Celebrated author Linda McQuaig will present a talk about her new book, Nov. 28
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Linda McQuaig
Bestselling author and journalist Linda McQuaig, recipient of a National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting, will visit York University on Nov. 28 to talk about her new book The Sport and Prey of Capitalists.
McQuaig’s presentation is free and open to the public and will run from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Harry Crowe Room, 109 Atkinson Building, Keele Campus.
The Sport and Prey of Capitalists carefully details how, over the course of more than four decades, Canada’s public wealth – its democratically owned assets and services – became private wealth. From hydro-electricity to infrastructure, transportation, pharmaceutical research, finance and Canada’s oil sector, McQuaig details how, through a combination of under funding, so-called public-private-partnerships and privatization schemes, public services funded through progressive and redistributive taxes became lucrative sources of private wealth accumulation.
As rising inequality, labour market precarity and climate change continue to play an ever larger role in our lives, McQuaig shows how active labour market policies combined with a recommitment to public ownership is not only the sensible economic way forward but charts a path toward a fairer, more democratic and just society.
McQuaig is also the author of eight national bestsellers, including Shooting the Hippo, selected by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the 25 most influential books of the past 25 years.
The following tribute to Professor Emeritus Randy Scott, a Fellow of Founders College and a long-serving faculty member in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, was submitted to YFile by York Professor Gabriella Colussi-Arthur and Queen’s University Vice-Provost and Dean Fahim Quadir, School of Graduate Studies. Professor Scott died in early November.
Randy Scott
Randy Scott served at York University for 45 years, beginning in 1972 when he served as both a sessional instructor in the Department of French Literature and the assistant to the Dean in the former Atkinson College.
His work in administration was highly prized, but by 1980 he made the move permanently to teaching in the newly formed combined program of French and Italian Program in the Department of Humanities, Atkinson College and seconded to the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics (Italian Section).
Professor Scott earned his BA, MA and PhD in a combined French & Italian Literature program at the University of Toronto and was perfectly trilingual in English, French and Italian and also conducted research in Latin, Old French, and Provençal. He transferred permanently to the Italian Section of Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics in 1996 and contributed fully to teaching courses in language, literature, and culture.
While at Atkinson, he created courses both in French Studies and in Italian. He was renowned for introductory language pedagogy, having launched Elementary Italian, which attracted very high enrolment among mature students for evening classes. He added courses in Issues and Themes in Italian Culture; Great Writers and Thinkers on Dante, Erasmus, and Rousseau and beginning in 1995 he collaborated with Professor Emerita Rita Belladonna, herself an Italian Renaissance expert and internationally renowned scholar, on Aspects of Italian Culture, attracting hundreds of students when it was extensively revised as a 9.0-credit Foundations course in the former Faculty of Arts.
Last, but not least, he remedied a notable gap in the program by creating the course titled, “Italian Philosophical and Political Thought”. Those were heady days for the Italian Studies program.
As a member of the Italian Section, Scott was the embodiment of collegiality, a gentle, kind, empathetic soul, whose care and consideration for his fellow colleagues and Founders Fellows, was exemplary. Never a word out of turn, never an improper gesture, only a warm, large smile and, when necessary, a soft, but firm word; in other words, a gentleman in every way.
What made Scott a truly exceptional human being was his commitment to building an inclusive community in Founders College. In his eyes, the college was anything but an ordinary space to manage routine office work; it was, instead, a hub for creative social engagements that could effectively bring people together from different academic backgrounds; bridging disciplinary, ethnic and geographic divides alike. He would eagerly await any opportunity to extend a warm welcome to new faculty to Founders College. With a gracious smile, he would knock on the door of the new colleague and offer his unequivocal support to smooth out the individual’s transition. Making such personal connections to colleagues was his passion. It didn’t matter if the colleague was from a different department or was 20 years his junior; Scott would take a keen interest in learning about the individual in question and would go out of his way, on every occasion, to foster a respectful relationship with him or her. He was remarkably generous in mentoring junior faculty and doing everything in his capacity to set them up for success. His fellow faculty members at York University will always remember him fondly as both a colleague and friend and he will be dearly missed.
He had a great passion for Italian Studies and taught with great insight and dedication, writing out detailed notes in longhand and with impeccable calligraphy, which is truly a lost art.
Randy Scott’s students and colleagues loved him. He will be greatly missed.
Symposium explores how contemporary practices shape Islamophobia
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A symposium at York University will explore how contemporary practices of governmentality shape Islamophobia by bringing together international and Canadian scholars, activists and emerging scholars on Dec. 5.
