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.