J.W. Dafoe Political Studies Students’ Conference

The Honourable Bob Rae, P.C., C.C., O.Ont., Q.C., former Premier of Ontario, and former interim Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, was born in 1948, in Ottawa. Mr. Rae received his Honours Bachelor of Arts in Modern History in 1969 from the University of Toronto, a Master of Philosophy as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in 1971, and graduated from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 1977.

Mr. Rae’s passion for social justice dates back to his early days in student politics and community service. Between 1978 and 2013, he was elected 11 times to federal and provincial parliaments, and served as the Premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995.

Returning to the practice of law in 1996 as a partner at Goodmans LLP, Mr. Rae led the restructuring of the Canadian Red Cross, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and also chaired the board of the Royal Conservatory of Music. He also wrote Lessons to be Learned on the Air India bombing, and Ontario: A Leader in Learning, a study of the higher education system for the Government of Ontario.

Mr. Rae stepped down as a Member of Parliament in 2013 to return to legal practice and, in particular, to work with Indigenous communities and continue his work in education, governance, and human rights. He currently serves as senior counsel at Olthuis Kleer Townshend LLP.

In addition to his legal practice, Mr. Rae is a Fellow of the Forum of Federations, Massey College, and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He teaches at the University of Toronto in the School of Public Policy and Governance, the Faculty of Law, Massey College, and Victoria University. He is also a mediator and arbitrator with ADR Chambers. He is the author of five books.

In October 2017, Mr. Rae was appointed as Canada’s Special Envoy to Myanmar. In this role, he engaged in diplomatic efforts to address the crisis in the country’s Rakhine State and wrote the report Tell Them We’re Human in 2018. In March 2020, he was named Canada’s Special Envoy on Humanitarian and Refugee Issues to continue the important work he started as Special Envoy to Myanmar, while also addressing other pressing humanitarian and refugee issues around the world.

Bob Rae is a Privy Councillor, a Companion of the Order of Canada, a member of the Order of Ontario, and has numerous awards and honorary degrees from institutions in Canada and around the world.
Along with music, reading, and writing, he loves tennis, golf, and fishing. He is married to Arlene Perly Rae. They have three daughters and five grandchildren and live in Toronto.
 

Col Chris Morrison is a 30 year veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force who hails from Owen Sound, Ontario. A CH-146 Griffon Tactical Aviation pilot by background, he has been privileged to deploy overseas a total of 7 times on various NATO, UN and US-led coalition operations, and received the Meritorious Service Cross for his leadership as the commanding officer of the Aviation Battalion deployed to MINUSMA in Gao, Mali in 2018.  He also has extensive staff experience, having held a wide assortment of roles in 1 Canadian Air Division Headquarters here in Winnipeg, where he has also served in various NORAD capacities. He is currently the Visiting Defence Fellow at the University of Manitoba.

LCol (ret’d) Joseph Harding is a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces and a PhD student in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba. His military career includes international deployments in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Lebanon, retiring in 2021 as Dean of Academics at the NATO Special Operations School in Belgium. Joseph strategically trained and educated the first Royal Sierra Leone Armed Forces contingent for the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID).

Cdr (ret’d) Omar Tejada is a retired Marine Officer in the Peruvian Navy. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Naval and Maritime Sciences from the Peruvian Naval Academy and a Master's in International Security Studies from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. He has published several articles, including a book chapter, on topics such as the illicit cocaine trade, counterinsurgency, intelligence failure, privatization of security, and peacekeeping operations, having delivered lectures in civil and military academic institutions in Peru, Colombia, Chile, the United States, and Canada.

Born and raised in Lima, Peru, Omar’s interests have taken him around the world. He is a former United Nations Peacekeeper who served as a military observer in the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), as a Contingent Commander in the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), and as a Peacekeeping Affairs Officer at the Department of Peace Operations in the UN Headquarters in New York. Currently, he is a Peacekeeping Affairs Consultant at the Conflict and Resiliency Research Institute Canada (CRRIC), a Regional Security Expert at the Centre for Defense and Security Studies (CDSS) at the University of Manitoba, and a university instructor at the Department of Political Science and the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg.
 

