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The Whole World is Watching
When I was a student in the U.S. in the Sixties and Seventies, a slogan we shouted was “the whole world is watching,” which was an attempt to shame the Johnson and Nixon Administrations by reminding them of what we assumed was their obligation to preserve the U.S.’s standing in the eyes of the rest…
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Resisting Domination
The extraordinary rendition of Venezuelan President Maduro last weekend, coupled with the release of the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) last month, have riveted the attention of Canadians. These two events are closely linked, as the unidentified authors of the strategy must have been aware of the Administration’s military plans regarding Venezuela and wrote…
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A Song for the Next Ontario Election Campaign – or Sooner
Recently my Harvard classmate Peter Sage, who blogs in Oregon and occasionally reposts some of my blogs, did a post with an AI-generated folk song criticizing the 73 year-old Republican member of Congress for his district. I took Peter’s lead and went to Chat GPT for a protest song about Doug Ford. Ford is no…
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Is Ontario Still a Democracy?
Earlier this week, I spoke to this provocative question at a panel discussion organized by Ontario NDP MPPs Chris Glover (Spadina-Fort York) and Jessica Bell (University-Rosedale). I provided a broad historical and comparative perspective – what academics are expected to do – and the other speakers gave their reactions to the Ford Government’s policies from…
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Will the Ontario PC Party Ever Lose?
With the Ontario Liberal Party (personal disclosure – I’m a member) beginning the process of selecting a leader, it is an appropriate time to think more broadly about Ontario politics. In the last 80 years – the post-World War II era – the PC Party has formed the government for 55 years (69 percent of…
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A Jewish Remembrance Day
My wife and I always observe Remembrance Day. Most years, especially during the pandemic, we watched the broadcast of the service at the National War Memorial. This year we attended a special event at the Toronto Holocaust Museum. The event combined three key mitzvot (obligations): study, remembrance, and prayer. The prayer component was at the…
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Rediscovering Yousuf Karsh
“You interviewed Yousuf Karsh? Wow!” That was the response from Betty Hagopian, a fellow Harvard undergraduate student, fifty-five years ago. Betty is Armenian-American, and thus more aware than most of the fame of her ethnic confrere. I was a member of the news department of the Harvard student radio station WHRB, and I produced a…
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This Magical Season
My first memory of baseball fandom was watching Saturday afternoon television broadcasts – the only ones – in the early Sixties, with commentary by Dizzy Dean and Peewee Reese. It was obvious that they both knew a lot about baseball, but I was too young to know that they were living legends. Forty years later,…
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That Ontario Ad: So Much Hypocrisy
It’s been about a week since Trump went ballistic about the Ontario Government ad quoting Ronald Reagan’s advocacy of free trade and skepticism about tariffs. We’ve seen the reactions of the President, Prime Minister, and Premier as well as several key players (US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Ambassador Pete Hoekstra) and a public…
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A Temper Tantrum or a Deadlock?
In response to the Government of Ontario’s ad quoting a Ronald Reagan speech criticizing tariffs, Donald Trump announced that “ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.” Would a government really terminate trade negotiations with its second largest trading partner because its head of state doesn’t like an ad campaign run by a subnational jurisdiction?…
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What’s Wrong with a “Cash Grab”?
Doug Ford’s labelling speed cameras a “cash grab” is an example of a tactic the political right has developed to a high art in recent years: renaming issues in ways that build support for conservative positions. If renaming is effective, they may even shut off debate. Besides “cash grab” some examples that come to mind…
- 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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