The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) took place in Glasgow, Scotland and marked the 26th annual summit on climate change. The conference faced a renewed sense of urgency and purpose. It required consensus by one hundred and ninety world leaders,...
“There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.” John F. Kennedy In November, Russia destroyed one of its own old space satellites, Cosmos 1408, a 2,200-kg intelligence satellite launched in 1982,...
Students at Western University walked out of class on September 17 to protest a "culture of misogyny". This following a series of sexual assault allegations made on social media of mass drugging and sexual assaults at the Medway-Sydenham Hall residence on campus...
We are a uniquely privileged society. We place the highest premium on our justice system, press, judiciary, and protections of human rights. And yet even we continue to see troubling trends with regard to unwanted sexualized behaviour and sexual assault across the...
In this essay, I explain that young people should come to university to be educated, and not to become credentialed; the public should support universities because universities educate young people, not because they produce credentialled workers. Why should a...
During the whole of recorded history, the empire has been the most constant and common form of political organization. A basic, self-evident feature of all empire-building has been the successful occupation of the lands of the local, Indigenous inhabitants by outside...
In contemporary British and Canadian television programs, women dominate the police forces. Any men officers are often men of colour. In older police dramas, the police were predominantly men.[1] Even in a few current programs, there are more male police, although the...
We are often told that Canada and the U.S.A. are racist societies. Minority activists denounce white society and demand compensatory measures. Black Lives Matter in Canada declares that “Black Power Matters.” In the United States, Black Lives Matter campaign against...
Television programs not only entertain, but they also are an important influence our ideas about our society and culture. These messages are not meant solely to reflect social reality accurately, but also to shape that reality. People and their actions and opinions...
In November of 2016, I attended a national gathering in Toronto organized by Indspire, a truly worthwhile national body that promotes and assists with the improvement of education quality and success among Indigenous youth. I was presenting a workshop on the value of...
Equality, of course, is one of the hallowed values of the post-Enlightenment West, celebrated in the French revolutionary slogan, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” and in the American Declaration of Independence,[1] which asserts that it is “self-evident” that “all men...
Think about it. What would the death of six million people look like in the Canadian population? A loss of that number would be equivalent to the annihilation of every single person in the following cities: Vancouver, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, London, and Halifax....
In the last few days, two academic conferences were criticized for not being sufficiently “diverse.” A conference to empower women and train them for leadership was cancelled by St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, because, according to university...
On a Saturday afternoon that presented me with a few idle hours, I sat down on the living room sofa to watch director James Mangold’s 2007 film, 3:10 to Yuma, starring Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, and — oh my goodness! — Peter Fonda in a supporting role. I’d popped...
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King, Jr.[1] History is replete with people being treated according to their...