This opinion piece appeared in the Globe and Mail on January 24. With permission, I am re-posting it here, the day the sentence decision will be issued. You can listen to my January 28 interview on the CBC's Morning Edition, or watch a video interview here. (I wasn't warned there would be video! I had come straight from the gym! Hopefully there isn't smoothie all over my face). For further reading, see We Need to Talk About the Backlash--What is To Be Done?, a report prepared for the … [Read more...]
Leaving #AtHomeWithArendt
In 2019, we launched a blog series called #AtHomeWithArendt. This series was intended to share research coming out of From Rootlessness to Belonging: An Arendtian Critique of the Family as a Structure of Refugee Assimilation, a research grant awarded from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Government of Canada). Katy, and her collaborator Dr. Rita A. Gardiner, were thinking about issues of refugee resettlement through the lens of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy. Janet came onto the … [Read more...]
Variations on thinking: Keats and Arendt
"‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." ---John Keats, from Ode to a Grecian Urn Poetic imagination I've been thinking about the English Romantic poet John Keats for the past month or so as I prepared to moderate a panel on Keat's concept of "negative capability." The panelists included poet Luke Hathaway, visual artist Gwenessa Lam, and Buddhist scholar Jeff Wilson. The event is part of a virtual series entitled Café Philo, organized by … [Read more...]
World-travelling, envy, and the role of emotions in solidarity
Recently, the American Philosophical Association (APA) Newsletter put out a call for papers (CFP). They are asking for reflections on the experiences of philosophers who come from a first-generation and/or low-income background (deadline is Sept 15 if you want to submit). One of the topics listed by the APA was “Code Switching across Academic and Non-Academic (Familial or Home) Life” and it got me thinking... The world of home I am not the first in my family to attend university. In fact, both … [Read more...]
First thoughts on public scholarship
Philosophers want their work to matter. At least I do. This hope partially explains my website tagline, "philosophy in the world." In my first blog post, I wrote, "I seek for my philosophical work to be embedded in the world and in service to maintaining it as a space for speech and action." Philosophy can be helpful for public matters. Philosophers often clarify ambiguous or muddled concepts or phenomena. Or, alternatively, philosophers point out that some concepts are treated too … [Read more...]