Past Events

Description

Session begins at noon, Eastern Standard Time

Part of the series “Scholars in dialogue: six conversations on the modern Middle East", co-presented by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy,  IE University Madrid, and Sciences Po – Paris School of International Affairs.

About the Session

What are the conflicts and peace-making efforts over time?  What are the consequences of these events for Palestinian and Israeli society today?  What are the controversies in understanding and interpreting these histories?

Speakers

Bernard Avishai is Visiting Professor at Dartmouth during the summer and fall quarters. He is former Adjunct Professor of Business at the Hebrew University and taught also at MIT and Duke. He splits his time between Jerusalem and New Hampshire. He is a past strategy editor of Harvard Business Review and former International Director of Intellectual Capital at KPMG. For the past ten years, he has contributed regularly to The New Yorker about Israeli affairs and global business; and has written for Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and many other publications. A Guggenheim fellow, he is the author of four books, including The Tragedy of Zionism: Revolution and Democracy in the Land of Israel, The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace at Last, and Promiscuous: Portnoy’s Complaint and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness. His doctorate, in political economy, is from the University of Toronto.  

Ezzedine Fishere is a Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College, a novelist, and a diplomat. He taught at the American University in Cairo (2008-2016), worked for International Crisis Group (2007 – 2008); advised the Egyptian foreign minister (2005 – 2007); was a senior political adviser to multiple UN missions in the Middle East (2001- 2004). He also worked at the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv (1999 -2001), served as rapporteur for the "Independent Commission on Reforming the Arab League" and was a speech writer for the League’s Secretary-General (2011-2013). Fishere published nine novels, depicting social and political conditions in Egypt as well as the questions of identity construction and transformation. Many of these were translated to English, French and Italian.  Fishere was part of Egypt’s attempted democratic transition. He advised pro-democracy groupings and presidential candidates. He briefly served as an independent on a government committee monitoring democratic transition in the Fall of 2013, then denounced the return of authoritarianism at the hand of its military.  Fishere studied political science at Cairo University (B.Sc.1987), the University of Ottawa, (M.A, 1995) and l’Université de Montréal (Ph.D., 1998). He also studied public administration at the École nationale d’administration (ENA, Paris 1992).  

Moderator

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at th New York Times Magazine, the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School, and a co-host of Slate’s Political Gabfest, a popular weekly podcast. She is the author of two national bestsellers published by Penguin Random House: Charged, about the power of prosecutors, and Sticks and Stones, about how to prevent bullying. Charged won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Emily was also a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 2023. Before joining th Times Magazine in 2014, Emily was a writer and editor for nine years a Slate. She is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.  

Description

Join APSIA for their VOHs this spring! The goal of the VOHs is to celebrate APSIA member school programs in a more intimate setting than a fair and expand prospective students’ knowledge of different degree options. These open houses allow for in-depth conversations about programs. Each session will last for 75-90 minutes The open houses will take place on Zoom. Sessions will not be recorded.

Professor Todd Foglesong is going to be presenting on this topic and Rejeanne Puran will attend the meeting to answer questions on Admissions.

Description

As the United States hurtles towards the 2024 presidential election, the integrity of its constitutional system faces serious questions. The last several years alone have brought both jurisprudential revolution and legislative gridlock; democratic backsliding and enervated governance; deepening partisan division and disappearing common ground; an attempted insurrection and protracted efforts to hold those responsible to account. In turn, these challenges have fuelled a range of proposed solutions, from disempowering the Supreme Court and bolstering electoral democracy to retrenching national power and reviving an assertive federalism. Against this fraught backdrop, the 2024 Bissell-Heyd Symposium will probe the question raised by these developments: Is American constitutionalism in crisis? Engaging this topic requires clarifying what crisis entails, as well as identifying both past cases and present causes of constitutional infirmity. Animated by the conviction that such questions are best answered by situating contemporary American constitutional politics within both historical and comparative context, the symposium will feature three keynote speakers: Maggie Blackhawk (New York University Law School), Jonathan Gienapp (Stanford University), and Rogers Smith (University of Pennsylvania). These addresses will be complemented by a series of thematic panels probing the meaning, history, and dimensions of constitutional crisis.

Schedule

Thursday, May 9

3:00pm-3:15pm Introduction

3:15pm-4:45pm Panel 1: What is Constitutional Crisis?

