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Professor Susan Henders talks about her role as an observer for Taiwan election

fmaquito — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Several international observers were asked to oversee the January Taiwan presidential election to ensure freedom and fairness in what was predicted to be an extremely close race. Susan Henders, director of the 91��ɫ Centre for Asian Research (YCAR), was one of them. She’ll be discussing her experience as part of a panel Tuesday.

“Taiwan’s Super Saturday: Perspectives on the 2012 Polls from Canadian Election Observers” will take place Feb. 14, from 3:30 to 5:30pm, at 857 91��ɫ Research Tower, Keele campus.

Invited by the (ICFET), Henders was one of about 21 scholars, business people, parliamentarians and former government officials from eight countries, including Canada, the United States and several in Europe and Asia. This was the fifth time the Taiwanese people have voted directly for a presidential candidate since 1996. In addition, the legislative elections were also underway.

A street rally in support of the Democratic Progressive Party campaign

“There are always issues of freedom and fairness in Taiwan elections,” says Henders, a political science professor at 91��ɫ. “However, there were particular concerns about this one because the presidential race was predicated to be really close. The ICFET wanted some international observers there who could comment on the spot about what might be going on in the days leading up to the polls and also to provide some judgment about the freedom and fairness of the election.”

Michael Stainton (left) in Taiwan with a poster in the background in support of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, which was re-elected

Henders found the experience interesting and enlightening, and despite Taiwan’s unique situation and challenges, feels it has something to teach other democracies about the conditions that undermine the strength of democracy and the democratic nature of elections. She will join Michael Stainton, a Taiwan scholar and president of the Taiwan Human Rights Association of Canada who was also a member of the ICFET mission, in discussing their experiences as observers at the Tuesday event.

Stainton and Henders will examine how Taiwan’s democracy is affected by the island’s authoritarian past and its relations with China and the United States. B. Michael Frolic, a 91��ɫ political science professor emeritus, will speak about the election in light of Taiwan-China relations and democratization in other contexts. Lois Wilson, a former Canadian senator and president of the World Council of Churches, who was also part of the election observation mission, will also speak at the event.

A meeting for the Democratic Progressive Party campaign, with the presidential candidate and her running mate on the background poster

In the preliminary report following the election, the ICFET observers noted issues, such as vote buying, were a problem in the Jan. 14 polls. They also noted some misuse of government power and a severe imbalance in party wealth and resources, which undermines the freeness and fairness of elections, but is a result of the island’s authoritarian past. Taiwan was under authoritarian rule until the late 1980s and is still trying to throw off the residue of that period in its bid for democracy.

Susan Henders

Taiwan’s particular geopolitical and economic positioning with respect to China and the United States also means that foreign interference in elections remains an issue, says Henders.

The international election observation report stated that both Chinese and former United States officials interfered in the political process. During the election process, Taiwan and international media reported that Chinese officials were using China’s economic power to try to sway the election outcome. In addition, a few days before the election, a former American Institute in Taiwan chairman commented that Taiwan relations with China and the US would suffer if the opposition won.

“It was that kind of thing we were able to respond to quickly,” says Henders. Head of the ICFET mission Frank Murkowski, former US Alaska governor and senator, publicly condemned the remarks saying the US government should be neutral in the election.

The Taiwanese people are particularly sensitive to the views of US and Chinese officials. Although the US doesn’t recognize Taiwan as a state, it is obliged to protect it militarily. “So if a former US official says anything before an election in Taiwan, it gets a lot of attention,” says Henders. As Canada doesn’t formerly recognize Taiwan either, “it is particularly important that Canadian people, by participating in the election observation mission, showed support for efforts by Taiwanese people to strengthen their democracy.”

The Central Election Commission counting centre

Henders says the mission should be seen as a small contribution to the long-term building of a stronger democracy in Taiwan by getting rid of old authoritarian legacies and dealing with the power of China. “We were in many ways impressed by the election. We did not hear of issues with ballot counting or the mechanics of the process while we were there, and the candidates on the whole were forthcoming in answering the questions of our observation mission. Taiwan has achieved a lot.”

