F.E.L. Priestley Lecture Series

Nothing Sacred: From I and It to I and Thou. Understanding Climate Change as a Spiritual Crisis

If every Judeo-Christian holiday is rooted in our connection to the natural world, then how did the word Pagan become a pejorative? Author, podcaster and ordained Spiritual Director Ralph Benmergui believes that the climate crisis is a spiritual crisis. We have dispensed with awe and humility and given God the pink slip. We have dominion. We are God, and we're not very good at it. Hundreds of years in the making and featuring fire, floods and famine, we find ourselves starring in a dystopian movie, standing helpless while Mother Earth is crying, and we don't even offer her a handkerchief to wipe away the tears. It's time for Plan B. Time for the journey from I and It to I and Thou.

Ralph Benmergui is an award-winning television and radio broadcaster and five-time Gemini Award nominee. After spending over twenty years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), he moved to Jazz.FM 91, where he hosted Benmergui in the Morning. He has hosted, written and co-produced critically acclaimed documentaries and currently hosts two popular podcasts. His eclectic career has spanned the realms of comedy, music, government communications, and Higher Education. He is also an ordained Spiritual Director. His biography, I Thought He was Dead – A Spiritual Memoir, was published in 2021.

Ethics of Belonging

In the age of migration, many societies are grappling with a crisis of belonging. Not only do immigrants and minorities feel alienated from their community, but even the majority feels disoriented in their homeland. What’s the missing social glue? Many philosophers have argued that the cement of a society is a social contract, and that civil debates can help define the right terms. In this lecture, Professor Tam challenges this conventional view, arguing instead that the social glue is the bond of history. To create this bond, she emphasizes the pressing need for stories, ethical and artful ones.

Agnes Tam is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary and the 2023-4 Applied Ethics Fellow of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities. Abandoned in rural China, adopted first by Hong Kong and later by Canada, Agnes is grappling with questions of belonging herself. She has a law degree from the University of Hong Kong, a Master in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a PhD in Philosophy from Queen’s University, and held a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at McGill University. Her research reflects her hybrid identities and is unified by her belief that the liberal tradition tends to misunderstand the nature of community, exaggerate its risks, and undervalue its contribution to a good society. Her empirically-informed work on how community drives progress has been published in Journal of Political Philosophy, Analyse & Kritik and edited volumes with Oxford University Press and Routledge, and more is forthcoming in Analysis and Standard Encyclopedia Entry (with Margaret Meek Lange).

Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers

On September 21, 2023 the F.E.L. Priestley Lecture Series proudly welcomed Dr. Cheryl J. Misak (BASc (BA) '83) to the University of Lethbridge to present, Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers.

Frank Ramsey, the great Cambridge philosopher, economist, and mathematician, died in 1930 at the age of 26. He was one of the most original thinkers of the last century. He was at least Wittgenstein’s equal in philosophy and a major influence on his difficult friend. A fruitful branch of mathematics (Ramsey Theory) is named after him. He founded two branches of economics and, in figuring out how to measure degrees of belief, he laid the basis for contemporary economics and social science.

His life was as exciting as his mind. He began his Cambridge undergraduate degree just as the Great War was ending; he was part of the race to be psychoanalyzed by Freud and his students in Vienna during the 1920s; and he was part of the Bloomsbury set of writers and artists. When Virginia Woolf met the 20-year-old Ramsey, she described him ‘as something like a Darwin, broad, thick, powerful, & a great mathematician, & clumsy to boot.’ He had important things to say about politics and the meaning of life.

In this talk, Ramsey’s biographer, Dr. Cheryl Misak, will convey the excitement of this brilliant life and mind with the help of some soundbites from the past.

Dr. Cheryl Misak obtained her undergraduate degree at the University of Lethbridge in 1983, then an MA in Philosophy at Columbia and a DPhil at Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2009, she was recognized by the University of Lethbridge as the Distinguished Alumna of the Year. She is the author of six books, the last being Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers. The playwright Tom Stoppard chose it as his book of the year and it was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and many other venues. Learn more.

Neglected No More: The Urgent Need To Improve the Lives of Canada’s Elders

On December 1, 2022, the F.E.L. Priestley Lecture Series was pleased to welcome André Picard to the University of Lethbridge to present Neglected No More: The Urgent Need To Improve the Lives of Canada’s Elders.

