Canada Archives - Public Seminar

Migration

From Moral Panic to Government Policy and Research

The stated rationale for policing street gangs in Montreal has always been “prevention” rather than actual incidents

March 24, 2025 • by Benoit Décary-Secours and Anne-Marie Livingstone

The evolution of criminological research on gangs in Quebec mirrors events elsewhere. It began in the late 1980s with a media frenzy that attracted the attention of political elites and became the object of government policy and research....

From Moral Panic to Government Policy and Research

Past Present

Canada’s Freedom Convoy

Past Present Podcast, Episode 314

February 22, 2022 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: A convoy of truckers and their allies, totaling about 8,000 people, hasgathered in the center of Ottawa, Canada, in protest of what they consider excessive COVID prevention policy. Natalia referred to Michelle Goldberg’s New York Times column about the protest, ...

Democracy

Confronting the World Wide Threat of Right Wing Authoritarianism

If we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately

February 3, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Our effort to create and nourish a “world-wide committee of democratic correspondence” began long before the coronavirus laid waste to our world. And as a world-wide network, our efforts have always involved a strong online component. For the web affords our far-flung group many opportunities for the sharing of ideas ...

Confronting the World Wide Threat of Right Wing Authoritarianism

Feature

How the North American Free Trade Agreement ruined Nourishment

A Review of “Eating NAFTA”

June 13, 2019 • by Alexandra Délano Alonso

Eating NAFTA demonstrates the urgency of responding to a clear and yet mostly invisible health crisis that manifests across borders. It offers tools for rethinking existing approaches to trade and food systems from a transnational, intersectional and structural perspective that shifts the blame that public institutions have placed on individuals (particularly ...

Feature

Tempest Tossed

Is the US a ‘safe country’ for asylum-seekers?: A conversation with Professor Sean Rehaag on new challenges to the US-Canada

October 24, 2018 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Under an agreement signed in 2002, Canada can return asylum-seekers to the US if they have traveled through the US or lived there prior to arriving in Canada. Recent policies north and south of the US-Canadian border pose new challenges to the agreement, as Sean Rehaag, professor at Osgoode Hall ...

Feature

What Must Be Done With Sovereignty?

Rejecting Recognition and the Ruse of Participation

September 7, 2018 • by Sandra Harvey

Race/isms Book Forum is a new series aimed at bringing established and emerging voices together in conversation around recent work that critically engages our world’s racial scripts, past and present. The structure of the forum is straightforward. We invite three to four thinkers to grapple with a book, highlighting a ...

Feature

Sovereign (In)capacity

Possibilities of Black and Indigenous Futures

September 6, 2018 • by Shanya Cordis

Race/isms Book Forum is a new series aimed at bringing established and emerging voices together in conversation around recent work that critically engages our world’s racial scripts, past and present. The structure of the forum is straightforward. We invite three to four thinkers to grapple with a book, highlighting a ...

Feature

Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization, and the Politics of Intervention

Race/isms Book Forum

September 4, 2018 • by Jaskiran Dhillon

For our second installment, we feature and discuss Jaskiran Dhillon’s recently published ethnography: Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization, and the Politics of Intervention. The discussion includes reflections by Melanie Yazzie, Shanya Cordis, and Sandra Harvey. While our contributors address the book as a whole, we begin with an edited excerpt ...

Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization, and the Politics of Intervention

Feature

U.S.-Canada Relations, Kate Spade, and A.P. History

Past Present Episode 135

June 20, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Niki, Natalia, and Neil debate the historical relationship between Canada and the United States, the legacy of the late designer Kate Spade, and the controversy over proposed changes to an Advanced Placement history course. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Relations between longtime ...

U.S.-Canada Relations, Kate Spade, and A.P. History

Feature

The Canadian Option

Trump year 1

January 7, 2018 • by Anne Balant-Campbell

What have you done in the last year to respond to the upheavals in American politics? This is an installment in a series of short essays that reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. I am living a double life. When I am in front of a class, or going through ...

Feature

The Imaginal Politics of Empire

Thoughts on the images in the new Canadian passport

August 3, 2017 • by Serafina Appel

I. Imaginal Politics In 2013, the Canadian government redesigned Canada’s passports. The thirty-one pages that were until recently covered in faint maple leaves now boast images of two European explorer ships and one sailboat, five war memorials, two trains, one grand waterfall, two groups of policemen, hockey and football players with their ...

Feature

Support the Standing Rock Sioux

September 6, 2016 • by Jaskiran Dhillon

A version of the attached letter was circulated for signature among faculty at The New School. Dear Friends and Colleagues, I hope this finds all of you well at the semester's start. I am writing to request your signature for a letter I have drafted in support of the Standing Rock Sioux ...