Welcome to the Fall semester and the inaugural issue of Political Science Pulse. The goal of this newsletter is to provide faculty, students, and alumni with monthly updates on departmental news and activities. If you are interested in featuring your publications, events, or general news, just send me an email and I’ll include it in the next newsletter.

This semester marks some changes in the department. Dr. John Sutcliffe has completed his second term as Head, and we thank him for his 11 years of service. During his tenure we welcomed several great colleagues: Cheryl Collier, Emmanuelle Richez, Elena Maltseva, Jesse Ovadia, and Gregory Feldman.

For the next year, Dr. Sutcliffe will be the acting Chair of the Graduate program. In addition to countless hours writing various forms and letters, I suspect he holds the University record for drafting the most IQAP reports – the last of which will serve as the basis for the site visit this November 7-8. The visit will allow for faculty, staff, and students to provide the reviewers with valuable insights into what works and what can be improved. Stay tuned for times and locations.

Dr. Jim Wittebols retired this year. Family and friends gathered earlier this summer to wish him well on his well deserved retirement.

EU Study Abroad

May 2023 marked the thirteenth year of our popular European Union Study Abroad Program. Fifteen students from the University of Windsor, Western University, and Huron University College participated, bringing to about 250 the number of students who have participated since the program began in 2009.

Our program’s model involves experiential learning and an immersive cultural experience. The majority of the 14-day program consisted of briefings from policy-makers, administrators, politicians, diplomats, journalists, and NGO researchers at their places of work. This keeps us constantly on the go, travelling between locations and institutions by train, metro, and on foot. The core of our program remains the same each year, consisting of visits to all the major institutions of the European Union, NATO, the College of Europe (a prestigious finishing school for Eurocrats), several NGOs, and a handful of country missions to the EU. This year we added a meeting with Catherine De Bolle, the Executive Director of Europol, the Ambassador of the Permanent Delegation of Germany to the EU, a talk on Belgian politics from Kris Deschouwer, a former president of the European Political Science Association, and a visit in Antwerp to the Mode Museum.

In total, students spent about 40-42 hours in meetings and attending talks over the two weeks of the program. On the final day of the program the group visited Breendonk, a Nazi transit camp just north of Brussels. It is a sober and eye-opening experience for the students and one that probably makes a stronger impression on them than anything else that we do during our time in Belgium. The group always stays at the Irish College in Leuven. It was founded by Franciscan monks fleeing Ireland in the first years of the 17^th century. In the mid-1980s it was reinvented as a conference center. It is very important that our students have a safe and comfortable place to return to every evening.

The University of Windsor EU Study Abroad Program is recognized as a return visitor at the EU and at the many other institutions that we visit each spring. After an absence during Covid, it has been a pleasure these past two years to renew these acquaintances and to provide our students with an experience that so many have told us was the highlight of their university years.

Stephen Brooks, Professor

For the full report and more information on the program visit the website.

Know your rights! A community symposium on the Charter

The Charter Symposium brought together political scientists, legal scholars, and legal practitioners to exchange knowledge with rights advocacy groups, students, and members of the public on how the Charter must be further developed to bring more equity for disadvantaged groups in Windsor-Essex and beyond. It was organized by Dr. Emmanuelle Richez, Associate Professor of Political Science as part of her position as Humanities Research Group Fellow for the 2022-2023 academic year. The one-day event was held at the University of Windsor on Friday, March 3rd, 2023.

The main objective of the Charter Symposium was to generate and to share knowledge that will better equip disadvantaged individuals and groups representing them to have their Charter rights and freedoms recognized, clarified, and enforced. The Charter Symposium consisted of three panels. The first panel tackled access to justice under the Charter. The second panel explored how human rights protected by the Charter can be expanded to aid vulnerable groups (sections 2 and 15), while the third panel focused on how to increase the scope of languages rights for official language minority communities (sections 16 to 23 of the Charter). The Charter symposium concluded with a formal networking session, an opportunity for local advocacy groups to build relationships with academics and legal practitioners in view of furthering Charter rights and freedoms.

