Friday, September 20 – 12PM ET

Danny Leroy – The rising price of groceries

Danny Le Roy, Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute, is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Lethbridge. He specializes in agricultural economics and has completed research on such critical agricultural issues as livestock production and trade, commodity pricing, and emerging markets for irrigation water. Le Roy has served as an executive member of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, the Alberta Agricultural Economics Association, and the Tiffin Conference Organizing Committee. He has published in and reviewed papers for the Canadian Journal of Economics, Current Agriculture, Food and Research Issues, Canadian Public Policy, and Western Economic Forum. He received his BA (Honours) in Economics from Carleton University and his MSc and PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Guelph.

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Thursday, October 24 – 12PM ET

JP Messina – Private Censorhip

Concerns about censorship have once again reached a fever pitch across the liberal West. In other historical periods, such concerns focused on government actions. Against this history, complaints about the new censorship appear differently. With respect to the new censorship, there are no books burnings, no prosecutions, no laws or committees. Indeed, there is no coercive state involvement at all. With a few notable exceptions, complaints about censorship in the 21st-century West are complaints about the behavior of private parties: social groups, employers, media conglomerates, social media platforms, and search engines. To better understand the concerns surrounding nonstate interference with speech, Messina offers an account of censorship, as well as an assessment of the ethical and political issues it raises across contexts.

JP Messina is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy. He offers courses in moral and political philosophy, the ethics of data science, and the history of practical philosophy. In addition to teaching responsibilities in the philosophy department, Messina teaches in the college’s Cornerstone Program. Before joining the faculty at Purdue, he held research positions at the University of New Orleans and Wellesley College. He received his Ph.D. from UC San Diego in 2018.

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TBD

Conversations with a Contrarian: Temba Nolutshungu

Temba Nolutshungu is a director at the Free Market Foundation and a long advocate against institutionalised racism; first as an anti-Apartheid activist and now as a supporter of liberal democracy. He is chairman of the Langa Heritage Foundation and a council member of the (SA) Institute of Race Relations. His political background is rooted in the struggle against apartheid. In the early 1970s he was a pioneer activist of the black consciousness movement. His dedication to the overthrow of the apartheid system was based on the fact that it was an omnipotent and all-embracing system which sought to limit and control every facet of black people’s lives, from the cradle to the grave. He was detained twice under the Terrorism and General Law Amendment Acts and kept in solitary confinement. The influence of his personal experiences is manifested in his writings and interventions in debates on public policy and generally fires his determination to contribute to the enhancement of the individual liberties of all people.

This event is held in partnership with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy – a new think tank that aims to renew a civil, common-sense approach to public discourse and public policy in Canada.