Description

In light of the recent migrant crisis in Central America and along the southern US border, it is valuable to re-examine the obstacles which the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) has created with respect to those seeking refuge from violence and horror in Central America. Pulling together experts from the legal, policy, and governmental fields, the Global Migration Lab Student Initiative will explore the ongoing questions surrounding the STCA. What is the current legal situation? What is the current political situation? What does the future hold and what are the consequences?

Dr. Craig Damian Smith, the former Associate Director of the Munk School’s Global Migration Lab, will be facilitating this panel discussion. Craig Damian Smith earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on migration, displacement, European foreign policy, and refugee integration.

The panel discussion will take place on March 17th, 2020 from 5pm to 7pm at the Boardroom located on 315 Bloor Street West, Toronto Ontario, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. There will also be a reception after the panel discussion from 7pm to 8pm.

Notice to all attendees, this event may be filmed and broadcast on the Global Migration Lab Student Research Initiative’s social media channels.

The speakers for this panel discussion are:

John McCallum is the former Minister of Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship under the Justin Trudeau government from 2015 to 2017. John McCallum also previously served as Canada’s Minister of Defense from 2003 to 2004 under the Jean Chretien government as well as having most recently served as Canada’s Ambassador to China from 2017 to 2019 under the Justin Trudeau government.

Jenny Kwan is the NDP Member of Parliament for Vancouver East and the current Critic for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship, as well as the Critic for Multiculturalism. She serves as the Vice-Chair of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Robert Falconer is a Research Associate with the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. His work focuses on immigration and refugee policy, with a particular focus on reforming policies related to the Canadian asylum system. His other research interests include the retention of newcomers in rural Canada and the influence of domestic and foreign policy on immigrant interest in moving to Canada.

Prasanna Balasundaram is a staff lawyer for Downtown Legal Services and supervises the Refugee and Immigration division and academic appeals cases in the University Affairs division. He has a special interest in judicial reviews of decisions by the Immigration and Refugee Board and administrative issues that engage constitutional rights. Prasanna is counsel for two of the individual applicants in the judicial review of the STCA, which was heard in November 2019.

Description

This event will be conducted partially in English and partially in French.

De l’Histoire naturelle de Buffon au Regnum Animale d’Arnout Vosmaer: Scientific Rivalry between France and the Dutch Republic at the End of the Old Regime

Après un doctorat en médecine vétérinaire (DMV) obtenu en 1992 à l’Université de Montréal,Swann Paradis a exercé la médecine vétérinaire (animaux de compagnie) au Québec pendant plusde 15 ans, parallèlement à ses études littéraires. Ses champs d’intérêt incluent l’histoire naturelleau XVIIIe siècle (littérature, philosophie et sciences), de même que le « roman terrifiant » et le« Romantisme noir », la poésie québécoise et franco-ontarienne contemporaine et l’écriturepoétique. Il prépare actuellement une monographie qui devrait paraître quelque part au XXIe sièclechez Hermann, dont le titre provisoire est : Le sixième sens de la taupe. Buffon dans la fabriquedes quadrupèdes. Il travaille actuellement sur un projet de recherche ayant reçu l’appui d’une« Subvention Savoir » du CRSH (2016-2020), pour le projet intitulé : « De la ménagerie du Princed’Orange au Jardin du Roi : Arnout Vosmaer (1720-1799) dans l’ombre de Buffon (1707-1788) ».

At the beginning of his article on the Bengal Loris published in the 7th and last volume of the Supplément à l’Histoire naturelle in 1789, Buffon (1707-1788) offers a detailed description of an exotic species, based on a monograph written approximately twenty years earlier in 1770 by Aernout Vosmaer (1720-1799), who was the director of stathouder William V of Holland’s Cabinet of Natural History since 1756. Buffon, lacking access to a live or even stuffed specimen, had to rely on the description proposed by Vosmaer, who observed the live exotic animal in the Prince of Orange’s menagerie between 1770 and 1774 ; moreover, to support his harsh critic of how Vosmaer named this strange quadruped — The ‘‘Bengal Five-Toed Sloth’’, Buffon added a black & white copperplate — drawing from Jacques de Sève, engraving by Madeleine Rousselet (ou Veuve Tardieu) — a mirror copy of the coloured plate made from a pen and watercolour drawing by Aert Schouman, published alongside Vosmaer’s original monograph. As natural history was a hotbed of political rivalry, this anecdotic controversy is typical of many others between these two important centres of exotic animal specimens: the French and Dutch national menageries, based respectively in Versailles and Voorburg (a suburb of The Hague). À partir de cet exemple emblématique, nous voudrions exposer, au cours de cette présentation bilingue, comment la rivalité entre ces deux puissances coloniales en déclin a des résonances en amont et en aval dans la joute polémique qui se développe entre deux figures incontournables de la scène naturaliste périrévolutionnaire. Pour ce faire, à partir de certaines descriptions textuelles et iconographiques d’animaux exotiques, qui ont donné lieu à des échanges « musclés » entre le célèbre intendant du Jardin du Roi et son homologue néerlandais, beaucoup moins connu, il s’agira de déterminer si, par-delà les motivations nationalistes des protagonistes, ne se dégagerait pas aussi un certain « cosmopolitisme scientifique » propre à la République des Lettres, qui viendrait en quelque sorte réhabiliter la contribution néerlandaise, jusqu’ici plutôt occultée, dans l’histoire de l’histoire naturelle.