 Connor Ewing, University of Toronto

 Ran Hirschl, University of Toronto

 Victoria Nourse, Georgetown University Law Center

4:45pm-5:00pm Break

5:00pm-6:30pm Keynote 1: “America’s Conflicting Constitutional Visions: The Quest for Common Ground,” Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania

Friday, May 10

8:30am-9:00am Breakfast

9:00am-10:20am Panel 2: Constitutional Crisis in Historical Perspective

 Zachary Elkins, University of Texas at Austin

 Max Mishler, University of Toronto

 Emily Zackin, Johns Hopkins University

10:20am-10:30am Break

10:30am-12:00pm Keynote 2: “The Constitution of American Colonialism,” Maggie Blackhawk, NYU Law School

12:00pm-1:00pm Lunch & Break

1:00pm-2:20pm Panel 3: Dimensions of Crisis

 Yasmin Dawood, University of Toronto

 Rob Goodman, Toronto Metropolitan University

 Robert Schertzer, University of Toronto

2:20pm-2:30pm Break

2:30pm-4:00pm Keynote 3: “The Crisis of History in U.S. Constitutional Interpretation,” Jonathan Gienapp, Stanford University

 Organized by the Centre for the Study of the United States, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science, the David R. Cameron Distinguished Professorship in Law and Politics and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

Session begins at noon, Eastern Standard Time

Part of the series “Scholars in dialogue: six conversations on the modern Middle East", co-presented by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy,  IE University Madrid, and Sciences Po – Paris School of International Affairs.
 

About the Session

What are the conflicts and peace-making efforts over time?  What are the consequences of these events for Palestinian and Israeli society today?  What are the controversies in understanding and interpreting these histories?

Speakers

Bernard Avishai is Visiting Professor at Dartmouth during the summer and fall quarters. He is former Adjunct Professor of Business at the Hebrew University and taught also at MIT and Duke. He splits his time between Jerusalem and New Hampshire. He is a past strategy editor of Harvard Business Review and former International Director of Intellectual Capital at KPMG. For the past ten years, he has contributed regularly to The New Yorker about Israeli affairs and global business; and has written for Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and many other publications. A Guggenheim fellow, he is the author of four books, including The Tragedy of Zionism: Revolution and Democracy in the Land of Israel, The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace at Last, and Promiscuous: Portnoy’s Complaint and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness. His doctorate, in political economy, is from the University of Toronto.  

Ezzedine Fishere is a Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College, a novelist, and a diplomat. He taught at the American University in Cairo (2008-2016), worked for International Crisis Group (2007 – 2008); advised the Egyptian foreign minister (2005 – 2007); was a senior political adviser to multiple UN missions in the Middle East (2001- 2004). He also worked at the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv (1999 -2001), served as rapporteur for the "Independent Commission on Reforming the Arab League" and was a speech writer for the League’s Secretary-General (2011-2013). Fishere published nine novels, depicting social and political conditions in Egypt as well as the questions of identity construction and transformation. Many of these were translated to English, French and Italian.  Fishere was part of Egypt’s attempted democratic transition. He advised pro-democracy groupings and presidential candidates. He briefly served as an independent on a government committee monitoring democratic transition in the Fall of 2013, then denounced the return of authoritarianism at the hand of its military.  Fishere studied political science at Cairo University (B.Sc.1987), the University of Ottawa, (M.A, 1995) and l’Université de Montréal (Ph.D., 1998). He also studied public administration at the École nationale d’administration (ENA, Paris 1992).  

Moderator

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at th New York Times Magazine, the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School, and a co-host of Slate’s Political Gabfest, a popular weekly podcast. She is the author of two national bestsellers published by Penguin Random House: Charged, about the power of prosecutors, and Sticks and Stones, about how to prevent bullying. Charged won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Emily was also a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 2023. Before joining th Times Magazine in 2014, Emily was a writer and editor for nine years a Slate. She is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.  

Description

Location: William Doo Auditorium | 45 Willcocks St.

Join us for Imperial Heat, the second in the Ecologies of Empire Salon series hosted by the TWIG Research Kitchen. Imperial Heat asks us to consider what we can know about colonialism, empire, and the governance of raced and gendered difference if we begin by exploring infrastructures of thermal comfort. Featuring Hi’ilei Hobart, author of Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Duke 2022) and Bharat Venkat, Director of the UCLA Heat Lab, this discussion will help us understand heating and cooling as political and deeply historicized processes with much to tell us about bodies, technoscience, and power. Our conversation will be moderated by Waqas Butt, author of Life Beyond Waste: Work and Infrastructure in Urban Pakistan (Stanford 2023).

