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Speakers and Moderators

Friday, March 27, 2009

Morning Session #1 - 8:45 am -12:00 pm

Environment: The Right to be Cold

Sheila Watt Cloutier Canadian Inuit activist and political representative for Inuit at the regional, national and international levels, most recently as International Chair for Inuit Circumpolar Conference. Watt-Cloutier has worked on a range of social and environmental issues affecting Inuit, and has most recently focused on persistent organic pollutants and global climate change. She has received numerous awards and honors for her work, including a nomination for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

York Moderator: Jennifer Foster, Faculty of Environmental Studies
Jennifer Foster is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at York University, Coordinator of the Urban Ecologies certificate program at York, and Chair of the York President's Sustainability Council. Her research focuses on urban planning, ecological restoration, environmental aesthetics and social justice. She has published in urban design, geography and environmental philosophy journals. Her current research examines the ecological politics of post-industrial urban greenspace.

Global Society: No Place Like Home

Arjun Appadurai Goddard Professor of Media, Culture and Communications at New York University. During his academic career, he has held professorial chairs at Yale University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania, and has held visiting appointments at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), the University of Michigan, the University of Iowa, and Columbia University. An anthropologist, he is the originator of the term Òglobal cultural flows.Ó He is the founder and President of PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) a non-profit organization in Mumbai, and co-founder of the academic journal Public Culture, an interdisciplinary journal of transnational cultural studies.

York Moderator: Barbara Sellers Young
Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University. Her research projects on the intersections of dance, body, and globalization have taken place in Sudan, Egypt, Nepal, China, England, Japan, and Australia. She is the author of three books Teaching Personality with Gracefulness (published in 1993), a discussion of Kanriye Fujima's life and teaching of Nihon Buyo in the United States, Breathing, Movement, Exploration, a movement text for actors (Applause Books 2001) and an edited volume with Anthony Shay on the globalization of the popular culture form, bellydance, titled, Bellydance: Orientalism, Transnationalism and Harem Fantasy. (Mazda Press, 2005).

 

Friday, March 27, 2009

Afternoon Session #1 - 1:00 pm – 5:45 pm

Technology: Change You Have Counted On

Nicholas Negroponte Founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child non-profit association. He is currently on leave from MIT, where he was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology. A graduate of MIT, Negroponte was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, and has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1966. He is also author of the 1995 best seller, Being Digital , which has been translated into more than 40 languages. In the private sector, Nicholas Negroponte serves on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc. and as general partner in a venture capital firm specializing in digital technologies for information and entertainment. He has provided start-up funds for more than 40 companies, including Wired magazine.

York Moderator: John K. Tsotsos, Faculty of Science and Engineering, PhD (University of Toronto) began as Assistant Professor in Computer Science and in Medicine at the University of Toronto. During his 20 years there, he was awarded a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Fellow for two consecutive terms. He moved to York University in January 2000 to become Director of York's Centre for Vision Research, one of the world's top handful of inter-disciplinary vision centres, serving for 7 years. He is now York's Distinguished Research Professor of Vision Science and Canada Research Chair in Computational Vision and maintains Adjunct Professorships in Computer Science and Ophthalmology and Health Sciences at his Alma Mater.

Wasted Crises: A Past and Possible Future Of Ottawa's Economic Policies

Jeffrey Simpson The Globe and Mail's national affairs columnist, has won all three of Canada's leading literary prizes -- the Governor-General's award for nonfiction book writing, the National Magazine Award for political writing, and the National Newspaper Award for column writing (twice). He has also won the Hyman Solomon Award for excellence in public policy journalism. In January, 2000, he became an Officer of the Order of Canada. He completed a two-hour documentary for CBC to accompany his book, Star-Spangled Canadians. He is now senior fellow at the University of OttawaÕs Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

York Moderator: Patricia Bradshaw, Schulich School of Business
Patricia Bradshaw is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour in the Schulich School of Business. Her research interests include non-profit governance and the role of power in organizational change efforts. In addition to being a former chair of the York University Senate, Pat has been Director of the MBA Program and is currently Area Coordinator for the Organizational Studies Area. Pat frequently consults to non-profit and enjoys teaching leadership skills to the MBA students.

Conversation with the Interdisciplinary Panel

Join Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Arjun Appadurai, Nicholas Negroponte, and Jeffrey Simpson, for a roundtable conversation and audience Q & A.

York Moderator: Lorna Marsden, President Emerita
Lorna Marsden is president emerita and professor at York University. She came to York to serve as president and vice-chancellor in 1997 after five years as president of Wilfrid Laurier University. She began her academic career in 1972 at the University of Toronto. From 1984-92 she was a Senator on the Parliament of Canada. She is a recipient of the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and of six honorary degrees. She was the third president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and serves on a number of public, private and voluntary boards.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Morning Session #2 - 8:45 am -12:00 pm

Justice: Balancing the Scales

Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and sole commissioner and author of the 1984 federal Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, which created the term and concept of employment equity.