Maj (ret’d) Paula Thorne is a PhD student in the Peace and Conflict Studies program at the University of Manitoba. She joins the program after a near 20-year career as a Logistics Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force and having completed her Master of Human Rights also at the University of Manitoba. Although she has never deployed on a UN mission, she has been on two deployments serving Canada's mission abroad. 

Professor Brenda Gunn is a Professor at Robson Hall Faculty of Law and a lawyer. Ms. Gunn has a multitude of experiences and achievements in the areas of international and Indigenous law, including developing a handbook on understanding and implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and providing technical assistance to the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 2013, she participated in the UNITAR Training Programme to Enhance the Conflict Prevention and Peacemaking Capacities of Indigenous Peoples’ Representatives, which continues to impact her research.

Dr. Nathan Derejko is the Mauro Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice and Assistant Professor of Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba. Previously, Nathan was the Director of the Masters in Human Rights programme at University College London (UK), Director of the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Essex (UK), a visiting lecturer at the International Institute of International Humanitarian Law in Sanremo, Italy, and a doctoral research fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland Galway. 

Dr. Adam Muller is a genocide and human rights scholar and professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manitoba. He is a founding member of the Global Consortium On Bigotry and Hate, an international think-tank studying local and global manifestations of political extremism. He co-edits the scholarly journal Genocide Studies International.

Ms. Janice Tilly is an interdisciplinary PhD student with her home department in Sociology, and her supporting departments in Political Science and Community Health Sciences. Her proposed research will examine those whom have effectively transitioned from a military career to civilian life, in order to understand the personal and structural factors, which contribute to successful and healthy transitioning out of the military. Her research will focus on the factors that contribute to health and effective, post-military career coping and successful transitioning, rather than the traditional approach, which tends to focus on the difficulties and barriers to making a successful transition after military service.

Hon. Dr. Lloyd Axworthy is a Canadian politician and academic who served twenty-one years in parliament, most notably as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He became known internationally for his advancement of the human security concept, in particular, the Ottawa Treaty -- a landmark global treaty banning anti-personnel landmines. His contribution to the signing of the landmines treaty in 1998, led to a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize. Furthermore, Dr. Axworthy’s advocacy at the United Nations set the context for Canadian leadership over a treaty establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002. Currently, Dr. Axworthy serves as Chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council and as Co-Chair of the Americas Task Force on Migration. His memoir “Lloyd Axworthy - My Life in Politics” was published in 2024. 

Past conference themes have included:

2025: The UN at 80

2024: 75 Years of NATO: Canada's Place in Democratic Grand Strategy

2023: The Arctic is Hot

2022: International humanitarian law: Past trends, current reflections and the future (held online)

2021: The legacy of 911 and the defence of North America (held online)

2020: Manitoba at 150: Past, present, and future

2019: WWI and Versailles 1919: The making of the modern world (dis) order

2018: Terrorism and beyond: Defence and security in an new age

2017: Canada at 150: Canada in the world

2016: Elections: Democratic tools or democracy denied?

2015: he legacy of great wars: Marking history and humanity

2014: Canada and the Arctic: Challenges and opportunities

2012: 20 years of western military intervention: Protecting whose rights? 

2010: Manitoba as an international actor

2007: Aerospace power and counter insurgency

2006: The state of the state: New challenges in the 21st century

2004: Transformation of war in the 21st century

2003: Geopolitical perspectives on world politics

2002: Globalism and regionalism the evolving international system

2001: Canada's security and defence policy: Continentalism and internationalism

2000: Canada's external relations into the 21st century

1999: The next frontier: Civilian and military implications of space

1998: Conflict in a New World: Is war obsolete?

1996: International intervention: A challenge to world order?

