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Sherry Turkle: The Right Time and Place
Sherry Turkle’s just-published bildungsroman-like memoir demonstrates her knack of being in the right place at the right time. Taking a year off college, she landed at Sciences Po in fall 1968, the best place imaginable to study “les evenements de Mai 1968.” A few years later she was having personal tutorials with Jacques Lacan just…
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In the Name of God, Go!
When the British Parliament debated the disastrous military operation in Norway in 1940, a Conservative backbencher, Leo Amery, quoted Oliver Cromwell’s dismissal of the Long Parliament, hurling at Neville Chamberlain the words “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.…
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Bleeding (a Little) for Research
Several years ago I volunteered to participate in the Ontario Health Study (OHS), though I can’t recall the specific impetus. But I am one of 225,000 who did. About the Study OHS is a longitudinal study that tracks its participants over a long period of time, likely decades. The study is investigating the risk factors…
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Creating My Legacy at UTSC
When I retired last year, my department and I discussed creating a legacy to build on my teaching and research on narrative and management. We came up with the idea of creating a digital communications fund to train students in digital storytelling (such as podcasts or videos) and run a competition. We need to raise…
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The Leisure of the Theoried Class
In 1979 and 1980 I participated in a study commissioned by the US National Academy of Engineering on the impacts and appropriate regulation of diesel automobiles. The study came about because the 1979 energy supply shock due to the Iranian Revolution led US policy makers to anticipate widespread consumer adoption of energy-efficient diesel-powered automobiles. I…
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Bolivar: An Admirable Docudrama
As part of my studying of Spanish, in addition to grammar exercises, I have been watching Spanish-language movies and television programs. This is what brought me to the 2019 Columbian docudrama Bolivar: una lucha admirable (Bolivar: an admirable fight), available on Netflix. I sampled several of Netflix’s Spanish offerings and realized that many of them…
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Ontario’s Vaccination Situation: A Rant
Today’s post is unexpected. I participate in a list-serv with my Harvard undergraduate classmates. After reading so many of their stories about getting vaccinated for Covid – 19, I posted with the news that my 97 year-old mother has finally been vaccinated, but my own vaccination is not imminent. And I ranted a bit about…
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Building UTSC Management: My Story
In a recent interview for the University of Toronto at Scarborough’s (UTSC) oral history project I discuss my two terms as Chair of the Department of Management (1991 to 2003). The interview has now been posted online. In 1991 UTSC was officially Scarborough College and its faculty perceived it as a mall liberal arts college.…
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A Tale of Two Marks
Last Thursday night I was listening to central banker Mark Carney’s Reith Lectures, originally given on the BBC and rebroadcast on the CBC, and hearing the news about Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) CEO Mark Machin’s vaccine tourism to the UAE. Machin’s trip didn’t end well. He was forced to resign the next day.…
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Bill Gates and his Writing Partners
I’ve just read Bill Gates’s How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. I’ll begin by making clear my enormous admiration for Gates. He could have used his enormous wealth in the idiotic or narcissistic ways some of his fellow billionaires have (buying sports team, building the biggest toys, dabbling in personal cryonics) but he has used…
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Porque y Como Aprendo Espanol
I have been studying Spanish for several years now and want to discuss the why – porque – and the how – como. Porque Espanol In recent years before the pandemic I visited Mexico, Peru, Spain, and Cuba, in every trip enjoying myself. The Spanish-speaking world is vast and I’m optimistic that I will be…
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Podcast on My Academic Career
Alex Rascanu, one of my best public management students, is a true public sector entrepreneur. Alex recently graduated with an M.P.A. from Dalhousie, after doing a B.B.A. at the University of Toronto Scarborough, which is where I had the honour to be his instructor. We’ve also kept in touch since then. He’s had a wide…
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‘O Canada’ Op-ed: Replying to Critics
Last weekend, I published an op-ed in The Globe and Mail entitled “’O Canada’ without the cross – why it’s time to revisit the lyrics of the national anthem.” It got many comments, a considerable number of them critical. In this post, I will reply to the major arguments raised by the critics. Quite a…
- 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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