Helene Berman, Forrest Bivens, Melanie Katsivo, and Warren Steele will be participating in a community panel discussion about structural violence. The event, Race, Gender, Class? Who is society designed to serve?, is on Monday, September 18, 7pm, at Central Library. See full details and panelist bios.
CRHESI co-coordinator James Shelley and local human rights lawyer Susan Toth will discuss competing human rights claims at Central Library on Monday, September 25, at 7pm. “In Canada’s increasingly diverse society, the question of competing human rights comes up often. Join us as we pick apart some legal cases to see how these conflicts are resolved in the court system.” (Full event details)
This is a speculative discussion considering the future of the immigrant experience in Canada. What would it take for nation known for its diversity to change its inclusionary policies? Panelists Anton Allahar (Professor of Sociology at Western University), Victoria Esses (Professor of Psychology at Western University), Stephanie Levitz (journalist at The Canadian Press), and Erna Paris (author From Tolerance to Tyranny: A Cautionary Tale from Fifteenth-Century Spain) weigh in on the question. (Full speaker bios)
A video edition of this event (with closed-captioning) is also available.
In this podcast episode, Rifat Hussain and Tristan Johnson reflect on the history of Islamophobia and the impact that it has on the lives of Muslims today.
Rifat Hussain is the manager of Orientation Services for Newcomers at the Cross Cultural Learner Centre, and she has played an integral role in helping settle hundreds of refugees and newcomers in the city. She is also the chair of London’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Oppression Advisory Committee. Rifat’s family immigrated to Canada from the United Kingdom when she was very young. She has degrees in Criminology and International Politics. Rifat is deeply invested in efforts to support cross cultural communication, cultural diversity, anti-bullying, and interfaith dialogue.
In 2014, Tristan Johnson was working on a Masters in American Cultural Studies and researched the experiences of American Muslims after the September 11th attacks. Digging through the statistics, he charted the way Islamophobia morphed from anxiety and fear in 2001, to a more generalized hatred by 2014, complete with attribution to anyone who looks or dresses like someone from Turkey, the Middle-East, North Africa, or South Asia. Now working on his PhD, Tristan is revisiting his 2014 research, investigating the impact of ISIS on Islamophobia and examining the way that Islamophobic attitudes have spread in Canada and Europe.
Our contemporary policies and attitudes about immigration in North America did not materialize in a vacuum. They have long histories, which shape and hue many of the perspectives we inherit today. In this conversation, we explore the ‘backstory’ to the present.
Stephanie Bangarth is an Associate Professor in History at King’s University College, at the University of Western Ontario. She is also an Adjunct Teaching Professor in the Department of History at Western and a Faculty Research Associate with the Collaborative Graduate Program in Migration and Ethnic Studies (MER) at Western. Her research interests also include Canadian immigration policy, social movements in Canada, and political history.
Shamiram Zendo, born in Aleppo Syria to an Assyrian family, moved to Canada in 1999. She is currently completing her Phd at Western University in the Health Information Science Program. She has worked extensively with the settlement of privately sponsored Syrian/Assyrian newcomers in the city of London.