1995: Order and disorder: Domestic sources of regional instability

1993: Canada and the new Europe

1992: Canada, the United States, and new challenges to security

1991: In defence of Canada: Constitutional, economic and security dimensions

1990: The end of the cold war? Prospects for East-West security in the 1990s

1990: The end of the cold war?

Mandate

Coordinated by students in the Department of Political Studies and aided by the Centre for Defence and Security Studies and faculty members, the Conference’s mandate is to explore issues of current relevance in international affairs by inviting speakers from the academic, diplomatic, and government communities to present their views in a variety of academic panels. Every year the conference is eagerly anticipated by students, faculty and the general public wishing to seize the opportunity to interact with leading thinkers and officials in an intimate, collegial setting.

Under the stewarship of Dr. Paul Buteux, Professor of political studies and founder and first director of the Center for Defence and Security Studies (CDSS), the Political Studies Students’ Conference (PSSC) was founded in 1985. Buteux's genuine commitment to the Conference had remained a key driver of the organizational efforts for the event in the following years.

In 1983 Rahul Aggarwall, an energetic University of Manitoba student with an interest in arms control and disarmament, came up with a concept of hosting a conference that would unite students, academics, and professionals from across Canada and eventually the world. Mr. Aggarwall brought together fellow students John Skynner, Jeff Brown, and Aaron Hywarren and under the stewardship of Dr. Paul Buteux, Professor of Political Studies and former Director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba, became the core group who put together the first annual Political Studies Students’ Conference. Soon after the first conference in 1985, Mr. Aggarwall decided to travel back to his home country of India and was regrettably killed in the bombing of Air India’s flight 182. The devastating terrorist attack and the loss of a close friend motivated Jeff Brown and Aaron Hywarren to keep Mr. Aggarwall’s dream and vision of a student conference alive. These two students would Chair the second annual student conference. During its third year the conference’s name started to become well known and it was no longer a conference strictly targeting International Relations students. Students became involved in the conference who were studying political administration and theory along with many other students not enrolled in the Political Studies Department. The third conference would eventually be the staple that solidified and stabilized many conferences to come.

After the arrival of Dr. James Fergusson in the Department of Political Studies in 1988, the CDSS became a regional hub in strategic research and a well-known, student-oriented think tank. Ever since, there has been a true synergy between the political studies students’ broader activities and the Centre’s research process.

The PSSC has invited numerous distinguished guests to present their views on a wide range of issues. Conference participants have included speakers from Canadian universities, as well as the London School of Economics, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Leningrad (St. Petersburg), the Royal Military College, and officials from the United Nations, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), RAND Corporation, Department of National Defence (DND), and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). Keynote speakers have included Romeo Dallaire, Commander of UN Peacekeeping Forces in Rwanda and Chief of Staff of the Canadian Forces; Susan Strange, prolific academic writer on globalization and international political economy; the Honourable Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Foreign Affairs; and David Bercuson, historian and Globe and Mail columnist, just to name a few. Student "visitors" from the United States Military Academy (West Point), the U.S. Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs), the University of Moscow, Bulgaria, and Singapore have also had the opportunity to take part in the three-day Conference.

Although the range of topics has been diverse, the theme of each student conference has always centered on issues in international affairs and it's implications for Canada. Topics explore the economics, social, cultural, and political implications of the changes taking place in the world. The aim of the conference is to challenge conventional wisdom in the field and present policymakers with alternatives for the future.

Though remaining a distinct student initiative over the decades, PSSC has greatly benefited from the mutually reinforcing relationship between the students and the CDSS. Fully supported by the Centre’s director and lead staff, student enthusiasts who are involved in the preparatory work for each annual PSSC find a rewarding experience and great satisfaction in their overall engagement.

As a result, PSSC has gradually evolved into a nationally recognized forum on politics, defence and security with expanded international participation each successive year. It is now a long and prolific tradition that the graduate students in political studies, with the generous help of professors and undergraduate colleagues, are determined to keep alive and promote to new heights.