The ICFET mission visited Taipei, Kaohsiung, Tainan and Taichung and met with candidates or organizers from the three main political parties – the Democratic Progressive Party, the Chinese Nationalist Party and the People’s First Party. They also attended street rallies and campaign events, and visited polling stations. The mission members were present in the Central Election Commission counting centre on election day, they spoke with the media and held press conferences, as well as a public forum on democracy.

‘These kinds of observer missions represent a way civil society groups can be vigilant in helping each other and strengthening democracy,” Henders says.

For more information, contact YCAR at ycar@yorku.ca or visit the YCAR website.

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

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New speaker series hits hot labour relations buttons

fmaquito — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Do workers’ rights still matter? That is one of the hot and timely questions the new Conversations on Work and Labour Speakers’ Series will be addressing throughout the year.

The first conversation, “The Future of Public Sector Collective Bargaining,” will take place Wednesday, Oct. 26, from 12:30 to 2pm, 2003 Osgoode Hall Law School, Ignat Kaneff Building, Keele campus.

Left: Steven Barrett

of Sack, Goldblatt Mitchell LLP, (LLB ’94) of the School of Management at Ryerson University and of McGill University will discuss the issue of collective bargaining, a topic on many Canadians' minds right now.

Barrett, managing partner of the firm since 2006, practises in the areas of labour law, the Charter of Rights and constitutional litigation, as well as public interest litigation. An alumnus of Osgoode Hall Law School, Bartkiw’s research interests include industrial relations, labour and employment law, labour policy, public policy and political economy. Hebdon, a professor in the Desautels Faculty of Management, worked for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union for 24 years and his research interests include public sector labor relations and restructuring, collective bargaining, dispute resolution and industrial conflict.

Right: Timothy Bartkiw

The second conversation will feature , a professor of economic security at the University of Bath, talking about his new book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (Bloomsbury Academic). The event will take place Tuesday, Nov. 15, from 12:30 to 2:30pm, at 2003 Osgoode Hall Law School, Ignat Kaneff Building, Keele campus.

Left: Robert Hebdon

“91��ɫ had traditionally been the go to place for media and government policymakers for pressing and hot labour issues of the day, as well as long-term labour-relations issues,” says social science Professor Carla Lipsig-Mummé of 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) and co-convener of the series with law Professor Sara Slinn. “One of the reasons for this kind of a speaker series is to bring that role back to 91��ɫ as the leading university in research and community-based action-research in labour relations and get people talking about labour issues both internally and externally.”

Standing, a former research director of the International Labour Organization and an internationally acclaimed scholar, will argue that the long-term work-based precarisation of increasing numbers of people worldwide is leading to the crystallization of a new class. The volatility and political potential of this new class is just starting to be recognized, he says. Neoliberal policies and institutional changes have produced a huge and growing number of people with sufficiently common experiences to be called an emerging class. This conversation is co-organized with 91��ɫ Professor Peer Zumbansen and the Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy Network.

Right: Guy Standing

There will be six conversations throughout the academic year, featuring nationally and internationally influential speakers from Canada, the United States, the European Union, international organizations and 91��ɫ.

These conversations will foster more internal dialogue with students and academics, as well as law and social science collaborative research at 91��ɫ, and will help bring people external to the University into the dialogue, said Lipsig-Mummé. It will allow collaboration with labour and labour law practitioners that will benefit students, researcher and the wider public.

A will allow those conversations to continue and deepen long after the panel discussions are finished. More disciplines than ever are now concerned with labour issues, which makes this speakers series highly relevant, she says.

As Slinn of 91��ɫ’s Osgoode Hall Law School points out, “91��ɫ has a lot of expertise and interest in labour and employment issues. This speaker series takes advantage of expertise and provides a nexus for a multi-dimensional discussion on timely and important issues.”

Right: Sara Slinn and Carla Lipsig-Mummé

The conversations will encompass a variety of different viewpoints and ideologies regarding the topic at hand and will include union leaders, academics, lawyers and academics. “They are meant to be fulsome conversations. We hope the panels will be enlightening and interesting and will examine crucial questions at the heart of each topic,” says Slinn. “There aren’t many spaces in existence for those kinds of conversations anywhere right now.”