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Banks on the Brink explains why some countries are more vulnerable to banking crises than others. Copelovitch and Singer highlight the effects of two variables in combination: foreign capital inflows and the relative prominence of securities markets in the domestic financial system. Foreign capital is the fuel for banks’ potentially dangerous behavior, and banks are more likely to take on excessive risks when operating in a financial system with large securities markets. The book analyzes over thirty years of data and provides historical case studies of two key countries, Canada and Germany, each of which explores how political decisions in the 19th and early-20th centuries continue to affect financial stability today. The analyses in this book have crucial policy implications, identifying potential regulations and policies that can work to protect banking systems against future crises.

Mark Copelovitch is professor in the Department of Political Science and the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He works on the political economy of international trade, money, and finance, with a particular interest in the domestic and international politics of financial crises and the role of the International Monetary Fund in global financial governance, and European integration and the European Union.

This event is sponsored in part by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).

Description

German foreign policy at the end of the Merkel era is heading for the end of certainties. For the pillars that have supported this policy since 1949 – the European integration process, transatlantic security relations, the rule-based international order – are in crisis in one form or another. The next Federal Government will have to address these shifts in foreign policy more actively and develop new initiatives.

Dr. Markus Kaim is currently Helmut Schmidt Fellow of the Zeit-Stiftung and the German Marshall Fund. In Berlin he works as Senior Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP). He has taught and held fellowships at universities on both sides of the Atlantic: As Visiting Scholar at the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa (2018), as Adjunct Professor at the Department for Political Science, University of Zurich (since 2012), as Guest Instructor at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin (since 2012), as DAAD Professor for German and European Studies at the University of Toronto (2007-2008), as Acting Professor for Foreign Policy and International Relations at the University of Constance (2007), and as Visiting Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies/ Johns Hopkins University (2005).

This event is sponsored in part by the DAAD with funds from the German Foreign Office (AA).

Description

University of Copenhagen’s Professor and Director of the Centre for European Politics Marlene Wind will present her new book “The Tribalization of Europe. A defense of our liberal values” , which is forthcoming in Polity Press in April 2020. Here is a summary and praise for the book:

Tribalization is a global megatrend in today’s world. The election of Donald Trump, the Brexit vote, populist movements like Catalan separatism – together with democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe – are all examples of tribalization. Fueled by anti-globalism and identity politics, tribalization is pulling up the drawbridge to the world. It is putting cultural differences before dialogue, collaboration, and universal liberal values.

But tribalism is a dangerous road to go down. With it, argues Marlene Wind, we have put democracy itself in danger. Tribalism is not just about being pro-nation, anti-EU, and anti-global. It is in many instances a bigger and more fundamental movement that casts aside the liberal democratic principles we once held in common.

At a time when former defenders of liberal values are increasingly silent or even have joined the growing chorus of tribalists, this book is a wake-up call. Drawing on a wide range of examples from the UK and the US to Spain, Hungary, and Poland, Wind highlights the dangers of identity politics and calls on people to stand up for democracy and the rule of law.”

“The Tribalization of Europe is a hard-headed analysis of the turn toward narrow populist nationalism, as well as an impassioned defense of the liberal values needed to sustain a democratic political future.” — Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University

“Marlene Wind has written an eloquent, magisterial and compelling warning: the degradation of democracy to extreme majoritarianism and adherence to the tribe (even if a tribe of citizens) fundamentally questions our common democratic values.” — Carlos Closa, European University Institute