CART captioning will be provided. The William Doo auditorium is wheelchair accessible.

Co-Sponsors: CSUS, TWIG Research Kitchen, Ziibing Lab

Description

The Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI), an initiative of the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) based at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto, will participate in various sessions and host a panel discussion at the World Bank’s Land Conference, scheduled for May 13 to 17, 2024, in Washington DC. The theme for this year’ conference is “Securing Land Tenure and Access for Climate Action.”

In-person registration has closed, but you can still register to attend virtually. To watch the live stream of LoGRI’s session at the World Bank Land Conference and for the latest information, please visit the World Bank Conference website.

LoGRI’s experts, along with experts from partner institutions, will present at the following sessions. All session times are listed in Eastern Standard Time (EST).

Panel Discussion

Leveraging Property Taxation to Strengthen Land Management and Sustainability

Date & Time: May 16, 2024, 11:15 AM – 1:00 PM EST

Location: MC 4-800 (Hybrid – in-person & virtual)

This session will explore the significant role of property tax reform in enhancing urban resilience and land management. Featuring insights from LoGRI, the discussion will highlight successful reform strategies for linking property tax reform, investment in urban climate resilience and efforts to strengthen land management in lower income countries. In doing so, the panel seeks to contribute to the emergence and spread of reform strategies that maximize potential benefits, while seeking to learn from the missed opportunities of past reform programs.

Chair: Dr. Wilson Prichard, Executive Director, ICTD, Chair, LoGRI & Associate Professor, University of Toronto

Speakers:

Rosetta Wilson, Independent Consultant & Program Lead FCDO-funded Property Tax Reform Projects
Sitsopé Kounetsron, Inspector of the Cadaster and Head of Land Tenure Section, Togolese Revenue Authority (OTR)
Camille Barras, Policy Lead, LoGRI
Frank Pichel, Land Information Specialist, PLACE
Dr. Colette Nyirakamana, Research Lead, LoGRI and Senior Research Associate, University of Toronto

Research Session

Using Property Taxation as the Basis for a Social Contract

Date & Time: May 16, 2024, 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM EST

Location: MC 8-100 (in-person only)

"Building comprehensive property tax systems in lower-income countries: ‘cadaster-first’ versus ‘property tax-first’ approaches to property tax reform"

Dr. Wilson Prichard, Executive Director, ICTD, Chair, LoGRI & Associate Professor, University of Toronto
Dr. Colette Nyirakamana, Research Lead, LoGRI and Senior Research Associate, University of Toronto

"Strengthening the fiscal contract by linking property tax reform and participatory budgeting in Freetown, Sierra Leone"

Kevin Grieco, Postdoctoral Fellow, LoGRI

"The challenges of taxing properties on customary land"

Sripriya Iyengar Srivatsa, Doctoral Fellow, LoGRI

"Should local and traditional authorities collaborate in raising property tax? A study of property owner preferences in Zambia"

Nicolas Orgeira Pillai, Doctoral Fellow, LoGRI 

Additionally, Dr. Wilson Prichard, Executive Director, ICTD, Chair, LoGRI & Associate Professor, University of Toronto, is scheduled to speak at a session titled "Revolutionizing Land Administration: A Debate on Cadaster-first Versus Fit-for-Purpose and Property Tax-first Approaches to Achieve Tenure Security." The session will take place on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, from 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM, at Location: MC 4-800, available both in-person and virtually.

Description

Session begins at noon, Eastern Standard Time

Part of the series “Scholars in dialogue: six conversations on the modern Middle East", co-presented by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy,  IE University Madrid, and Sciences Po – Paris School of International Affairs.

About the Session

How do American and Middle East states’ interests and behaviour affect the Israeli / Palestinian conflict historically and today?

Panelists

Elham Fakhro is a Research Associate at the Chatham House MENA program, and a Research Fellow at Exeter University’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. She previously acted as Senior Gulf Analyst with the International Crisis Group and as a Lecturer at NYU Abu Dhabi. She holds a doctorate from St Antony’s College, Oxford University and is the author of a forthcoming book on the Abraham Accords, and Arab normalisation with Israel (Columbia University Press, 2024).

Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He is a weekly columnist for The National (UAE), former columnist for Bloomberg, regular contributor to The New York Times and The Daily Beast, and frequent contributor to many other U.S. and Middle Eastern publications. He has made thousands of radio and television appearances and was the Washington, DC correspondent for the Daily Star (Beirut).   

Ibish is the editor and principal author of three major studies of Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Arab Americans, and numerous chapters on Arab-American Race relations, civil liberties and media representation in the U.S.  He wrote, along with Ali Abunimah, “The Palestinian Right of Return” (ADC, 2001) and “The Media and the New Intifada” in The New Intifada (Verso, 2001). He is the editor, along with Saliba Sarsar, of Principles and Pragmatism (ATFP, 2006). His most recent book is What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal (ATFP, 2009).  

Ibish previously served as a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, and executive director of the Hala Salaam Maksoud Foundation for Arab-American Leadership from 2004-09. He has a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Daniel C. Kurtzer is the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. During a 29-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, Ambassador Kurtzer served as the United States Ambassador to Israel and as the United States Ambassador to Egypt. He was also a speechwriter and member of the Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s Policy Planning Staff; he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research.

Kurtzer was a member of the Middle East peace team for Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Secretary of State Warren Christopher. He played an instrumental role in formulating and executing American policy, in particular helping to bring about the Madrid peace conference. Following that breakthrough, Kurtzer was named as the coordinator of the multilateral peace talks; served as the U.S. representative to the bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinians and between Israel and Syria; and chaired the U.S. delegation to the multilateral refugee negotiations.

Kurtzer is the co-author of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East; co-author of The Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989-2011; and editor of Pathways to Peace: America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. After retiring from the State Department, he served as a member of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, and as an advisor to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. In 2007, he was named the first Commissioner of the professional Israel Baseball League.   

Ambassador Kurtzer received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Nimrod Novik was the Senior Policy Advisor to the late Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a Special Ambassador of the State of Israel and an Advisor to the Israeli National Security Council.  He is a member of three organizations dedicated to securing Israel’s future as a strong Jewish democracy, via separation from the Palestinians in an eventual two-state solution: Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), an organization of over 550 former IDF generals, as well as Mossad, Shin Bet and Foreign Service equivalents; The Israel Policy Forum (IPF), an American Jewish organization that provides policymakers and community leaders with policy analysis and educational resources, and The Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF), the NGO that launched the Oslo Process and has been involved in all phases of Israeli-Palestinian and regional negotiations since. He has long been involved in back-channel diplomacy employing a network of security and diplomatic contacts in the region and beyond.

Moderator

Cristina Gallach, international official and journalist, served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information (2015-17), and as a member of the Spanish government for six years (2018-2024) in multiple roles, including State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Iberoamérica and the Caribbean. As UN Under-Secretary-General, she was directed global, regional, and local communications of the UN system on major current affairs and strategic agendas, with special emphasis on the 2030 sustainable development agenda, climate action, and peace and security issues.  As a senior EU Official and communication director for the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy (1999-2009), she participated in all EU plans, activities and joint international initiatives related to the Middle East, including the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Prior to that, she worked for NATO as communications advisor to the Secretary General.  Her long career in journalism includes international reporting in Central and Eastern Europe, Brussels, and as a correspondent in the former Soviet Union, based in Moscow. She graduated from the Journalism and Communications faculty in the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, holds an MIA from Columbia University (New York), and an Honorary Doctorate degree from Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona.

Description

Session begins at noon, Eastern Standard Time

Part of the series “Scholars in dialogue: six conversations on the modern Middle East", co-presented by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy,  IE University Madrid, and Sciences Po – Paris School of International Affairs.

About the Session

What diplomatic initiatives could reduce the cost of the conflict?  What can we do now to resolve the immediate crisis that will enable some progress down the road?

Speakers

Daniel Byman is a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, director of the Security Studies Program there, and a Senior Fellow with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Byman is also Foreign Policy Editor for Lawfare and a part-time Senior Advisor to the Department of State as part of the International Security Advisory Board. In addition to serving as Vice Dean for the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, he was a senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, a Professional Staff Member with both the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States (“The 9-11 Commission”) and the Joint 9/11 Inquiry Staff of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, the Research Director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corporation, and as an analyst of the Middle East for the U.S. intelligence community.  Dr. Byman has written widely on topics related to terrorism, insurgency, intelligence, social media, artificial intelligence, and the Middle East. He is the author of nine books, and his most recent is Spreading Hate: The White Power Movement Goes Global (Oxford, 2022). He is author or co-author of almost 200 academic and policy articles, monographs, and book chapters as well as numerous opinion pieces in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other leading journals.   

