Learning to be Quiet: A proposal for European Union Conflict Prevention *
Michael Johns, Laurentian University
January 25, 2008

Dr. Michael Johns is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Laurentian University - Barrie Campus. He holds a Master's degree in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland - College Park. Prior to coming to Laurentian, Dr. Johns was the Researcher in Residence for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's High Commissioner on National Minorities in The Hague, Netherlands. He currently is an Executive Member for the Centre for Research on Canadian-Russian Relations and has recently been elected to the Advisory Board of the Minorities at Risk Project.

How do 'We' Become 'Multicultural'? The Social Constitution of Pluralist Group Identity
Elke Winter, University of Ottawa
November 22, 2007

Dr. Elke Winter holds an International Council for Canadian Studies postdoctoral fellowship at EDG and is working with Will Kymlicka during the fall term. She studied sociology in Germany, Spain and Canada (Ph.D., York University, 2005). She recently accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Winter is the author of Max Weber et les relations ethniques (Laval University Press, 2004). In this book, she traces Weber's intellectual trajectory from his early confrontation with dominant biological/racial conceptions of the social to his reluctant embracement of the multi-national state.

Currently, she is completing a book manuscript on the social constitution of normative pluralism. Concentrating on discourses in the mainstream press, she examines the integration of (previously constructed) ethnic categories ("them") into a Canadian "multicultural we" through contrast with "others". Particular attention is given to representations of minority nationalism within (de)legitimizations of multiculturalism. Dr. Winter has published articles in Ethnicities, International Journal for Canadian Studies and Nations and Nationalism.

Managing Diversity: The Relevance of Canadian Experience for Foreign Affairs
John Packer, University of Essex
September 20, 2007

As of October 1st, John Packer will be Professor of Law and Director of the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. He was formerly Senior Legal Adviser and then Director of the Office of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and, before that, a Human Rights Officer at the UN where he investigated serious HR violations in Iraq, Burma, and Afghanistan. He has been a fellow at the Carr Centre of HR Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School and a Visiting Assistant Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University. In the last few years he has been coordinator of the Global Initiative on Conflict Prevention through Quiet Diplomacy. He has advised (and still does) a number of governments, IGOs and NGOs around the world on peace and security, human rights, diversity management, conflict prevention and resolution, and dialogue and mediation.

National Identity and Inclusion: The moral force of transformative prescriptions
Catherine Frost, McMaster University
March 15, 2007

Catherine Frost is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University. Her research interests include nationalism, diversity issues, and contemporary theory. Her research work centres on questions of representation and justice. Current research projects include looking at the relationship of nationalism and diversity, and also new media technologies and how these may be re-shaping social and political relations. Recent publications include: “Is post-nationalism or liberal-culturalism behind the transformation of Irish nationalism?” (Irish Political Studies 2006, Vol. 21, No. 3), and Morality and Nationalism (London: Routledge, 2006).

Luck, Institutions, and Global Justice
Kok-Chor Tan, University of Pennsylvania
March 8, 2007

The doctrine known as luck egalitarianism provides a relatively straightforward case for global distributive equality. On the luck egalitarianism view, the guiding aim of an egalitarian distributive principle is to mitigate or discount the influence of luck on persons’ life prospects. Accordingly, if people’s citizenship or the natural distribution of the earth’s wealth and resources is generally a matter of luck for which persons cannot generally be held responsible but which nonetheless affects profoundly and pervasively their life options, then there ought to be some global distributive commitments to counter the effects of such contingencies on people’s life chances (e.g. Beitz 1979; Pogge 1989). Yet, luck egalitarianism has come under heavy criticisms in the recent literature, and is very much on the defensive if not retreat. Indeed, some opponents of global egalitarianism proceed by exposing and undermining the luck egalitarian presumptions behind the common arguments for global distributive justice (see Freeman 2004; Heath 2007). A successful defense of global egalitarianism on luck egalitarian grounds must, therefore, first show how and why the luck egalitarian ideal is a plausible and attractive one, these recent objections against it notwithstanding. My goal in this paper is to outline a plausible understanding of the luck egalitarian position, and then suggest how this account of luck egalitarianism can ground the case for global distributive equality.This talk is co-sponsored by the Philosophy Department.

* Talk can be downloaded through iTunesU.