Perry Center professor William Godnick was called upon by the Southern Command to moderate two virtual panel sessions at the Caribbean Nations Security Conference 2020 on 2 June 2020. The first panel addressed the sub-regional defense sector response to the COVID-19 pandemic while the second took an inventory of lessons learned for hurricane response operations. The participating Caribbean countries included Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as well as Trinidad and Tobago. Representatives from Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos also participated.

US Navy Admiral Craig Faller, commander of SOUTHCOM, welcomed CANSEC’s participants and addressed the importance of sharing lessons learned during the ongoing pandemic that prompted the need to host it virtually. “COVID-19 has swept the globe and affected all of us,” he said, “It’s the norm, and it will be the norm until we can inoculate and immunize the globe.” This is the third consecutive year that Perry Center faculty contribute to moderating the substantive sessions of CANSEC.