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Date: April 30, 2-4pm (Lecture followed by catered reception)
Location: Ponderosa Ballroom
RSVP by Wednesday, April 23 for catering purposes
Title of talk: What Kind of University Do We Want?: In Defense of University-Community Engagement
Speaker: Dr. Am Johal
Abstract of talk: In this moment of major financial volatility and deep cuts in the post-secondary sector and multiple crises unfolding locally and internationally, why are universities going inward and moving away from their public commitments to deeper forms of community engaged scholarship locally and internationally? At a time when social infrastructures and democratic practices are unravelling all around us at an unprecedented pace, why are universities unable to rise up to their public mission? This talk will make a call for a more vigorous and more radical university engagement with communities that allows for porousness and sites of engaged teaching, research, learning and engagement that will push the university far beyond its present comfort zone. Facing attacks from multiple fronts, universities and their leaders need to make a much more vigorous defense of the public mission of the university to strengthen democracy, foster adult learning, and build stronger communities.
Bio of Speaker: Am Johal was until February 2025, Director of SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, Co-Director of SFU’s Community Engaged Research Initiative and host of the podcast, Below the Radar. He has additional affiliations at SFU with Graduate Liberal Studies, Labour Studies and the Institute for the Humanities. He has been on the boards of the Vancouver International Film Festival, Vancity Community Foundation, Indian Summer Arts Society, Impact on Communities Coalition, 221A, Greenpeace Canada, BC Alliance for Arts and Culture. In 2020, he was recognized with SFU’s Warren Gill Award for Community Impact, and in 2024 with the Dr. Hari Sharma Community Award and the King Charles III Coronation Medal. He is the author of ‘Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene’ (2015), co-author with Matt Hern of ‘Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale’ (2018) and ‘O My Friends, There is No Friend: The Politics of Friendship at the End of Ecology’ (2024). Am Johal holds a PhD in Communication and Media Philosophy from the European Graduate School in Switzerland.
Information about Buttedahl Memorial Lecture: The Buttedahl Memorial Lecture was established in 2008 in honor of Paz and Knute Buttedahl who were, at one time, faculty members in Educational Studies. Separately and together, Paz and Knute had an enormous impact on adult education, international development, community building, peace building, and development of university education in British Columbia. For more information see Paz Buttedahl and Knute Buttedahl
Donations can be made to the Paz and Knute Buttedahl Memorial Fund at the University of British Columbia by visiting give.ubc.ca/buttedahl-memorial, calling 604.827.4111 (toll free 1.877.717.GIVE), or by mail at 500-5950 University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3.
2025 Buttedahl Memorial Lecture
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