York University’s Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies will host the Leonard Wolinsky Lectures on Jewish Life and Education on April 10.

The event, titled “Re-imagining the Bible in the Contemporary World”, begins at 2pm and runs in the Private Dining Room in the Executive Learning Centre at Schulich.

Guest lecturers featured at the event include Professor Lori Lefkovitz of Northeastern University, who will lecture on “Bedrooms and Battlefields: Biblical Foundations of Sexual, Gender, and Ethnic Identities”; and, Professor Adele Reinhartz of the University of Ottawa, lecturing on “Holy Words of Hollywood: Moses as Jesus in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956)”.

The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited. For more, or to register, email cjs@yorku.ca or call 416-736-5823.

About the guest lecturers:

• Lori Hope Lefkovitz, Ruderman professor and director of the Jewish Studies Program and director of the Humanities Center, is the author ofIn Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identity(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010), which was named a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in the category of Women’s Studies.

Her awards include a Fulbright professorship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an academic fellowship at the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis, a Woodrow Wilson dissertation fellowship in the Women’s Studies Division, and a Golda Meir post-doctoral fellowship at Hebrew University.

She was the founding director of Kolot, the Center for Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College where she held a chair in Gender and Judaism, and is the founding executive editor of the website, ritualwell.org.

Lefkovitz holds a BA from Brandeis University and an MA and PhD from Brown University. Her books include: Shaping Losses: Cultural Memory and the Holocaust (with Julia Epstein), Textual Bodies: Changing Boundaries of Literary Representation, and The Character of Beauty in the Victorian Novel. She is widely published in the fields of literature, critical theory, and Jewish feminist studies, and serves on editorial, professional and community boards, and lectures widely in academic and Jewish contexts.

• Adele Reinhartz, PhD (McMaster University, 1983) is a professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is currently the 2015-2016 Corcoran Visiting Chair in Christian-Jewish Relations at the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, as well as the general editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature.

Her main areas of research are New Testament, early Jewish-Christian relations, and the Bible and Film. She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2005 and to the American Academy of Jewish Research in 2014.

She is the author of numerous articles and books, including Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John (Continuum, 2001), Scripture on the Silver Screen (Westminster John Knox, 2003), Jesus of Hollywood (Oxford, 2007), Caiaphas the High Priest (University of South Carolina Press, 2011; Fortress 2012) and Bible and Cinema: An Introduction (Routledge, 2013).

World-renowned international jurist Navi Pillay will deliver this year’s N. Sivalingam Memorial Lecture in Tamil Studies on April 7 from 5 to 8pm at Osgoode Hall Law School.

Drawing on her experiences and expertise as a judge in an international criminal tribunal and as former UN high commissioner for Human Rights, Pillay will highlight the challenges and achievements of international legal systems in delivering justice for international crimes.

Renu Mandhane, chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, will provide the introduction.

The 2016 N. Sivalingam Memorial Lecture will highlight the achievements of a South African lawyer’s struggle against systemic racial and ethnic injustice and the prospects and possibilities of achieving accountability and justice for international crimes through international criminal law. Pillay will also speak about the role of international law in addressing mass atrocities, including the contemporary context of Sri Lanka.

Pillay has defended anti-Apartheid activists and helped expose the use of torture and poor conditions of political detainees. In 1973, she won the right for political prisoners on Robben Island, including Nelson Mandela, to have access to lawyers. Pillay was the first non-white female judge of the High Court of South Africa, after being appointed to the bench by former president Nelson Mandela in 1995. She has also served as a judge of the International Criminal Court and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

She served as the United Nations high commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014, and currently she is serving as the chief commissioner of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty.

Pillay is visiting York to deliver the second annual N. Sivalingam Memorial Lecture. Alongside the N. Sivalingam Award in Tamil Studies, the annual lecture was established at the York Centre for Asian Research to encourage and promote graduate research in Tamil language, history, culture, society and the Tamil diaspora.

The award and lecture commemorate the life and work of N. Sivalingam, co-founder of the Tamil Eelam Society of Canada, and a lifetime advocate of Tamil language and culture.

“Our family established the N. Sivalingam Award in Tamil Studies, with matching funds from the Faculty of Graduate Studies, to honour the legacy of our father who spent his lifetime committed to empowering the Tamil community in Canada and back home,” said Harini Sivalingam, N. Sivalingam’s daughter and a PhD student in Socio-Legal Studies at York University. “We hope to empower the community by encouraging students at York University to pursue graduate studies and research in the field of Tamil Studies.”

François Tanguay-Renaud, director of the Nathanson Centre, a co-sponsor of the event, explained why it was important for the centre to host Pillay’s lecture.

“As former United Nations high commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay brings with her a unique perspective on this intersection,” he said. “Her accountability role in relation to the Sri Lankan civil war and its aftermath also ties neatly with intensive research currently being carried out at York on related questions. Her visit to Osgoode and York will allow us to revisit some of these important issues, in dialogue with the scholarly community, Toronto large and engaged Tamil diaspora, and a vast array of other interested constituencies.”

