Join us for the Gender and the Economy Speaker Series at Rotman for a discussion on “Had It Coming: What’s Fair in the Age of #MeToo?” (Allen Lane, Sep. 24 2019)

SPEAKER: Robyn Doolittle, Investigative Journalist, “The Globe and Mail”; Author

BOOK SYNOPSIS: For nearly two years, Globe and Mail reporter Robyn Doolittle investigated how Canadian police handle sexual assault cases. Her findings were shocking: across the country, in big cities and small towns, the system was dismissing a high number of allegations as “unfounded.” A police officer would simply view the claim as baseless and no investigation would follow. Of the 26,500 reported cases of sexual assault in 2015, only 1,400 resulted in convictions. The response to Doolittle’s groundbreaking Unfounded series was swift. Federal ministers immediately vowed to establish better oversight, training, and policies; Prime Minister Trudeau announced $100 million to combat gender-based violence; Statistics Canada began to collect and publish unfounded rates; and to date, about a third of the country’s forces have pledged to review more than 10,000 sex-assault cases dating back to 2010. Had It Coming picks up where the Unfounded series left off. Doolittle brings a personal voice to what has been a turning point for most women: the #MeToo movement and its aftermath. The world is now increasingly aware of the pervasiveness of rape culture in which powerful men got away with sexual assault and harassment for years: from Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, and Matt Lauer, to Charlie Rose and Jian Ghomeshi. But Doolittle looks beyond specific cases to the big picture. The issue of “consent” figures largely: not only is the public confused about what it means, but an astounding number of police officers and judges do not understand Canadian consent law. The brain’s reaction to trauma and how it affects memory is also crucial to understanding victim statements. Surprisingly, Canada has the most progressive sexual assault laws in the developed world, yet the system is failing victims at every stage. Had It Coming is not a diatribe or manifesto, but a nuanced and informed look at how attitudes around sexual behaviour have changed and still need to change.

COST: $26.95 plus HST per person (includes 1 hardcover copy of “Had It Coming” and 1 seat for the talk)

VENUE: Rotman School of Management

PLEASE REGISTER IN ADVANCE VIA THE WEBSITE.

Jelena Subotic (PhD, Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2007) is Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta, USA. She is the author of two books: Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans (Cornell University Press, 2009, Serbian translation 2010) and Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (Cornell University Press, forthcoming, 2019). Professor Subotic is the author of more than twenty scholarly articles on international relations theory, memory politics, national identity, human rights, and the politics of the Western Balkans.

Book Synopsis:  The business world is no longer entirely a “total returns to shareholders” game. Corporations are increasingly expected to address the interests of multiple stakeholders through corporate social responsibility. This pressure comes from “clicktivists,” socially-conscious consumers, Millennials, and a new generation of investors focused on ESG (environmental, social and governance) standards. The urgency for moving beyond the “bottom line” mindset has never been greater. Yet, the popular “shared value” framework uses a business case logic to inspire companies to find win-win solutions. But what if there is no win-win? How can companies cope when the interests of the shareholder and those of other stakeholders such as communities, workers, consumers, suppliers, and the environment conflict irreconcilably? This book is designed to provide answers to these questions, showing leaders how to engage with stakeholders to create possibilities for everyone, and to foster innovative business model transformation. Companies can look through the lenses of different stakeholders—taking a 360° view—and see new ways of doing business. The 360° Corporation is an organization that can tackle the tensions created by these trade-offs, and this book offers signposts to leaders who want to spearhead the 360° revolution. Using rich case studies of Walmart, Nike and other leading companies, this book shows every organization can address its trade-offs. Sometimes there’s a “win-win”; sometimes, creative thinking may lead to innovation; and, other times companies will have to thrive in irreconcilable tensions. The 360° Corporation addresses all of these modes of action, serving as a comprehensive playbook for managers, CEOs, and innovators who are burned out by constantly being tugged in many different directions. 