York Moderator: Patrick Monahan, Osgoode Hall Law School
Patrick J. Monahan, Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, and commencing July 1, 2009, he will become Vice President Academic and Provost at York University. He is also Chair of the Board of Governors of the Law Commission of Ontario and a member of the Board of Directors of the Ontario Power Authority. One of CanadaÕs foremost constitutional law experts, he holds an LLB from Osgoode and an LLM from Harvard and has appeared as counsel at all levels of court in Canada, including the Supreme Court of Canada. He was Senior Policy Advisor between 1986 and 1990 to the Attorney General and Premier of Ontario, respectively, where he played a key role in the negotiation of the 1987 Meech Lake Accord. The author of several books, he was awarded the David W. Mundell Medal for Legal Writing in 2008 by the Attorney General of Ontario.

Health: Mind, Body and Planet

Edward O. Wilson Pellegrino University Research Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University, is one of the most highly respected scientists in the world today. Hailed as "the new Darwin" by Thomas Wolfe, and one of "America's 25 Most Influential People" by TIME Magazine, he has twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for The Ants and On Human Nature.

York Moderator: Suzanne MacDonald, Faculty of Health
Suzanne MacDonald is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology at York University, appointed to the graduate programs in both Psychology and Biology. She received her PhD in animal learning and behavior from the University of Alberta, and then did postdoctoral work at the University of British Columbia, before moving to York in 1990. She has three main areas of research expertise: memory and cognition in nonhuman primates; psychological well-being of captive animals; and reproductive behavior of critically endangered species. Much of her research is conducted at the Toronto Zoo, where she has volunteered as the “behaviorist” for over 15 years.

 

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Afternoon Session #2 - 1:00 pm – 5:45 pm

International Relations: What’s a Nice Middle Power Like You Doing in a World Like This?

Lloyd Axworthy Current President of the University of Winnipeg and member of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, the first global initiative to focus on the link between exclusion, poverty and law. Former federal Minister of Foreign Affairs under Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

York Moderator: David Dewitt, Faculty of Arts
David Dewitt (BA, UBC; MA & PhD, Stanford) is Associate Vice-President Research (Social Sciences & Humanities) and Professor of Political Science, York University. From 1988 until July 2006 he served as Director of the UniversityÕs Centre for International and Security Studies. He is widely published on Canadian foreign, security, and defence policy, international and regional security and conflict management in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, arms control and proliferation, and human security. Dewitt has been actively involved in various track two initiatives on security in the Asia Pacific and in the Middle East and has led a number of national and international academic research and policy organizations.

The Writer as Citizen: The Last 50 Years and the Next 50

Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood is an international literary star and one of the world's most celebrated authors. A truly extraordinary and prolific writer, Ms. Atwood has published more than 25 books, in which she has explored the issues of our times, capturing them in the satirical, self-reflexive mode of the contemporary novel. Her most recent works include the best-selling novels, Alias Grace, Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride, the collections Wilderness Tips and Bluebird's Egg, and The Blind Assassin. Noted for her ability to both entertain and challenge an audience to think critically about our relationship to words and language, she is the perfect choice for major lecture series, artist-in-residence programs, and creative writing programs.

York Moderator: Caitlin Fisher, Faculty of Fine Arts, holds a Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture in the Department of Film at York University. A co-founder of York’s Future Cinema Lab, her research investigates the future of narrative through explorations of interactive storytelling and interactive cinema in Augmented Reality environments. Caitlin completed York's first hypertextual dissertation in 2000 and her hypermedia novella, These Waves of Girls, won the Electronic Literature Organization's 2001 Award for Fiction. Her augmented reality poem, Andromeda, was awarded the 2008 International Vinaròs Prize for Electronic Literature. Most recently she co-edited an issue of PUBLIC on digital confession and narrative.

Conversation with the Interdisciplinary Panel

Join Justice Rosalie Abella, E.O. Wilson, Lloyd Axworthy, and Margaret Atwood, for a roundtable conversation and audience Q & A.

York Moderator: Allan C. Hutchinson, LLB (London), LLM (Manchester), LLD (Manchester), FRSC, Barrister of Gray's Inn, and of the Bar of Ontario. Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, since 1982, he was recently appointed to the position of Distinguished Research Professor at York University, was elected to the Royal Society of Canada, and was awarded the University-wide Teaching Award. He has held a variety of visiting appointments around the world, including University of Wales, London, Sydney, Monash, and Toronto, and was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in 2007. He has published and/or edited 15 books and contributed many chapters in books and numerous articles in the world’s leading law reviews.