Humanities for Inhumane Times

George Ignatieff Theatre
Recorded Sep 21st 2009

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Humanities for Inhumane Times

A round-table discussion of what we hope and expect the humanities to contribute in our world today and tomorrow.

The promise of the humanities is to make us more humane, more able to care for and enhance the humanity of each other, but we live in an inhumane time of economic crisis, of terror, repression and fanaticism, and indeed in the wake of genocide and extreme disparity of wealth.  What can scholarship on the human record of cultures, languages and thought contribute to our world?

• Chad Gaffield, President, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
• Avi Lewis, Host of CounterSpin, The Big Picture, On the Map, Why Democracy?
• Jill Matus, Professor of English and Vice-Provost, Student Life, University of Toronto
• John Ralston Saul, author of A Fair Country: Telling Truths about Canada