TORONTO, April 12, 2001 -- Sam Gindin will deliver the Inaugural Lecture for the Packer Endowment in Social Justice at York University, Tuesday, April 17, at 7:30 p.m.
Gindin, the former Research Director and Assistant to the President of the Canadian Automobile Workers union, will discuss the significance of the Seattle protests for placing "anti-capitalism" and social justice on the global trade agenda and how these themes continue to be important within the protest movement including at next week’s Quebec City Summit of the Americas.
"The optimism I see lies not so much in the possibility of an economic collapse in capitalism as in the implications of capitalism's success and the resistance, struggles and political questions this has engendered," says Gindin. "If social justice could no longer be discussed without addressing globalization, Seattle declared that globalization could no longer be addressed without addressing capitalism. By naming the previously unspoken social system behind globalization, globalization was being politicized. Where globalization had become a weapon brandished by business, politicians, and the media to explain what we couldn't do, placing capitalism itself up for discussion and criticism was part of insisting that the limits we faced were socially constructed, and could therefore be challenged, stretched, and one day overcome."
Appointed to a three-year term as the first Packer Visiting Professor in Social Justice in the Department of Political Science, Gindin has initiated a innovative seminar series at York on social justice and political activism which brings together activists from a broad range of organizations with York's own students to explore the meaning of social justice today and its relationship to intellectual and political endeavour. Gindin’s book, The Canadian Auto Workers: The Birth and Transformation of a Union (James Lorimer, 1995), and his essays on free trade, socialism, working class capacities, and political economy have received widespread attention and acclaim.
The Packer Family Endowment was established to promote teaching, outreach and research within the field of social justice and to award scholarships to graduate and undergraduate students committed to promoting social justice in the 21st century.
Gindin’s lecture will be held in the Moot Court (located off the main foyer), Osgoode Hall Law School, York University Campus, 4700 Keele Street.
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For further information, please contact:
Sam Gindin
Packer Visitor in Social Justice
Dept. of Political Science, York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 33675
gindins@caw.ca
Prof. Leo Panitch
Dept. of Political Science
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 33891
lpanitch@yorku.ca
Cim Nunn
Director, Media Relations
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22087
cimnunn@yorku.ca
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