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Carl Levin: A Life Examined
In my Narrative and Management course, I often used two documentaries of corporate malfeasance, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Inside Job. Confronting the perpetrators (Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling in Enron and Lloyd Blankfein and Glenn Hubbard in Inside Job, among many others), there is a legion of public servants, journalists, and…
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Women Warriors versus Girlie Men
In my recent presentation about personal storytelling I referred to the 2017 campaign launch videos of M.J. Hegar (“Doors”) and Amy McGrath (“Told Me”) as exemplary instances of that genre. I encourage readers to spend a total of six minutes watching their videos before reading the rest of this post. These videos were too long…
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Telling Your Story: Proof-of-Concept
Since retiring from full-time teaching, I have wanted to develop a seminar to help practitioners tell stories about their experiences in a convincing and compelling way. The seminar would build on the personal storytelling component of my courses on narrative and management and narrative and politics. Because I intended the seminar to be in-person rather…
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Ford’s Fourth Wave
Last week Doug Ford was presiding over a ground-breaking, the sort of event politicians have always loved. It was for a new long-term care home in Toronto. Ford was taking a victory lap and feeling expansive. His off-the-cuff responses to media questions turned out to be a major statement of policy regarding Covid – 19.…
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Governing Fables: Je Regrette Beaucoup
Working on the sequel to “my” 2011 book Governing Fables brings to mind two major regrets I have about that book: first that my co-author did not receive proper credit and second my choice of publisher. I will explain. The Unacknowledged Partner When I was writing about public sector innovation for two decades prior to…
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When (Pierre) Trudeau Dissed Mary Simon
At the 1984 first ministers conference on aboriginal constitutional matters Mary Simon (our new Governor-General) made the case for recognition in the constitution of equality between indigenous men and women. Prime Minister Trudeau dismissively retorted “I wish you and your sisters would somehow take it out of your heads that we are deliberately trying to…
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Op-ed on Canadian Political Film
Last Friday I had an op-ed in The Toronto Star making the case for greater public funding of Canadian documentary films about politics. This is something I have been writing about for some time, and the op-ed format challenged me to make my argument in 700 words. Here is a link to the article: Fund …
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Living in a Natural World
Readers of a certain age will recognize that this post’s title evokes but also contradicts a line in a pop anthem of the mid-Eighties. It wasn’t the music of my youth, but rather of my early adulthood. Lately numerous events and encounters have kept reminding me of the natural world I live in. The Eclipse…
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Why CAPPA Matters
This week I have been participating online in the annual research conference and AGM of the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration. CAPPA is the professional association for Canadian academics in the field of public administration, similar to the Canadian Economics Association or Canadian Political Science Association. As the thumbnail for this post on…
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Making Sense of Toronto Real Estate
This is a bit of a change from the topics I usually explore, but in a hot real estate market like everyone else I’m watching the action in the neighbourhood. The most interesting nearby street is Sandfield Road, particularly the long block between Misty Crescent and York Mills Road. Sandfield is a wide street with…
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Worthwhile American Initiatives
In 1986, Flora Lewis, a columnist for The New York Times, wrote a column about the Canadian government’s proposal for free trade negotiations with the US with the headline “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.” Three weeks later, The New Republic, describing this as “possibly the most boring headline ever written,” launched a contest for readers to identify…
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Business Travel for a Flaneur
With the prospect of Covid – 19 coming under control, we can contemplate the revival of business travel. Some will have mixed feelings, seeing business travel as an imposition that often can be avoided by conducting meetings and conferences online. Others may look forward to business travel as an opportunity to get away from home.…
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A Future for Canadian Political Film?
Is there a future for Canadian political film? This is the question I will be asking in my presentation to the Canadian public administration research conference in June. The conference, sponsored by the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration (CAPPA), will of course be conducted online. I have completed a draft of my Powerpoint…
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The Humanities Informing Political Science
Articles in Journals or Chapters in Books? In my experience with academic incentives, chapters in edited books get far less credit than peer-reviewed articles in journals. Edited books rarely use double-blind reviewing. When the editor of the book asks you to write a chapter, it would seem ungracious for her to then send it out…
- I am Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career.
- My latest book, Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, co-authored with Beth Herst, was published in April 2026 by University of Toronto Press (open access).
- On this website I post blogs about politics, narrative, and my life experiences.
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