The Centre for Feminist Research, in collaboration with The Graduate Program in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies, presents “State Surveillance, Muslim Subjects and Islamophobia symposium” which will run from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The symposium explores the implications of British and Canadian state national security strategies for the civil liberties of Muslim subjects, and the ways these regulations shape and reinforces the discourses of Islamophobia.
Speaker Nisha Kapoor, assistant professor of sociology at University of Warwick, will present the first talk from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. with “‘Meek’, ‘Mother’, ‘Monster’: Sur(veil)ling Muslim Women.”
Kapoor is the author of Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism (2018, Verso) and prior to joining the University of Warwick., she held appointments at the University of York (U.K.) and Duke University, where she was 2012-13 Samuel DuBois Cook Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences (REGSS) and at Manchester Metropolitan University. She was awarded an ESRC Future Research Leaders Award, 2015-18 entitled “Race, Citizenship and the State in the Context of the War on Terror.”
A catered lunch follows from 12 to 1 p.m., and a panel discussion, and Q-and-A, will run from 1 to 3:30 p.m. featuring Jasmin Zine, Khadija Cajee and Hawa Mire.
Khadija Caree is an entrepreneur and the co-founder of No Fly List Kids (@noflylistkids), a grassroots advocacy group whose work compelled the Federal Government to legislate changes to Canada’s Secure Air Travel Act after she discovered her infant son had been falsely flagged as a security risk. She will discuss “Deemed High Profile: Kids on the No Fly List.”
Jasmin Zine (Wilfrid Laurier University) has developed award-winning curriculum on Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism and worked with the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe the Council of Europe, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on guidelines for educators and policy-makers on combating Islamophobia. She will present “Islamophobia and the Security Industrial Complex.” She has completed a SSHRC-funded national study on the impact of 9/11, the ‘war on terror’ and domestic security discourses and policies on Canadian Muslim youth and is finishing a book manuscript based on this study tentatively titled Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation. She is currently working on a SSHRC-funded research project mapping the Canadian Islamophobia industry in partnership with the National Council of Canadian Muslims.
Hawa Y. Mire is a diasporic Somali storyteller, writer and strategist with more than a decade of experience in high-impact community-based initiatives, as well as the co-editor of MAANDEEQ, a collective of young Somali-demics from diverse fields who write about the Somali territories and the Somali diaspora. She holds a master’s degree in environmental studies from York University, where her research was preoccupied with storytelling as a site of social-boundary making, and is currently completing her PhD in anthropology at Carleton University.
Graduate Program in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies Annual Lecture and Q&A takes place at 109 Atkinson College (Harry Crowe Room). It is co-sponsored by YUGSA. For more on the event, visit the Facebook event page; to RSVP, fill out this form.
Sexuality Studies Program celebrates its 15th anniversary today with social event
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The Sexuality Studies Program is celebrating its 15th anniversary with a special social event on Thursday, Nov. 21, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. in room 305, Founders College.
Housed in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS), the Sexuality Studies Program is one of the few programs of its kind in the country offering a certificate and an undergraduate degree in multiple streams at both the minor and major levels.
This interdisciplinary program has been and continues to be supported by a number of faculty who come from a diversity of programs across LA&PS and Glendon contributing their research, knowledge and expertise.
This open and free event will feature celebratory remarks and light food and beverages in commemoration of this special milestone of the Sexuality Studies Program. All are welcome.
Films on labour highlighted during special screening at York
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Highlighting the stories of workers and labour issues, York University’s Department of Social Science will present a special screening of films featured at this year’s Canadian International Labour Film Festival (CLiFF).
Four short films will be presented during the event, running Nov. 21 from 6 to 7 p.m. in Accolade West, Room 304:
A Radiant Sphere (9.5 minutes, Canada)
Glasgow Women’s Strike (11 minutes, Switzerland)
24-Hour Workday (14.5 minutes, U.S.)
The Stain (13 minutes, Iran)
This year marks the 11th annual CLiFF, a festival that came out of a collaboration between trade unionists, worker activists and filmmakers committed to social justice. It takes place is more than 20 cities across Canada and aims to tell the stories of workers, and give voice to those who seek justice in workplace dignity.
The event is free to attend and is sponsored by The Work and Labour Studies Program, the Work and Labour Studies Student Association, and the Global Labour Research Centre at York University.
November wraps up with four events in McLaughlin Lunch Talk Series
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McLaughlin College invites the York University community to come and listen to interesting speakers as they share their knowledge on a variety of topics, and enjoy a free lunch. The long-running Lunch Talk Series wraps up November with four events.