Thomas Fletcher is Principal of Hertford College, Oxford University. He was previously Foreign Policy Adviser to three UK Prime Ministers (2007-11) and the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to Lebanon (2011-15). More recently, he was a Visiting Professor at New York University (2015-20), advised the Global Business Coalition for Education, and chaired the International Advisory Council of the Creative Industries Federation. In 2018, he founded The Foundation for Opportunity which supports good people doing good things in public life. Fletcher has published four books. The Naked Diplomat: Power and Politics in the Digital Age’ (Harper Collins, June 2016), Ten Survival Skills for a World in Flux (Harper Collins, February 2022), The Ambassador (Canelo, August 2022) and The Assassin (Canelo, 2024). He presented the BBC series ‘The Battle for Liberal Democracy’ (2023), led a review of British diplomacy for the UK Foreign Office in 2016, and on the future of the United Nations for the UN Secretary General in

Julie Trottier is director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France, and adjunct lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, in the Master’s program on Environmental Policy. She served as a consultant to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization water governance program from 2020 to 2022. She co-authored a proposal for an Israeli-Palestinian water accord, acting for Friends of the Earth Middle East within their contract with the Geneva Initiative.  Over the past 29 years, her research has focused on the social and political aspects of scientific discourse and technological choices concerning water, including, in particular, water in the Palestinian territories.   Following a PhD in political science at Louvain, Belgium, and a post-doc at McGill University, Canada, she became a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, UK, and lectured at Newcastle University, UK. She has undertaken research in Jerusalem in 1998-1999, and 2012-2018.  

Moderator

Steve Paikin is the host of TVO’s flagship current affairs program The Agenda with Steve Paikin He co-hosts the weekly provincial affairs #onpoli podcast and contributes weekly columns to tvo.org. He is an officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario   

Description

Session begins at noon, Eastern Standard Time

Part of the series “Scholars in dialogue: six conversations on the modern Middle East", co-presented by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy,  IE University Madrid, and Sciences Po – Paris School of International Affairs.

About the Session

Are any proposals for a permanent peace more realistic today than they have been for the last 50 years?  What leverage do outsiders have and what do the two parties have to do to achieve peace and stability?

Panelists

Itamar Rabinovich is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University. He is Israel’s former ambassador to the United States and former Chief Negotiator with Syria in the mid- 1990s, and former President of Tel Aviv University (1999-2007). He is President of the Dan David Foundation (sponsor of the world’s largest history prize), President Emeritus and Counselor of the Israel Institute (Washington and Tel Aviv), and a Distinguished Fellow of the Brooking Institution’s Foreign Policy Program. He is the Vice Chairman of the Institute for National Security Studies, an external institute of Tel Aviv University and Israel’s leading think tank. He is also a senior research fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern studies, and is co-editor of the Center’s review journal, Bustan.

Professor Rabinovich is the author of more than ten volumes on the Modern History and Politics of the Middle East, as well as numerous essays and papers. Recent books include Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman (published by Yale University Press in 2017, and available also in German); Syrian Requiem: The Civil War and Its Aftermath (published by Princeton University Press in 2021), and Middle Eastern Maze: Israel, the Arabs, and the Region, 1948 – 2022 (published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2023).

Professor Rabinovich has held visiting appointments and fellowships in academic institutions around the globe. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the Honorary Grand Golden Cross of the Austrian Republic and made a Commandeur l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the Government of the French Republic. In 2009 he was awarded the Korn-Gerstenman Prize for contribution to peace in the Middle East.  

Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, the Director of the University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll, and a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Before coming to the University of Maryland, he taught at several universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in political science. He has authored and edited numerous books, including one forthcoming book: Peace Derailed: Obama, Trump, Biden, and the Decline of Diplomacy on Israel/Palestine, 2011-2022 (co-authored). His most recent book is a co-edited with contributions volume, The One State Reality: What is Israel/Palestine? which was published in March 2023 with Cornell University Press. He has advised every U.S. administration from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama. Telhami was selected by the Carnegie Corporation of New York along with the New York Times as one of the "Great Immigrants" for 2013 and the Washingtonian Magazine listed him as one of the “Most Influential People on Foreign Affairs” in both 2022 and 2023 He is also the recipient of many awards including the University of Maryland’s Distinguished Service Award and the University of Maryland’s Honors College Outstanding Faculty Award.

