The first lecture will take place on Monday Oct. 3 from 11am to 1pm in 305 91��ɫ Lanes. Professor Matthew Evenden (right) from the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia (UBC) will present his lecture titled “Of muskrats and minerals: The Second World War and the Canadian environment.” Evenden’s talk will focus on the processes of economic and environmental transformation in Canada during the Second World War through an examination of commodities such as aluminium, timber, wheat; even muskrats have a part in the story.

Other speakers in the series include geography Professor Arn Keeling and history Professor John Sandlos from Memorial University, and geography Professor Graeme Wynn, history Professor Tina Loo and Professor Emerita of geography Julie Cruikshank, all of UBC.  

The series is run in conjunction with a series at UBC's Green College with additional support from Networks in Canadian Studies and the Environment (NICHE) and the UBC Canadian Studies Program.

The Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies is located on the seventh floor of the 91��ɫ Research Tower.

For more information, visit the Robarts Centre website, or contact Laura Taman, Robarts project coordinator, at llt@yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Universities can play a critical role in confronting the democratic deficit pervading politics at every level, 91��ɫ’s will argue in this year’s Giambattista Vico Lecture Feb. 15.

What is to be done, Fallis will ask, about declining voter turnout, strident and polarizing debate, public decision-making dominated by business elites and experts – all signs of a democratic deficit at local, national and international levels. He will argue that the problem must be confronted not just by political parties and parliaments but by universities. Universities are not just institutions of teaching and books, not just institutions of the economy, but institutions of democracy.

Left: George Fallis

Fallis delivers his lecture, “Democratic Deficit: Universities and the Future of Democracy”, in Founders Assembly Hall, 152 Founders College, at 7:30pm.

In his essay “” published two years ago in Academic Matters, Fallis made a similar argument that a university’s responsibility to contribute to democratic life is just as critical as its role in economic development.

Fallis is professor of economics and social science who has published widely on housing, urban policy and constitutional reform. His current research focuses on universities: their roles and responsibilities in the 21st century; the value of undergraduate liberal education; and the role of university-based research in national innovation. His most recent book is .

At 91��ɫ, the Princeton-educated Fallis has served as chair of economics, dean of the former Faculty of Arts and chair of the Senate Academic Policy & Planning Committee. He has been academic colleague on the Council of Ontario Universities and an auditor of degree programs at Ontario universities.

The annual Giambattista Vico Lecture was named after an 18th-century Italian philosopher of history, culture and myth whose ideas had a profound influence on the humanities and social sciences. 91��ɫ’s former Faculty of Arts launched the Vico lecture in 2000 in memory of Fred Zorzi, late partner of the Toronto law firm DelZotto, Zorzi LLP, which helped endow the annual event.

American social researcher Nancy Fraser gave the 2009 Vico lecture on “Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation: Toward a Neo-Polanyian Conception of Capitalist Crisis".

This year’s lecture is sponsored by the 91��ɫ Foundation, the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and Founders College.

To attend the lecture, register online.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Left: Naomi Oreskes

Oreskes, who is an adjunct professor of geosciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and provost of Sixth College at UC San Diego, began her career as an exploration geologist working in the mining industry in the Australian outback. For the past 20 years, she has studied the process of consensus and dissent in science.

The central questions that inform her research are: How do scientists decide when a fact is established? How do they judge how much evidence is sufficient to deem something scientifically demonstrated? And what happens when scientists can’t agree?

Oreskes will be at 91��ɫ to talk about her new book, Merchants of Doubt (Bloomsbury Press, 2010).

In the book, Oreskes and her co-author Erik Conway, an historian of science affiliated with the California Institute of Technology, explore how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists, with extensive political connections, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades.

In seven chapters addressing tobacco, acid rain, the ozone hole, global warming and DDT, Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how the ideology of free market fundamentalism, aided by a compliant media, has skewed public understanding of the most pressing issues of our era.

Oreskes’ lecture marks the official launch of 91��ɫ’s new Institute for Science & Technology Studies. The institute, which launches today, was created to be a focal point for science and technology studies in Canada. Science & Technology Studies is a burgeoning field not only in Canada, but also the world, as scholars in humanities and social studies develop increasingly sophisticated intellectual and methodological tools for engaging with techno-scientific knowledge, practice and artifacts.