Students who attend six or more Lunch Talks throughout the year will receive a Certificate of Participation, while those who attend 10 or more will receive a Certificate of Honour.
The talks take place in the Senior Common Room, 140 McLaughlin College, Keele Campus.
Here’s what’s on the menu:
Nov. 25 – Crisis Management or Hysteria? Policy Reactions to the 2015 Refugee Arrivals in Austria and Germany
Julia Kienast and Constantin Hruschka will present this talk, looking at the policy reactions to refugees arriving in Austria and Germany in 2015.
Constantin Hruschka and Julia Kienast
Kienast graduated from the University of Vienna in 2014 with a general law degree and a specialization in criminology as well as European human rights. From 2015 to 2019, she was employed as a research and teaching assistant in the Department of Constitutional & Administrative Law at the University of Vienna. Kienast has published in the area of migration, asylum and human trafficking, and he co-edited two handbooks on pretrial detention standards for juveniles and on radicalization of juveniles in detention. In the course of her PhD thesis, Kienast is researching sustainable and adequate instruments for the management of mass migration in Austria. Currently, she is an LLM candidate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor under the auspices of Fulbright and the Michigan Grotius Fellowship program. Kienast is a member of the German Netzwerk Migrationsrecht, the Viennese Refugee Law Clinic and the Academic Council on the United Nations System, among others.
Hruschka is currently working as a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law & Social Policy in Munich, Germany. In this capacity, he is participating in the Research Initiative of the Max Planck Society on the Challenges of Migration, Integration and Exclusion. Hruschka has previously worked, inter alia, with the Swiss Refugee Council (2014-17) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2004-14), and he is a member of the Swiss Federal Commission on Migration. He teaches European asylum law, inter alia, at Bielefeld University. His areas of research include: international and European, German and Swiss asylum and migration law; human rights law; refugee law and refugee rights; integration and social rights; and ethics of migration. Hruschka has extensively published on asylum and migration law, with a strong focus on the common European asylum system and its implementation.
Nov. 26 – The Election Nobody Won: Post-Election Analysis
Four McLaughlin College Fellows will come together to discuss the results of the 2019 federal election, including:
Robert DrummondFred FletcherDenis PilonJames C. Simeon
Robert Drummond – University Professor Emeritus of politics, public policy and administration. Drummon is a York alumnus (Ba ’67) and was employed at York for 42 years. He is also a dean emeritus of the Faculty of Arts.
Fred Fletcher – University Professor Emeritus of politics and communications studies. He has conducted many studies in the role of the mainstream media and of social media in Canadian election campaigns.
Dennis Pilon – Associate professor in the Department of Politics.
James C. Simeon (moderator) – Head of McLaughlin College and associate professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration.
This event runs from 12 to 1:30 p.m.
Nov. 27 – The Assessment and Evaluation of ‘evidence’ by Judges in the United Kingdom’s Immigration and Asylum Chamber
John Campbell
Presented by John Campbell, this event looks at the issue of assessing asylum claims heard in the U.K. Among the tasks facing the judges who decide legal claims is the difficult problem of assessing and evaluating the evidence submitted to the court by the parties in the dispute. Campbell will draw on the work of Jones (1994) and Redmayne (2001) on the role of ‘experts’ in the legal process, and the work of Jasanoff (2006) on the limits of scientific evidence in the legal process to examine how British judges assess expert evidence submitted to the United Kingdom Immigration and Asylum Chamber.
Though an examination of decisions in the First Tier Tribunal and in the Upper Tribunal (specifically ‘Country Guidance’ cases), Campbell identifies a number of substantive and procedural problems which arise in the way that immigration judges assess and evaluate evidence which undermines due process and which prevents asylum applicants from securing protection.
Campbell is an emeritus reader in the Anthropology of Law and Africa at the School of Oriental Studies, London. He is also a research affiliate at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University, and is attached to an ERC-funded project called ‘Euro-Expert’ directed by Professor Livia Holden. In addition to undertaking fieldwork in Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Botswana, he has undertaken ESRC-funded fieldwork in the U.K. on the British asylum system. He has published numerous papers and several books including Nationalism, Law and Statelessness. Grand Illusions in the Horn of Africa (Routledge, 2014) and Bureaucracy, Law and Dystopia in the UK’s Asylum System (Routledge, 2017).
This event runs from 12 to 1:30 p.m.