The Conversations on Work and Labour Speakers' Series is a joint project of Osgoode Hall Law School and LA&PS. A number of departments, programs and associations are also sponsoring the conversations.

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

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AGYU launches its new season with the Raqs Media Collective

fmaquito — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Tricky math and haunting messages accumulate in unresolved poetics this fall at the Art Gallery of 91��ɫ (AGYU).

The AGYU invites you to "surge out there" as it joins with Raqs Media Collective: technological poets for an India in transition, to present their newest exhibit Surjection.

Of the current generation of Indian artists, the from New Delhi (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta) are among the best known and most widely exposed in the west – and certainly the most media conscious. Having started as documentary filmmakers, over the past 20 years they have evolved a sophisticated, and sometimes performative, practice that combines film, media, audio and text, all of which draw upon philosophy and political theory, in installations of an unresolved poetics.

Right: Members of the Raqs Media Collective, from left, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi and Monica Narula

The Raqs Media Collective exhibition, Surjection, opens with a free public reception tonight, from 6 to 9pm at the Art Gallery of 91��ɫ. The artists will be at the reception.

The collective describes their AGYU exhibition this way: “Raqs Media Collective delights in transposing the plenitude of the incalculable onto the fabric of the ordinary. By counting to infinity, sensing animation in stillness and speaking in the language of silence, Raqs will breathe numbers, figures, proverbs and stories into the galleries of the Art Gallery of 91��ɫ.”

In this exhibition of entirely new work, the artists start with traces that are minimal but that contain great amplitude within them, such as the palm print of Raj Konai – the ancestral trace (from 1859) of the entire history of forensic identification – that hovers over the exhibition. Now animated, this image of a counting hand initiates a series of moves that the viewer animates through the exhibition. At the same time, the viewer witnesses other evolutions in video projection where stillness itself slowly is animated. Surjection begins outside, in AGYU Vitrines and occupies both galleries.

The elements of the exhibition are in a surjective relationship to each other. “Surjection” is a mathematical concept devised by the Bourbaki Group, whereby the elements of one set are applied, transposed, or mapped onto those of another set. Surjection continues until Sunday, Dec. 4.

Surject yourself onto the Performance Bus

It’s an entirely different experience of numbers and letters on the Bingo Dilemma Bus. The game starts tonight at 6pm sharp when the Performance Bus departs the Ontario College of Art & Design University campus at 100 McCaul St.. Riders gather the clues to the game on the way to the Raqs Media Collective exhibition opening at the AGYU. Artist and game host Oliver Husain will be on the bus calling out the game clues. Performance Bus returns downtown at 9pm.

Math too tough for you? Go back to school with AGYU @ Art Toronto

The AGYU tricks or treats fair patrons with one of its specially commissioned installations featuring Toronto novelist Derek McCormack and Toronto artist Ian Phillips. The haunted schoolhouse is the outcome of an four-year project supported by the AGYU of H.A.M.S. (Holiday Arts Mail-Order School), which is a correspondence course (for the 1936-1937 school year) devoted to the holiday arts. Hallowe’enologists will be on hand to take your questions and offer demonstrations. Alumni are welcome.

Virtually AGYU

The surjective relations continue online with the as independent Toronto curator Su-Ying Lee visits the studio of New 91��ɫ-based artist Alexandre Singh, whom she met in Paris this past summer while travelling in Europe. on her travels through Europe.

Writing from the ash-filled Grimsvötn sky, Toronto artist counts down the rest of her days in Iceland as she writes about contemporary art and generous helpings of never-ending splendour, mind-blowing sunsets, migratory birds, half-shorn sheep, geothermal pools and more.

For more information, visit the AGYU website.

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

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91��ɫ music professors spread the word about their research

fmaquito — Fri, 21 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

The research and creative work of 91��ɫ music professors spans a wide range of genres and media formats. Disseminated through recordings, print publications and live performances, it’s reaching growing audiences at home and around the world.