Moderator

Steve Paikin is the host of TVO’s flagship current affairs program The Agenda with Steve Paikin He co-hosts the weekly provincial affairs #onpoli podcast and contributes weekly columns to tvo.org. He is an officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario   

Description

Throughout history, technological advancements have played a pivotal role in societal development, yet their benefits have often been unevenly distributed. In his latest book, Power and Progress, co-authored with Simon Johnson, Daron Acemoglu, a prominent economist and author of the bestseller Why Nations Fail, embarks on a bold reinterpretation of economics and history, examining how technology shapes our world.

In this webinar, Professor Acemoglu will present his compelling analysis of a thousand years of technological progress and its societal impacts. From the agricultural advancements of the Middle Ages to the digital revolution of the present day, he will explore how these innovations have often served the interests of a select few while sidelining broader prosperity. Key themes of the webinar include:

How has the historical pattern of technology predominantly benefited the elite at the expense of the masses?
What impact do digital technologies and artificial intelligence have on modern economies and democracies?
What strategies can be employed to redirect technological innovation in order to empower and democratize society?

This webinar is an essential resource for policy makers, economists, historians, and anyone interested in the intersection of technology and society. It offers a unique perspective on redirecting the course of technological advancement towards a more equitable future. Professor Acemoglu’s insights, grounded in extensive research and analysis, provide a roadmap for harnessing technological progress to benefit the majority.

Join us to gain a deeper understanding of the historical and contemporary role of technology in shaping our world and how we can steer its course towards a more inclusive and prosperous future.

Sponsors

This event is sponsored by the International Telecommunications Society. The academic host is the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and the corprate host is TELUS Communications.

Description

In Ukrainian literature, the war gave rise to a whole layer of works written by both veteran writers, combatants, and professional writers. These works are strikingly different from works written during the previous wars, including the literature of Ukrainian resistance. The specific realities of the Ukrainian-Russian war (such as its hybridity, the transfer of hostilities to the information space, the use of enemy propaganda and provocation, crimes against Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories and the humanitarian consequences of the occupation, the problems of refugees and internally displaced persons, advocacy for Ukraine abroad, etc.) have led to the search for a new artistic language and new artistic means that Ukrainian literature has not yet had in its arsenal. War is an absurd reality in which each of us is looking for his or her own way to survive the trauma and maintain sanity. It is interesting to see what tools fiction has to describe the realities of war, to live through and comprehend the dramatic experiences and traumas that cannot be avoided in wartime. Using the material of the latest Ukrainian works about the war, Halyna Kruk will analyse the forms and formation of war narratives, the transformation of the documentary into fiction, the depth of existential experiences, and the possibilities of fiction as a therapeutic practice of talking through personal and collective traumatic experiences.

Halyna Kruk (1974) is a poet and prose writer, translator, and scholar from Lviv, Ukraine. She is the author of six books of poetry, The BookWar (2023), An Adult Woman (2017), Co(an)existence (2013), The Face beyond the Photograph (2005), Footprints on Sand and Journeys in Search of a Home (both 1997), collection of short stories Anyone but me (2021), and four books for children. Her Marko Travels Around the World and The Littlest One have been translated into 15 languages. She is a winner of numerous literary awards abroad and in Ukraine, among them The Sundara Ramaswamy Prize, The 2023 Women in Arts Award, The 2022 Kovaliv Fund Prize for her proze book Anyone but me, The Best Book Award of BookForum 2021, Smoloskyp Poetry Award, Bohdan Ihor Antonych Prize and “Hranoslov” Award. She has been shortlisted for shortlist for The 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her works have been translated into more than 30 languages. The latest of Kruk’s books of poems A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails (2023) and Lost in Living (2024) were published in biligual Ukrainian-English version in U.S. (in translation of Amelia Glaser, Yulia Ilchuk, Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky). Kruk holds a PhD in Ukrainian baroque literature (2001) and is a member of the Ukrainian PEN. She lives in Lviv and teaches European and Ukrainian baroque literature at the Ivan Franko National University in Lviv.