Nov. 28 – Political Law – A Very Short Introduction
Gregory Tardi
The 43rd federal general election is now part of Canadian history. The task of scholars and observers is not only to find the right questions to ask about the event, but also to draw the lessons from this process. There can be no doubt that the even was democratic, because voters had freedom of choice leading to self-government. Gregory Tardi will discuss the more profound issues on whether the election was conducted according to the rule of law, following the precepts of the Supreme court, and whether the electoral process met the requirements of ethical behavior of public officials, candidates, political parties and third parties. As no electoral process is ever perfect, we must address what can or should be improved for the next election, that may come sooner than anticipated.
Tardi served for a long time as a lawyer with Elections Canada and the House of Commons. Although currently listed as “retired” from the public service, he maintains his interested in the conduct of public affairs by teaching and writing. His most recent manuscript Anatomy of an Election has just been delivered to a publisher. He is executive director of the Institute of Parliamentary and Political Law and executive editor of the Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law.
This event runs from 12 to 1:30 p.m.
Economics students compete in Bank of Canada’s Governor’s Challenge
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A team of highly motivated undergraduate students from York University’s Department of Economics was selected to compete in the Bank of Canada’s Governor’s Challenge.
The challenge simulates the monetary policy decision-making process by putting students in the role of advisor to the bank’s Governing Council, giving young economists an opportunity to apply their knowledge to a real-world situation. The competition began early in September and will culminate with a live presentation to a panel of Bank economists on Nov. 21.
Students on the presenting team for the Bank of Canada’s Governor’s Challenge: Olha Myronyuk, Maliha Rubaba Farhad, Naman Puri and Tenzin Chozin
The team includes students Tenzin Chozin, Naman Puri, Aaliah Joseph, Amirbardia Bahaaddini, Maliha Rubaba Farhad, Reyam Alkobaisi, Uche Osemene, Ying Xiu and Olha Myronyuk. Students were supervised by three faculty members: Professors Antoine Djogbenou, Tsvetanka Karagyozova and Robert J. McKeown, who made themselves available so the students had the support they needed when they needed.
McKeown said he was impressed with how hard-working York students were during the challenge.
“They took to the role of economic analyst with great energy,” he said. “Each of our young economists collected data, analyzed current economic events, performed risk analysis, and forecasted economic key variables such as economic growth and inflation. These are the same skills that today’s employers are searching for.”
Of the 24 teams representing different universities across Canada, only five will be invited to the final round in Ottawa. However, the faculty advisors supervising the York students remain optimistic that York University will be among the top performers invited to the bank’s head office in Ottawa.
The students, he said, are having fun working with each other and engaging with faculty. They are becoming a fixture in the Department of Economics computer lab, and have demonstrated remarkable teamwork and effort over the past eight weeks.
“You can see the students are having fun. And perhaps because it’s fun, they are willing to go that extra mile for each other,” said McKeown, noting that that commitment from the students, as well as Professors Djogbenou and Karagyozov, has been incredible.
“I am very proud of our team,” he said.
Poet Roo Borson to speak at Dec. 3 Canadian Writers in Person lecture
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York University’s Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series will feature poet Roo Borson on Dec. 3, who will read from her latest collection of poetry, Cardinal in the Eastern White Cedar.
The series features 11 authors who will present their work, answer questions and sign books. Canadian Writers in Person is a for-credit course for students. It is also a free-admission event for members of the public. All readings take place at 7 p.m. on select Tuesday evenings in 206 Accolade West Building, Keele Campus.
Borson has published 13 previous books of poems, including Rain; road; an open boat and Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida, winner of the Governor General’s Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. She has also won awards for her essays. With Kim Maltman, she writes and translates collaboratively under the pen name Baziju. She lives in Toronto.
After Borson’s two previous collections set the seasons in motion, focusing the poet’s mind on time, mortality, transience and absence, Cardinal in the Eastern White Cedar completes the triptych. From the glittering, classically rendered image to a freighted, lucid, narrative line, Borson’s voice can shift and refract while holding true to the momentary facts of the shifting, given world. Here, the distant past collides with the near future, the present opens suddenly into another age and friendship becomes the measure of time’s salience. These poems depict what vanishes, the various modest homes where half-remembered lives all flow toward their common end.
March 3: E. Martin Nolan, Still Point, Invisible Publishing
March 17: David Bezmozgis, Immigrant City, HarperCollins
Canadian Writers in Person is a course offered out of the Culture & Expression program in the Department of Humanities in York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. For more information on the series, visit yorku.ca/laps/canwrite, call 416-736-5158, or email Professor Gail Vanstone at gailv@yorku.ca or Professor Leslie Sanders at leslie@yorku.ca.