Composer and choral conductor Professor Stephanie Martin (left), who serves as music director of Toronto’s historic Church of St. Mary Magdalene, is celebrating the publication of five new choral compositions. Ave Verum Corpus, a song for unaccompanied choir, was recently published by Vancouver-based Cypress Choral Music. Martin directed the Gallery Choir of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in a performance of the work at the choir’s home church in Toronto and Calvin Presbyterian Church in Kitchener on April 30 and May 1, respectively. Ave Verum Corpus will be heard again later this month, having been selected for inclusion in the performance repertoire of , Canada’s Choral Conference taking place in Saskatoon May 20 to 23.

Martin’s other recent composition publications include Kontakion, an unaccompanied choral piece on a text from the Greek Orthodox liturgy, also released by Cypress; God so Loved the World for choir, oboe and flute, and O sacrum convivium, a Latin communion motet for unaccompanied choir, released by Hamilton’s UtReMi Edition; and Drop, Slow Tears, a choral work set to a text by the 17th-century poet Phineas Fletcher, released by Victoria’s Fairbank Music Publishing.

91��ɫ’s Grammy Award-winning “rock ’n’ roll professor”, ethnomusicologist Professor Rob Bowman (right), has added another release to his long list of popular music reissues. His latest production, , is a 5-DVD boxed set documenting some of the legendary rock artists and greatest hits of the 1960s. Bowman associate-produced the series for , home of the world’s largest library of music footage. Joining a chorus of critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, the Toronto Star’s Greg Quill hailed the DVD series as “a well-researched and expertly curated package.”

The set includes four titles: Dusty Springfield - Once Upon A Time 1964-1969, Small Faces - All Or Nothing 1965-1968, Gerry & The Pacemakers - It’s Gonna Be All Right 1963-1965, and Herman’s Hermits - Listen People 1964-1969, plus a bonus disc with additional content from the same artists. Rare concert and archival interview footage of the performers in their prime is accompanied by recent interviews that Bowman researched and conducted with Peter Noone (of Herman’s Hermits), Gerry Marsden (Gerry & The Pacemakers), Kenney Jones (The Who and Small Faces) and Ian McLagan (Small Faces), among others.

Bowman attended the launch party for the United States release hosted by the British Consulate General in Manhattan on April 8. While in New 91��ɫ, he got a head start on his next DVD project, conducting a three-hour interview with Graham Nash of The Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Future plans include a trip to England to do more interviews with members of The Hollies and The Pretty Things.

Bowman’s writing also graces the liner notes of two timely CD releases: Canadian blues artist Colin Linden’s recently re-issued debut LP , and an upcoming recording by soul singer Bettye LaVette.

On the jazz front, music Professor Sundar Viswanathan (right) released his latest CD with Sundary Quartet, titled at a standing-room only event at Chalkers Pub in Toronto earlier this season. A collection of jazz standards, the disc features Viswanathan on vocals and saxophone, with 91��ɫ instructor Adrean Farrugia and Dave Restivo on piano, George Koller on bass and Larnell Lewis on drums. Toronto Star jazz columnist Ashante Infantry described Viswanathan’s vocals on the CD as “a cross between Kurt Elling and Chet Baker” and complimented his performance of the material as “as commanding live as recorded.”

Master percussionist Professor Trichy Sankaran is launching his new book, The Art of Konnakkol, on May 27 with a free concert at Toronto’s . The concert starts at 8pm and will feature Sankaran in performance with members of the Indo-jazz fusion band Autorickshaw and other special guests.

The Art of Konnakkol is an authoritative text on the rich tradition of rhythmic spoken syllables of south Indian drumming. The spoken syllables, called konnakko or solkattu, are onomatopoeic to the mrdangam, the two-headed drum of south Indian classical music, on which Sankaran is a virtuoso performer. The spoken syllables can be performed as a call and response to the drum, or simultaneously with the drum beats.

Sankaran’s book, which is accompanied by a CD, outlines in detail the principal rhythmic concepts of this dynamic spoken art form. It can be used as a study guide and will be of benefit to a wide variety of artists, from percussionists and vocalists to composers and dancers, and anyone seeking a greater understanding of rhythm and musical time.

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

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