March 27-28, 2009
What have we learned in the last fifty years and how will it help us in the next fifty?
This is the question that will shape 50+50, the centerpiece of York University’s celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. To answer that question the University has invited some of the world’s most distinguished thinkers – and achievers – to a public symposium: “An Interdisciplinary Discussion of Pretty Much Everything”. Taking place in the Price Family Cinema, in York’s Fine Arts complex, confirmed speakers are:
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
| Rosalie Silberman Abella, Canadian Supreme Court Justice; | Arjun Appadurai, the preeminent commentator on global culture; | Margaret Atwood, award-winning Canadian author; | Lloyd Axworthy, distinguished Canadian diplomat; | |||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
| Nicholas Negroponte, technology guru; | Sheila Watt-Cloutier, citizen advocate on arctic climate change; | E. O. Wilson, one of the world’s most read and most quoted biologists | Jeffrey Simpson, award-winning Canadian journalist |
Each speaker will be hosted - and probed - by a York scholar. Each will take questions from the audience. In the afternoon session on both days, the speakers of the day will engage in a roundtable with the other speakers.
Symposium Emcee
Seth Feldman, Director of York University's Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies and Professor in the Department of Film, is widely known for his writing on film and media in Canada as well as the 25 radio documentary series he wrote and presented for the CBC program, Ideas. He is a former Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, former Chair of the Canadian Association of Fine Arts Deans and a founder and former President of the Film Studies Association of Canada. In recognition of his teaching and administrative work, Professor Feldman holds the honorific title of University Professor, one of twenty such positions at York.
