Calendar of Alumni Events

The International Olympic Committee took two further steps towards the realization of human rights at the time of the Rio Olympics, establishing anti-discrimination protections for LGBT athletes and creating the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team. But other serious challenges remain, especially with respect to other aspects of gender equity and the rights of workers and citizens in host cities. In this presentation, former Olympian, UC grad and professor of kinesiology and physical education Bruce Kidd will discuss the issues surrounding the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada specifically addressed educational reforms in its 94 Calls to Action. Why are these reforms important for all students? How have they been implemented in Ontario classrooms? We will discuss these issues from the perspective of the local Indigenous community and a settler ally in post-secondary education. The discussion will include an example of a community engaged learning course at the University of Toronto Mississauga facilitated by Councillor Veronica King-Jamieson (Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation) and Professor Sherry Fukuzawa.

The sixteenth century saw the rise of several European overseas empires -- Portuguese and Spanish, and then English and Dutch -- as well as the consolidation of more 'traditional' forms of empire like those of the Ottomans and Mughals. These empires had their admirers, who included their paid propagandists and official chroniclers. But they also encountered critics of various sorts, who deployed a variety of distinct arguments. In the Priestley Lectures for 2020, I intend to explore these distinct positions, focusing on some celebrated figures such as Michel de Montaigne, but also on more obscure writers of 'reform tracts' (so called 'arbitristas'). In closing, I will consider how these positions contrasted with later critiques that came from a nationalist standpoint.

In this lecture, Michael Witmore will discuss the origins and development of the design for the Folger Shakespeare Library, which opened its doors in Washington, DC in 1932. Designed by French architect Paul Cret, the Folgers conceived of their library as a living memorial to Shakespeare — one taking the architectural form of “the First Folio illustrated.” Witmore will discuss the early thinking that informed the creation of the library, both as a growing research collection and as an evolving, polemical statement about the importance of history and literature in a thriving liberal democracy.

Lecture: 4:30pm in UC 140
Reception to follow in UC 240