For more on the new institute, visit the Science & Technology Studies website.

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91��ɫ political science Professor Emeritus Bernie Michael Frolic, of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, will deliver the lecture Tuesday, Sept. 21, from 3:30 to 5:30pm, at 280N 91��ɫ Lanes, Keele campus. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Left: Bernie Frolic

Director of the 91��ɫ Asian Business & Management Program, based at the 91��ɫ Centre for Asian Research (YCAR) and in partnership with the , Frolic has been at 91��ɫ since 1966. His talk will focus on the history of the relationship between Canada and China up to present day. He will also speak about his own relationship with China.

His published works include Mao’s People: Sixteen Portraits of Life in Revolutionary China  (Harvard College, 1980) and Gongmin shehui zai Zhonghua renmin gongheguo (Xin shijie chubanshe, 2007). He is also co-editor of Reluctant Adversaries: Canada and the People's Republic of China, 1949-1970(University of Toronto Press, 1991), Civil Society in China (M.E. Sharpe, 1997) and Democracy, Human Rights and Civil Society in South East Asia (Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 2001).

He is currently completing a book on Canada and Peoples Republic of China relations since 1970 and is working on a long-term study of political change in China.

Professor Ruth Hayhoe of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, will be the discussant. Hayhoe is a specialist in comparative education and a sinologist. From 1997 to 2002 she headed the Hong Kong Institute of Education and is now its president emerita. She has held teaching positions at Heep Yunn School in Hong Kong, at Fudan University in Shanghai and at the Roehampton Institute of Higher Education in London. She held at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing from 1989 to 1991.

Hosted by the YCAR, the lecture is supported by 91��ɫ International and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. The reception begins at 3:30pm and the lecture will start at 4:30pm. This event will also serve as YCAR’s welcome back event for the 2010-2011 academic year.

For more information or to RSVP, contact YCAR at ycar@yorku.ca or 416-736-5821.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Four speakers will untangle some of the issues at Guns & Global Security: From Neighbourhoods to the United Nations, which will take place Thursday, April 22, from 7 to 9pm at the Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre Hotel, 525 Bay St., Toronto. Admission is free.

Canada is a producer and exporter of arms, as well as a recipient of both legal and less than legal transfers of weapons, mainly from the United States. For Canadians this has translated into greater numbers of guns on city streets and a more dangerous environment for the country’s military forces when they are deployed abroad.

Right: Barbara Falk

The problem of civilian possession will be addressed at multilateral arms control negotiations under the (SALW) and the Arms Trade Treaty. These discussions will explore the relationship of civilian possession of arms and problems of control, both domestic and international, for creating conditions of security and insecurity.

The panel for the YCISS discussion is comprised of Ryerson Professor Wendy Cukier of the 91��ɫ-Ryerson Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture; Ken Epps, senior program associate at Project Ploughshares; 91��ɫ criminology Professor James Sheptycki; Gregory Getty of the Toronto Police Service; and moderator Barbara Falk of Canadian Forces College.

Left: Wendy Cukier

The panel hopes to address some of the fundamental issues, such as how the concept of “civilian possession” should be interpreted under SALW and identifying the problems with civilian possession of small arms and light weapons faced by Canadian Forces.

The panellists will examine the problems and prospects of regulating small arms proliferation within Canada and the United States and whether civilian possession of weapons in Canada and the US needs to be addressed by state and non-state actors. They will also discuss what effect the multilateral arms control negotiations will have on arms trade as practised by Canada and the United States.

Since 2003, YCISS has held two annual public lecture series on contemporary issues in Canadian security, each exploring a current dilemma facing Canadian defence and security. The goal of the Contemporary Dilemmas in Canadian Security Lecture Series is to raise public awareness of the issues we face as Canadians, and to contribute to the public discussion of those issues. The lecturers are drawn from 91��ɫ, across Canada and around the world to provide informative, challenging reflections on the issues of the day.

This event is partly sponsored by the Guns, Crime and Social Order research project, an ongoing project that seeks to examine the relationship between weaponization and social cohesion.

To pre-register for the event, click here. For more information, visit the YCISS Web site.

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