Presentations in the McLaughlin College Lunch Talks series at York University during the month of February will highlight many themes, including Black History Month on Feb. 7.
The series runs out of the Senior Common Room in 140 McLaughlin College.
Feb. 7 – The Importance of Strategic Alliances for Canada’s Human Rights Movement
This panel discussion features Morley S. Wolfe and Arthur C. Downes, who will offer their professional and personal insights on this important topic. The event will be moderated by York University Professor Lorne Foster from the School of Public Policy & Administration and the Department of Equity Studies.
For more on this event, see the YFile story here.
Feb. 12 – Is Cultural Property Justified?
Dianne Lalonde, a PhD candidate in political science at Western University, will present a talk on cultural property and how it is often used in claims of cultural appropriation and repatriation. She will examine whether we can justify cultural property, and discuss how most justifications of property treat it as fungible in the sense that it is easily exchangeable or replaceable, and something that is permanently gained. However, such a conception of property does not seem to be amenable to the symbolic and representational nature of cultural property.
Feb. 25 – Reflections on a visit to North Korea
Thomas Klassen, a professor in the School of Public Policy & Administration at York University, will present this talk. He has spent extensive time in South Korea during the past decade, as visiting professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, visiting researcher at the Korea Labor Institute and field research Fellow at the Korea Foundation.
During this talk, he will discus how North Korea is arguably the world’s most unique nation: a hereditary dictatorship, a closed society and a country truly set apart from the rest of the world. For a small nation, it has a significant impact on global politics, as illustrated by U.S. and North Korea negotiations and meetings.
Feb. 27 – Cities and Foreign Relations: From High-Level Prerogative to Decentralized Discretion
Geneviéve Cartier is a professor of law in the Faculty of Law of the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec. She will present this talk and explore how cities seem increasingly present on the international scene, exercising what is sometimes labelled "local" foreign relations. This manifests itself when, for example, cities take a public stand in relation to an issue of concern in another country or region. This poses a challenge from a legal perspective, because cities are usually conceived as legally powerless in foreign relations for two main reasons. The first reason is that foreign relations are conventionally exercised by high-level executive officers of the state, in large part through what is called “the prerogative power,” on the basis of a unitary conception of state sovereignty. The second reason is that municipalities are conceived as mere creatures of statutes and their subordinated position has been consistently reaffirmed in judicial pronouncements, if only rhetorically.
The events run from noon to 1:30 p.m., and light refreshments will be served. For more information, visit mclaughlin.laps.yorku.ca/events.