Shortly before she died last Thursday, Finnish historian and Professor Emerita Varpu Lindström was presented with a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal as a tribute for her lifetime of scholarship and her pioneering work documenting the history of Finnish Canadians. She was nominated by York linguistics Professor Sheila Embleton and given the award by Halifax […]
They say two heads are better than one. Jonathan Edmondson, chair of York’s Department of History, now has an extra one – a Roman bust. He received it from the National Museum of Roman Art in Spain as the 18th winner of the international prize, Protective Spirit of the Colony of Augusta Emerita (Genio Protector de la […]
Last week, York law Professor Obiora Okafor was elected to the advisory committee of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Nigerian-born professor brings his expertise in international law, human rights law, and immigration and refugee law, especially as it relates to Africa, to the advisory committee. “The committee is the think tank of the […]
The day the Toronto Star broke the story on a wide variation of acceptance rates by refugee board members, a Federal Court judge issued a decision chastising an adjudicator who had not granted asylum to anyone in three years, wrote The Star March 9: In an order issued Friday on an appeal by failed refugee […]
Asylum rejection rates have no bearing in the quality and consistency of decisions made by adjudicators, says Canada’s refugee board, reported the Toronto Star March 4: In fact, the board insists that each decision must be examined on a case-by-case basis. “Statistics on the acceptance and rejection rates of individual IRB members who determine refugee […]
If you were a refugee seeking protection in Canada, you wouldn’t want to cross the path of David McBean, wrote the Toronto Star March 4, in a story about a new York study that shows evidence of bias among different adjudicators on the Immigration & Refugee Board (IRB) of Canada: According to an analysis of […]
Declarations by European leaders that multiculturalism is a failure are not applicable to York Region, academics and immigration advocates said, wrote the Aurora Banner, Feb. 18: The dialogue sparked by the leaders mystifies York University City Institute director Roger Keil, himself a newcomer from his native Germany in the 1990s. “I’m puzzled (that) the national […]
Imagine the stress of uprooting your family to make a new life in a new country in a new language. For women, adapting can be a very different experience than that of their children. Depending on their resilience and their situation, some adapt better than others. Nazilla Khanlou knows. An immigrant herself, she’s been studying […]
It’s not enough to plant trees in exchange for carbon emissions in the fight to mitigate climate change, say York environmental studies Professor Anders Sandberg and York environmental studies master’s student Tor Sandberg in their new co-edited book Climate Change – Who’s Carrying the Burden?: The Chilly Climates of the Global Environmental Dilemma. Nor is […]
There’s a tendency to think that the problems faced by people with precarious status – temporary workers, refugee claimants, failed claimants and people without status – are not Canadian issues, but York sociology Professor Luin Goldring disagrees. To shed light on the emerging body of research in this area, the Research Alliance on Precarious Status, which […]