An international conference at York University on Oct. 6 and 7 will honour the work and career of Professor Emeritus Leo Panitch.
Professor Emeritus Leo Panitch
Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LAPS) Dean Ananya Mukherjee-Reed will welcome participants from across the world for the two-day conference titled “Transcending Pessimism, Reimagining Democracy: A Conference in Honour of Leo Panitch” at the Keele Campus Senate Chamber.
Panitch, whose thesis supervisor was Ralph Miliband at the The London School of Economics and Political Science, has inspired, supervised and influenced countless generations of students – first at Carleton University, and since the 1980s at York University.
Panitch’s work and career has been focused on issues of social equity, and issues of capitalism and an Empire centred around the U.S. state in his writing. He has also dedicated time to building an intellectual and activist community around these issues through his participation in the legacy of the annual volumes of the that venerable institution, the Socialist Register, which has been published since 1964, and which he has co-edited since the 1985-86 volume and with which he is still involved.
While at York, Panitch was a York University Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Political Science. He is a Royal Society of Canada Fellow and a Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy.
Panelists featured in the conference come from these traditions of scholarly support in teaching, in inspiring, and will be speaking to issues of building democracy and capacity for building social equity, education, and socialist politics in Canada and the world.
The event is sponsored by: Office of the Vice-President Academic & Provost, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, Department of Political Science, York University; Centre for Social Justice.