Dorothy J. Killam Memorial Lecture Series

2005 Lectures

Toward a New Global Order?

• October 18, 2005: How Can We Advance Political and Economic Democracy?
• October 25, 2005: Can Civilization Survive Climate Change?
• October 27, 2005: Global Security, The War on Terror and the New American Century

After a brief period following the close of the Cold War when the 'end of history' was predicted, war and civil conflict, economic disparity and environmental insecurity present daunting challenges to the world of the 21st century. Yet the international order created at the end of World War II seems inadequate to address the problems facing humankind. The 2005 Killam Lecturers will assess the nature of these challenges, explore possible directions to a new global order, and discuss the role of global citizens in its emergence.

How Can We Advance Political and Economic Democracy?   

Date & Time: 8:00 pm, Tuesday, 18 October 2005
Speaker: Walden Bello, University of the Philippines

Corporate-driven globalization accompanied by unilateralist military intervention and the rewriting of international law has become the main threat to the consolidation of political and economic democracy globally. The current global disorder is placed by Walden Bello within an overarching framework resting on three key concepts: overextension, overproduction, and crisis of legitimacy. He addresses not only the causes of the crisis but discusses strategies to advance peace and democracy globally.

A campaigner for peace and economic justice and author of the bestseller Dilemmas of Domination: the Unmaking of the American Empire, Walden Bello is a professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines. He is also executive director of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy organization, Focus on the Global South.

Can Civilization Survive Climate Change?   

Date & Time: 8:00 pm, Tuesday, 25 October 2005
Speaker: Elizabeth May, Sierra Club Canada

In June 1988, Canada hosted the first major international conference on climate change. The consensus statement of the scientists present began, "Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences are second only to global nuclear war." The reality is that climate change is not really an environmental issue. It is about the survival of the human race. Elizabeth May asks whether we are repeating the experience of past advanced civilizations, which ignored the constraints of the natural world and perished.

Elizabeth May is an environmentalist, writer, activist, and lawyer. She has been Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada since 1989 and is a member of the Board of the International Institute of Sustainable Development. May holds a law degree from Dalhousie and in 1999, the University created a permanent chair in her honour, the Elizabeth May Chair in Women's Health & the Environment. She is the author of The Cutting Edge: The Crisis in Canada's Forests and three other books.

Global Security, The War on Terror and the New American Century   

Date & Time: 8:00 pm, Thursday, 27 October 2005
Speaker: Paul Rogers, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford

Four years after 9/11 and the start of the "global war on terror", the al-Qaida movement remains active across the world, a bitter counter-insurgency campaign continues in Afghanistan, Iraq is mired in a war that has already cost over 30,000 lives and there is a risk of a confrontation with Iran. A conflict has now developed between a vision of a New American Century and a disparate quasi-religious movement that threatens that vision. Moreover, the location of the world's most abundant oil reserves at the heart of this dispute means that a 30-year war could well be in prospect. Paul Rogers considers how this struggle will shape the future of our world.

A professor in the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University, Paul Rogers analyzes the linkages between economic disparity, environmental constraints and international insecurity in fostering conflict. His most recent books are Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century and A War on Terror: Afghanistan and After. Rogers gives frequent radio and TV interviews to stations and networks around the world, and writes a weekly column on international security for the Open Democracy web journal.