About Our Speaker: Sarah Kaplan is Director and Professor – Institute for Gender and the Economy, Distinguished Professor of Gender and the Economy and Professor of Strategic Management, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. She is a Senior Fellow with the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at the Wharton School at  University of Pennsylvania.  Sarah is co-author of the New York Times best-seller Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market–And How to Successfully Transform Them (Broadway Business, 2003) and co-author of Survive and Thrive: Winning Against Strategic Threats to Your Business (Dog Ear Publishing, 2017).  Her new book The 360° Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation will be published by Stanford Business Books on September 3, 2019. 

$36.00 plus HST per person (includes 1 signed hardcover copy of “The 360° Corporation”, 1 seat for the book talk and the drinks reception)

When Robarts Library comes under a ransomware attack, U of T grad students will have 60 minutes to fight for the survival of one of the world’s great library collections. Join U of T Libraries for this fun and challenging escape room game. Dive into the dark corners of our brutalist maze and be sure not to lose your way. Time is running out! Presented in partnership with U of T Libraries. Pizza will be available. Please let us know if you have food restrictions.

Program TBA

The colloquium is organized by Martin Pickavé, Deborah Black, and Peter King.

All sessions are free and open to the public and will be held in Room 100 of the Jackman Humanities Building (170 St. George Street).

India is an ancient civilization but a new nation. As a political experiment it is very much a work in progress. This lecture will provide a brief political history of India since Independence before discussing four key challenges facing the Republic in 2019; these are (1) inter-religious disharmony; (2) environmental abuse; (3) institutional decay; (4) the cult of personality.

Dr. Ramachandra Guha is a historian and biographer based in Bengaluru. His books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989), and an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002), which was chosen by The Guardian as one of the ten best books on cricket ever written. India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007; revised edition, 2017) was chosen as a book of the year by the Economist, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and as a book of the decade in the Times of London and The Hindu.

Dr. Guha’s most recent work is a two volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi. The first volume, Gandhi Before India (Knopf, 2014), was chosen as a notable book of the year by the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. The second volume, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World (Knopf, 2018, was chosen as a notable book of the year by the New York Times and The Economist.

Dr. Guha’s awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Daily Telegraph/Cricket Society prize, the Malcolm Adideshiah Award for excellence in social science research, the Ramnath Goenka Prize for excellence in journalism, the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies.

Explore employment opportunities with more than 100 diverse and global organizations. University of Toronto students from all years, all fields of study and campuses are invited, as well as recent grads.

The Sorbs of Lusatia are a Slavic minority community which has traditionally lived in parts of present-day Saxony and Brandenburg in Germany. Their identity is primarily expressed through the use of Upper and Lower Sorbian, West Slavic languages currently spoken by approximately 20,000 people in total. It is also reflected in these individuals’ self-identification as Sorbs, as members of the Sorbian society, who cultivate and receive Sorbian culture, wear Sorbian costumes, attend Sorbian religious services or participate in the teaching of Sorbian.

In my talk, I will discuss a number of factors that play a role in the maintenance of the Sorbian identity. These include the political representation of Sorbian interests on the state level, education (from preschools to elementary and high schools), higher education and research, religion, media (magazines, newspapers, radio, television, internet) and cultural institutions (music ensembles, book publishers, museums, theaters).
I will also explore the conditions necessary for the maintenance of the Sorbian language, culture and identity. Above all, and as history has shown, the state must be able to create policies which promote a minority-friendly atmosphere. Every citizen living in a bilingual territory is deserving of support. However, from the more contemporary perspective, the efforts for the continued existence of the Sorbian people can only succeed if their own initiatives, the tolerance and support of these initiatives from all citizens, and initiatives favoring government intervention work in cooperation with one another.

The Sorbs’ own efforts will be able to develop only to the degree that they are accepted by the German population, as the minority is always dependent on the goodwill of the majority. The specific situation of the Sorbs as an ethnic group lacking a “home country” in which they would be the majority is accompanied by the fact that, to date, no adequate answers to many fundamental questions have been found.