The pandemic exposed just how badly we treat our elders. In this talk, a veteran journalist explores how we can ensure that our loved ones can age in place and grow older with dignity.

André Picard is the health columnist at The Globe and Mail and the author of six books, including the current bestseller “Neglected No More: The Urgent Need To Improve the Lives of Canada’s Elders.”

He has received much acclaim for his writing, including the prestigious Michener Award for Meritorious Public Service Journalism and being named Canada’s first “Public Health Hero” by the Canadian Public Health Association. André is a graduate of the University of Ottawa and Carleton University and has received honorary doctorates from seven universities, including UBC and the University of Toronto.

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

Today, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding—and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. Why do we find ourselves flooded with fake news, medical quackery, conspiracy theorizing, and “post-truth” rhetoric? It can’t be that humans are just an irrational species — cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives, and discovered the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, we think in ways that are sensible in the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning our best thinkers have discovered over the millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation, and optimal ways to update beliefs and commit to choices individually and with others. Also, the rational pursuit of self-interest, sectarian solidarity, and uplifting mythology by individuals can add up to crippling irrationality in a society. Collective rationality depends on norms that are designed to promote objectivity and truth. Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress.

From https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/steven-pinker

Valuing Climate Loss and Damage

One of the most difficult problems to resolve in the creation of the 2015 UN Paris Agreement on Climate Change was how to attend to the emerging problem of “Loss and Damage” – a formal designation in the climate negotiations – an issue that had never been addressed in previous climate agreements. I witnessed this firsthand as one of the senior climate change officials for the U.S. Department of State at the time. The idea of Loss and Damage was introduced into the negotiations primarily by small island states and low-lying least developed countries. It refers both to slow onset events – such as sea level rise and glacial retreat – and extreme events – such as the possibility of permanent foreseeable droughts and relentless tropical storms – which countries may not feasibly adapt to. In the run up to Paris, the debate over Loss and Damage threatened to break apart the negotiations with calls from some countries that only a system of compensation and liability from larger high-emitting countries to poorer low-emitting counties could justly resolve it. It also created a moral platform that launched both a new international mechanism on Loss and Damage, and leveraged an array of side agreements to provide more resources to climate vulnerable countries to predict and prepare for extreme climate impacts. In this talk I will review the relatively recent history of Loss and Damage, focusing on what its recognition by the global climate community implies for our understanding of a world potentially marked by extreme climate vulnerability. More specifically, I will both defend the claim that Loss and Damage should not devolve into an attempt at creating a system of compensation and liability, as well as look at how this issue has forced these negotiations to grapple with an equally difficult problem of how to fairly value non-economic losses, including human mobility, cultural heritage, territory, and indigenous knowledge in a world of constant disruption.

Andrew Light is a Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy, and Atmospheric Sciences at George Mason University, and Distinguished Senior Fellow in the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute, in Washington, D.C. From 2013-2016 he served as Senior Adviser and India Counselor to the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change and Staff Climate Adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry in the Office of Policy Planning in the U.S. Department of State. In this capacity, he served on the senior strategy team for the UN climate negotiations, Director of the U.S.-India Joint Working Group for Combating Climate Change, and Chair of the U.S. Interagency Climate Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals. In recognition of this work, Andrew was awarded the inaugural Public Philosophy Award, from the International Society for Environmental Ethics in June 2017, which has been renamed the “Andrew Light Award for Public Philosophy,” the inaugural Alain Locke Award for Public Philosophy, from the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in March 2016, and a Superior Honor Award, from the U.S. Department of State in July 2016, for his work creating and negotiating the Paris Agreement on climate change. In his academic career, Andrew is the author of over 100 articles and book chapters, primarily on climate change, restoration ecology, and urban sustainability, and has authored, co-authored, and edited 19 books, including Environmental Values (2008), Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice (2003), Environmental Pragmatism (1996), and the forthcoming Ethics in the Anthropocene.

A Coast-to-Coast Literary Adventure

As one of Canada's leading editors and publishers, Douglas Gibson coaxed modern classics out of some of the country's finest minds. After the book tour for his first memoir, Stories About Storytellers, took him to all ten provinces, Gibson discovered even more about this land and its writers. Join him as he shares stories about Guy Vanderhaeghe, Robertson Davies, Jack Hodgins, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro and many others.

The University of Lethbridge Bookstore will be on site to handle book sales and to host the signing.
 

