The Friends of the University of Alberta is pleased to welcome environmental journalist Arno Kopecky to deliver the 2022 Tory Lecture.

The Tyranny of Freedom:
On human prosperity and the limits of our biosphere

2022 Tory Lecture
Tuesday, November 8, 2022 at 7:00 PM Edmonton

Two ways to attend:

In Person: Register on Eventbrite here Telus Centre, 150 Lecture Theatre 111 Street 87 Avenue NW Edmonton Doors open at 6:30pm. The Tory Lecture is a mask friendly event. Patrons are enthusiastically supported in their choice to wear a mask. If you are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, please follow AHS guidelines regarding testing and isolating, and stay home if you are sick.

Online: Register on Zoom here

Abstract: Contrary to the impression one gets from the headlines, most of humanity is better off today than ever before. Unelected despots are outnumbered by democratic governments, while technology has transformed daily life into something our ancestors could only have regarded as a parade of miracles. But as the 21^st century gathers steam, so does the flip side of progress. Climate change now marks the leading edge of an ecological crisis that’s thrown the global village into turmoil. In the 2022 Tory Lecture, Arno Kopecky will discuss how the conflicting signals of a relentless news cycle have common roots in the 20^th century’s unprecedented burst of resource extraction – and why, despite all the dour headlines, there’s still reason for hope.

Bio: Arno Kopecky is an environmental journalist and author who writes about the confluence of culture, politics and ecosystems. A regular contributor to The Globe And Mail, The Walrus, Alberta Views, The Tyee, Canada’s National Observer, and other publications, his dispatches have covered four continents over the past twenty years. He has reported on Iceland’s attempt to become the first oil-free country on earth, the devastation Cyclone Nargis wrought on Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta, Kenya’s brush with civil war in 2008, and the impact of Free Trade Agreements between North America and the global South. A child of Edmonton who now lives in Vancouver, he has spent much of the last decade focusing on western Canadian affairs with a view to their international context.

Kopecky has also written three books of literary journalism: The Devil’s Curve, which examined the impact of Canadian mining companies in the Amazon basin; The Oil Man And The Sea, based on his 5-month sailing expedition through BC’s central coast, where he chronicled the rich history of coastal First Nations and their fight to keep oil tankers out of the Great Bear Rainforest; and most recently, The Environmentalist’s Dilemma, a collection of reported essays exploring a central paradox of our times: how can it be that humanity’s standard of living keeps going up while the biosphere collapses all around us? 

International politics expert Andy Knight sheds light on the ‘new world disorder’.

The Friends of the University of Alberta is pleased to welcome University of Alberta Distinguished Professor and Fulbright Distinguished Chair W. Andy Knight to deliver the 2021 Tory Lecture.

Governing Disorder in our Intermestic World

2021 Tory Lecture
Thu, Nov 4, 2021 at 7:00 PM MDT
Online via Zoom

Video of presentation of Andy’s talk is available on our YouTube channel:

Abstract:
If you have been following the political and socio-economic trends since the end of the Cold War, you would realize that our world has become increasingly ungovernable. The Post-Cold War period has been marked by the intensification of globalization, with all its attendant negative effects, and it has ushered in a new world disorder. I argue that the extant institutions of global governance, including but not limited to the UN system, are more or less “decisions frozen in time”, created at a historical juncture when sovereignty-bound entities reigned supreme. Today, those institutions are inefficient, ineffective, and largely irrelevant because they are forced to operate in a turbulent complex interdependent, and “intermestic” era in which sovereign-free and sovereignty-bound actors compete and jostle for position on the global stage. The time has come for a new paradigm to shape our thinking about the kinds of institutions of global governance that will steer us through, and help us deal with, the disorder of the 21^st century.

Bio:
W. Andy Knight is Professor of International Relations in the Political Science Department at the University of Alberta and past Chair of the Department. He is the former Director of the Institute of International Relations (IIR), The University of the West Indies (UWI), Trinidad & Tobago, and co-founder and the former head of the Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean (DAOC). Professor Knight serves as Co-editor in Chief of both African Security journal and International Journal — two globally prestigious peer-reviewed academic publications. During his secondment in the Caribbean, Knight established the Caribbean Journal of International Relations and Diplomacy and he was co-editor of a highly regarded and award-winning journal — Global Governance from 2000 to 2005.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC), Professor Knight was named by Venture Magazine among Alberta’s top 50 most influential people and, by the Black Business and Professional Association of Canada, as the Harry Jerome Trailblazer. He served as Advisory Board Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Welfare of Children and was the inaugural Director of the Peace and Post Conflict Studies Certificate Programme in the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies (OIS) at the University of Alberta. In March 2007, Dr. Knight was appointed by the Canadian Foreign Minister to the Board of Governors of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and served in that position until 2011.

Knight has written several books on the United Nations, Global Politics, and the Responsibility to Protect. One of his most recently published books is the award-winning, Female Suicide Bombings: A Critical Gendered Approach, with Tanya Narozhna (published by the University of Toronto Press). His ongoing research and publications address issues of global health governance, global health security, Children and war, and the vulnerabilities and resiliency of small island developing states (SIDS). In March 2021, Professor Knight was awarded the University of Alberta’s highest honour – the University of Alberta Distinguished Professor. He is currently the 2021-22 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in International and Area Studies at Yale University.