A reception will begin at 5pm and will be followed by the lecture at 6pm. All are welcome to attend. To RSVP email ycar@yorku.ca by April 3.

This event is co-sponsored by the Jack & Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security, Osgoode Hall Law School, the York Centre for Asian Research and Amnesty International with support from the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies at Osgoode Hall School and the graduate program in Socio-Legal Studies.

York University Professor of history Bernard Luk passed away at Sunnybrook Hospital on March 23 after suffering a stroke. He was a beloved teacher and colleague, and author of numerous publications on modern East Asia, China and Hong Kong.

After receiving his PhD in history from Indiana University in 1977, Prof. Luk taught at the Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong before joining the History Department at York University in 1991. On leave from York between 2003 and 2007, he served as the vice-president of Hong Kong Institute of Education.

Prof. Luk was an internationally recognized authority on the history of Hong Kong. His early studies were on the Jesuits in Asia, but over time he turned more and more to studying Hong Kong, its history, its present and its future. His devotion to researching and writing about Hong Kong sprang not only from his great dedication to his hometown, but also from his keen observation that this former British colony has always occupied a unique position in the history of China.

He authored and co-edited 14 books and numerous articles on Hong Kong, often, but not exclusively, focusing on education, in both Chinese and English. His last major project, which will result in a substantive volume soon to be published, is the history of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, a major actor in the formation of the civil society in Hong Kong.

In 1992, Prof. Luk initiated and co-directed, with Diana Lary, the Canada and Hong Kong Project with the Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies. Apart from hosting academic exchanges and publication, this project houses an impressive collection of reference materials, which he has painstakingly helped to amass over the years. It eventually led to the establishment of the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library at the University of Toronto.

Prof. Luk was a passionate advocate for democracy and the rule of law in Hong Kong, believing, as he did, that these are the foundation of a civil society. While serving as vice-president of the Hong Kong Institute of Education, he brought to light incidents of direct interference into the autonomy of higher education institution from high-level government officials. This resulted in a government-appointed commission of inquiry, and later a judicial review into academic freedom and higher education institutional autonomy. His whistleblowing action, probably incurred at great personal cost, remains one of the significant landmarks of the ongoing struggle to defend academic freedom in Hong Kong.

Much less known is Prof. Luk’s penning of a booklet entitled “What is gwok-gaa?” under the pseudonym, Naam Ngaan Ming. Intended to debunk the myth of a timeless, natural formation of a “mother-nation/state”, this booklet carries the weight of the clarity and meticulousness of a good historian, and is intended to help young readers navigate the murky waters of “patriotic education”. His concern for the young ones was such that he took time out of the packed schedule of a university administrator to join a writing workshop for high school students in an under-privileged part of town in the summer of 2004, eventually contributing a short reminiscence of his childhood days to the resulting collection, under the name of “Uncle Gei”.

Despite the magnitude of his professional achievements, friends, family, and colleagues will perhaps miss him most for his thoughtfulness and unwavering sense of social service. Never to miss a meeting, a birthday, a memorial or other event, Prof. Luk saved and sent articles that he thought others would like to read, visited colleagues in hospitals, and brought snacks into the office. It is perhaps appropriate that one of his last activities was serving as coordinator of the East Asian Studies Program at York University during its review.

Prof. Luk is survived by his wife Fatima Lee and two sons.

Contributing authors: Poking Choi, Yuk-Lin Renita Wong, Diana Lary, Janice Kim

The School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA) will present its annual Public Policy & Administration lecture on March 31 with keynote speaker Mario Dion.

The event, titled “Leading Canada’s Largest Tribunal: Opportunities & Challenge” runs from 5:30 to 7pm at 1014 Osgoode Hall Law School and is an open event.

Dion, the chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) since 2015, will explain how he approached the new challenge after his appointment by the government. Dion will describe the steps he went through in determining the key strategic challenges faced by the board, the strategies to address them and how he approached partnerships both within the public sector and with external stakeholders.

Dion will also draw on his experience at the helm of several other federal organizations during the course of his career since 1980.

Dion holds a law degree from the University of Ottawa. He joined the federal Department of Justice upon being called to the bar in 1980 and has assumed a number of management positions both within that department, as well as several other departments and agencies.

After leaving the practice of law in the late 1980s, Dion was assistant deputy minister at the Correctional Service of Canada and associate deputy minister of Justice. He also worked in deputy minister’s level positions at the Privy Council office and the office responsible for Indian residential schools resolution.

He was appointed chairperson of the National Parole Board in 2006 and public sector integrity commissioner in 2010 until his appointment to his current position at the IRB.

A reception will follow the lecture. The event is presented by the School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA) an the Master of Public Policy, Administration and Law (MPPAL).

To RSVP, follow the link sppa.laps.yorku.ca/about/event-registration/.

For more, contact Jasmattie Jewan at 416-736-2100 xx77528 or jewan@yorku.ca.