CLiFF features documentary based on York University international research collaboration
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Rethabile’s Story, a 25-minute documentary based on research from York University’s School of Human Resources Management (HRM) Professor Kelly Pike, has been selected for the Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLiFF). It will screen on Nov. 23 at 5:30 p.m. at Carlton Cinemas in Toronto. Tickets are free.
Kelly Pike
The film is based on the Decent Work Regulation (DWR) Africa project, a collaboration between Durham University (U.K.), the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and York University (Canada) that aims to establish a regional network of researchers and policy-makers with an interest in effective labour regulation. After receiving a grant from the U.K. Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) in 2018, Pike co-led the project and established the project’s partners to achieve decent work in sub-Saharan Africa – and Sustainable Development Goal 8 – by making labour rights more effective.
“As part of the focus groups that were conducted, workers asked whether I would simply do my research and move on, or whether something could be done to help improve their conditions,” said Pike. “Making this film was an opportunity to let workers tell their story and give the rest of the world a glimpse into their daily lives.”
Having premiered in July at the 6th Bi-Annual Regulating for Decent Work Conference, hosted by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the film walks viewers through the garment factories of Maseru, Lesotho, where workers make clothes to be sold in the United States and South Africa. Former factory worker Rethabile showcases the places she used to work, introduces her friends and describes her role in the DWR-Africa project.
“Rethabile was involved in the first focus group I conducted in May 2011, and later became a union organizer and friend,” said Pike. “I hope this film is able to show that her story is really the story of every worker in the global clothing industry and that it highlights a common desire among stakeholders to work together to address challenges and complex dynamics when it comes to labour standards enforcement in global supply chains.”
York University’s Global Labour Research Centre will be screening the film on Keele campus Nov. 20 at 2:30 p.m. in Kaneff Tower, Room 519, as part of their Global Labour Speaker Series. Professor Nathanael Ojong from International Development Studies will lead a discussion following the film, during which there will be an opportunity for audience members to ask questions and discuss the challenges of regulating labour standards in global supply chains with Pike.
Learn about the transformative impact of new technologies at Monica Belcourt Speakers Forum
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An annual lecture at York University created for human resources professionals will feature guest speaker Robert Carlyle, AVP strategic people analytics for Sunlife Financial on Nov. 20.
Robert Carlyle
The HR Talks: Monica Belcourt Speakers Forum was established in 2015 to bring thought leaders in the field to the School of Human Resources Management. The speaker series is named after Professor Emerita Monica Belcourt, founder of the School of HRM in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies and a HR trailblazer in her own right.
Carlyle will present his talk “The Transformative Impact of New Technologies” from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Schulich Executive Learning Centre.
During his lecture, Carlyle will discuss how accelerating technology development and social change has transformed how societies create wealth. With increased importance on innovation and creativity the criticality of human capital has increased while changing the mix of high demand skills. At this time of flux for HR practitioners, there is also the opportunity to reinvent how people are managed and led using emerging technologies.
In the talk, he will address four topics:
new business models driven by technology development and social change;
the new workforce; different skills, behaviour and organisation structures;
emerging technologies and practices in HR – examples of machine learning, natural language processing and neuropsychology; and
visions of Future HR – options for management and leadership with technology pervasive HR.
Carlyle leads the development of observations, insights and predictions to enable better workforce decision making. Through targeted use of technology this is improving the decisions of individual employees (e.g. what should my next job be?), managers (e.g. how do I retain a key employee?) and leaders (e.g. how do I improve team productivity?).
He is also the chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s HR Policy Committee, and member of the Labour Market Information Council of Canada’s National Stakeholder Advisory Panel and formerly the Canadian representative to ISO’s Human Resources Management technical committee.
Prior to joining Sunlife, Carlyle led workforce analytics at RBC, was the global practice leader of workforce planning and strategies at Aon Consulting and was the CEO of a consulting and technology development start-up. He holds several degrees including a doctorate in strategic planning from Cranfield University in the U.K.
A reception with light refreshments will follow the lecture. HR professionals, alumni, students, faculty and staff are welcome to attend this free event. It is presented by the School of Human Resources Management in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.
As rising inequality, labour market precarity and climate change continue to play an ever larger role in our lives, McQuaig shows how active labour market policies combined with a recommitment to public ownership is not only the sensible economic way forward but charts a path toward a fairer, more democratic and just society.
York University’s Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series will feature poet Roo Borson on Dec. 3, who will read from her latest collection of poetry, 