The second objective of the project was to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion among women, religious minorities, official languages communities, Indigenous Peoples, disabled persons, etc. Panelists and students working for the Charter symposium were from diverse backgrounds. Simultaneous translation in French and English was provided for presenters to speak, and for audience members to listen, in their preferred Canadian official language. The Charter Symposium was also broadcasted live online, for free, in both French and in English for those who could not attend in person due to cost or disability, thereby reaching as many people as possible.

This department sponsored event also included faculty members, Dr. Rebecca Major, and Dr. Geoffrey Callaghan. Papers stemming from the panelists' presentations will be published in the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, which is a bilingual open-sourced journal hosted by the Leddy Library. For videos and more information, visit the website.

Recent Faculty Publications and News

• Roy Amore, 2023 “Introduction: A brief History of Theism and Its Alternatives, Religions, August.

• Roy Amore has been invited to serve as Guest Editor of a special theme edition of the journal Religions.

• Jamey Essex. 2023. “‘The apartment above a meth lab’?: Participation and impacts of the 2020 US election in Canada.” In B. Warf and J. Heppen (eds.), Geographies of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. New York. Routledge, 137-153. doi: 10.4324/9781003260837-9.

• Jamey Essex received a CTL Leadership project grant for $10,000 for 2023-25 to lead the development of an undergraduate honours experience program within FAHSS, and will begin working on that in the coming months with other faculty members in FAHSS.

• Greg Feldman. 2023.The Subject of Sovereignty: Relationality and the Pivot past Liberalism (London and New York: Berghahn Books). https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/FeldmanSubject 

• Greg Feldman. 2023 “Transnational struggles and the ‘state’: Biopower and biopolitics in the case of a Nigerian Human Trafficking Ring” In Global Human Smuggling: Buying Freedom in a Retreating World, 3^rd Edition, David Kyle and Luigi Achilli, eds. pp. 410-424 (John Hopkins University Press: 2023).

• Greg Feldman. 2023 'Militias in America: False Reality and the US Constitution.' Today's Totalitarianism. https://todaystotalitarianism.com/militia-in-america

• Greg Feldman. 2022 “Sovereignty as new beginnings: Action beyond the liberal subject, among undercover police investigators in Europe, for example.” Anthropological Theory 22(3): 317-337.

• Due to the success of her second book "International Development: Socio-Economic Theories, Legacies, and Strategies" (Routledge 2018), this year Anna Lanoszka secured a contract for the second edition. She is currently working on revising the book. However, a lot of her working hours have been devoted to her position as President of WUFA (Windsor University Faculty Association).

• Rebecca Major organized a successful pre-conference workshop on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization for the Canadian Political Science Association for the 2023 Annual Conference

• Emmanuelle Richez. 2022 “L’équivalence réelle en matière d'éducation pour les Franco-colombiens : une lutte sans fin ?” La Francophonie en Colombie Britannique, edited by Geneviève Brisson and Rémi Léger. Quebec City: Presses de l’Université Laval (Perspectives de l’Ouest).

Reading Liberty

Registration is open for Reading Liberty for Fall 2023.

Reading Liberty is an initiative at the University of Windsor, led by Dr. Lydia Miljan, that gives students the opportunity to explore a set of readings on the intellectual underpinnings of a free society without the stress of grades or assignments. By creating a space for active discussion with other intellectually engaged individuals Reading Liberty gives students a chance to achieve unusual depth and perspective on the classical liberal tradition that could not be achieved through solitary study. Reading Liberty is open to all UWindsor students interested in expanding their knowledge of the philosophical ideas of liberty. Don’t miss out on an opportunity to have meaningful discussions with other philosophically inclined participants.

• Reading Liberty is open to any interested University of Windsor student, depending on demand, it may be restricted to graduating students

• Enrollment is limited to 20 in each semester, so please sign up only if you are able to commit to attend all sessions.

• The format will be open discussion, but focused on the topics raised in the assigned readings. Importantly, this group is not intended to be a lecture. Ideally, the professor will do little of the discussion and only serve as a moderator.

• There is no cost to students to participate – books and refreshments will be provided.

• Reading Liberty participation qualifies as an entry on your Co-Curricular Transcript.

This semester’s book is by Deirdre McCloskey and Art Carden, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make you Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World. Art Carden will on campus on October 20th to meet with the group. Visit the website for details on meeting dates and times and how to sign up.

Upcoming