The Lives of Writers

In “The Lives of Writers,” Eleanor Wachtel, host of CBC Radio’s Writers and Company, will discuss the appetite for literary biography and how greater knowledge of a writer’s life affects the reader’s appreciation of a writer’s work. Drawing on her experience as host of Writers and Company, she will present specific instances of how writers reveal what is most important to them, as well as the way in which writers function as outside commentators on their own societies.

Eleanor Wachtel was born in Montreal and studied English at McGill University. She has been the host of CBC Radio’s Writers & Company since its inception in 1990, as well as the host of Wachtel on the Arts since 2007. Five books of her interviews have been published, including Random Illuminations, a book of reflections, correspondence and conversations with Carol Shields, which won the Independent Publisher Book Award. She has earned numerous accolades for her contributions to Canadian cultural life, including nine honorary degrees from universities across Canada and Officer of the Order of Canada. Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature, has called Wachtel “one of the finest interviewers of authors I’ve come across anywhere in the world.”

Apprehending the Past: History vs. The Historical Novel

Investigate the misunderstandings that occur between historians and writers of historical fiction about what constitutes a correct, rich, and full appreciation of the past.

Guy Vanderhaeghe is the award-winning author of novels, short stories and plays. His works include the much acclaimed western trilogy of The Englishman’s Boy, The Last Crossing and A Good Man, historical novels set in the Canadian west. He is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for English Fiction and is the recipient of the UK’s Faber Prize. His fiction has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize and a number of international awards, including the International Dublin Literary Award.

Why Multiculturalism Matters

Erna Paris was invested into the Order of Canada ‎by Governor General David Johnston in September 2016.

Multiculturalism can no longer be seen as a feel-good political program to keep minority populations happy. On the contrary, the rights and social attitudes that underpin policies of multiculturalism have become the foundation of peaceful co-existence in ethnically mixed democracies. These policies will need constant reinforcing as twenty-first century wars and climate change continue to create major population displacements, awakening a fear of otherness .

In Europe and elsewhere, we are already seeing the rejection of displaced refugees on grounds of religion or ethnicity. I’ve studied the historical patterns of this phenomenon. I shall be speaking about the process of how this happens, where it has led in the past, and where we may be heading.

ERNA PARIS is the author of seven acclaimed works of literary non-fiction and the winner of twelve national and international writing awards for her books, feature writing, and radio documentaries. Her works have been published in fourteen countries and translated into eight languages. Long Shadows: Truth, Lies, and History was chosen as one of “The Hundred Most Important Books Ever Written in Canada” by the Literary Review of Canada. In May 2007 Long Shadows inspired the Canadian House of Commons motion to apologize, on behalf of the government, to survivors of Canadian residential schools. In June 2002 it inspired a resolution in the United States House of Representatives to create a monument to American slaves on the Washington Mall. (For more information, please see Awards and Honours.)

Flying Under the Radar: Politics, Poetry and Peace

If, in the speaker’s words in W.H. Auden’s elegy, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”, "poetry makes nothing happen,” what then are its uses? I’d want to make a case both for the usefulness, political significance, and healing powers of poetry and, by implication, other forms of engaged writing.

Gary Geddes has “long been considered one of Canada’s most important men of letters.” He has written and edited 50 books of poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction, criticism, translation, and anthologies and won a dozen national and international literary awards, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Americas Region), the British Columbia Lt-Governor's Award for Literary Excellence, and the Gabriela Mistral Prize. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, UBC’s Green College, Ottawa University and the Vancouver Public Library. He lives on Thetis Island, BC with his wife, the novelist Ann Eriksson.

With financial assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts through the Writers' Union of Canada.

The Orenda, Writing and Approaching First Nations Issues in Canada

Award-winning author, Joseph Boyden, will be discussing his acclaimed historical novel, The Orenda, which is set in 17th-century Canada and told from the point of view of three narrators: a Huron warrior, a young Iroquois girl and a French Jesuit missionary.

The lecture will discuss the research that goes into writing a historical novel, as well as the issues surrounding the depiction of historical events in imaginative literature, gender dynamics in The Orenda, and the response that the novel has elicited from both indigenous and non-indigenous readers.

The Orenda won the 2014 Canada Reads competition. Joseph Boyden’s earlier novel, Through Black Spruce, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2008.: