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The Semiotician and the Golf Course
Did you hear the one about the post-structuralist and the mafia don? She made him an offer he didn’t understand. This post about semioticians and golf courses makes the opposite premise, namely that it is the semiotician who doesn’t understand. Start with a golf course that is shuttered due to Covid – 19, so it…
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Communicating about Covid – 19
In my post of March 21, I argued that the quality of a jurisdiction’s governance could have an impact on the seriousness of its Covid – 19 outbreak. One aspect of governance is the communication of government policy, and in this post I want to offer my armchair assessments of several government communicators. The emerging…
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Covid USA: A Parody
Seeing pictures of recent “open up America” rallies and once again crowded beaches in Florida, coupled with the news that the virus is spreading to Boston, left me appalled. One can react to such news with anger, which would lead to a denunciation. A second way to react is with scorn, which could be expressed…
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Taking the Package
After considerable thought, I have decided to accept a retirement package offered to senior faculty members by the University of Toronto. By retiring at the end of this academic year (June 2020), I will receive a full year’s salary from July 2020 to June 2021. Technically, I will be on paid leave of absence during…
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Doug Ford: A Convert to Science?
On Thursday March 12, Doug Ford was telling people to go on holiday over March break and enjoy themselves. Virtually overnight, he did a complete volte-face and urged people to stay home and start self-isolating. Since then, he has been tenaciously clinging to the same page as the federal government, hectoring Ontarians about strict social…
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Innovation under Populism Posted
My article “Innovation under Populism” has just been posted on the Public e-Bulletin of the ESADE Business School in Barcelona. I wrote the article several months ago, before the spread of the Covid – 19 virus. The point I made, however, is entirely relevant to the current situation. Populist governments and citizens, with their contempt…
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Fighting Covid – 19, Fighting Trump
The Israeli statesman David Ben-Gurion, while a resistance leader, admonished his followers to fight the Nazis as though the British Mandate didn’t exist, and fight the British Mandate as though the Nazis didn’t exist. (For those not familiar with Israeli history, the British Mandate refers to British control over Palestine, which Ben-Gurion wanted to replace…
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Covid – 19: Does Governance Matter?
When the Covid – 19 pandemic finally ends, a generation of students of public health and public policy will have data to evaluate the approaches taken by different governments in terms of their effectiveness at identifying the virus, controlling its spread, and treating its victims. Early experience suggests that countries that diligently traced cases and…
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Reluctant Radio Silence
It’s been almost a full month since my previous post. I haven’t lost my interests or my voice. The problem is that I am teaching three courses this semester. Preparation time (because I always update my content), classes, grading, and student contact take up most of my work week. By the way, the courses are…
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Trade Ms. Meng for USMCA?
I haven’t seen this discussed by other commentators, but it seems to me that Canada holds a tremendous bargaining advantage because Parliament has not yet ratified USMCA. President Trump has told us that USMCA is a fantastic agreement and would replace the worst trade deal ever. And he desperately wants USMCA to take effect before…
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Remember Auschwitz
Yesterday was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I visited Auschwitz some years ago and published an op-ed about my visit in the Globe and Mail. Here is a link to the Auschwitz article. In a post a few years ago, I wrote about an exhibit entitled The Evidence Room, an artistic representation…
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Innovation under Populism
Populism has become a topic of great academic interest, particularly after the Brexit referendum and election of Donald Trump in 2016 (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, Norris and Inglehart 2019). As a long-time student of public sector innovation (Borins 1998, Borins 2014), I have become interested in the impact populism is having on it. I have…
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Richard Jewell: Eastwood’s Medal Shot?
In this time of sharp political polarization in the US, it is well known that many television programs and movies tend to appeal much more to one side of the spectrum than another. It is therefore reasonable to ask, regardless of the intentions of the creators, to whom a particular work is most likely to…
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Mackenzie King at Midnight
I just saw director/writer Matthew Rankin’s satirical bildungsroman about Mackenzie King, entitled The Twentieth Century. The film is based on two premises, the first indisputable, the second debatable. The indisputable premise, anchored in King’s diaries – a gift that truly keeps on giving – is that King was one weird dude. The debatable premise is…
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Reviewing Shiller’s Narrative Economics
Robert Shiller, 2013 Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, has always challenged convention. A critic of rational expectations modelling, he demonstrated that stock prices were much more volatile than those models would suggest. And he was among the few who predicted the Internet stock bubble and the housing bubble a few years later. A few months…
- 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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