Dr. Bruce Gilbert to Host a Major Conference on Social Justice at Bishop’s

On October 19-22, 2017, the Crossing Borders research cluster and the Social Justice and Citizenship Minor, both led by Dr. Bruce Gilbert, will be hosting a major conference entitled “The Struggle for Social and Environmental Rights”. Grand Chief of the Cree, Abel Bosum, will be delivering the keynote address on Thursday evening, October 19 at 7 p.m. in Bishop Williams Hall.

This event will be an opportunity for Indigenous peoples, social movement members, human rights activists and academics from Canada and Brazil to debate and to enlighten one another on issues surrounding social and environmental rights.

Dr. Bruce Gilbert has long been actively conducting research into dialectical philosophy in the spheres of ethics, society, politics, ecology and religion. If dialectic names the process by which humanity learns, then freedom is not merely choice, but is rather our capacity to develop increasingly sophisticated forms of relationship with each other and our environment. Dr. Gilbert also engages in empirical research on this topic, focusing on social movements in Brazil, especially on the Movement of Landless Rural Workers of Brazil (MST), a large and very successful social movement which occupies under-utilized land in order to create self-sufficient farming cooperatives. The MST now has some 1.5 million members and its own university near São Paulo.

All conference events are free and open to the public.

For full details, including a (tentative) schedule of events, see the conference website.

For more information contact Bruce Gilbert, bgilbert@ubishops.ca.