2007 Lecture Information
Pundits, Pachyderms and Pluralism: The Never-Ending Debate on Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism has been the subject of public debate since 1971, when it was introduced as policy by the government of Pierre Trudeau. However, both the terms and the terminology of the debate remain ambiguous and lead to discussions in which people talk past each other. This disconnect is particularly evident in the passionate discussions on multiculturalism that periodically erupt in the editorial and opinion pages of our newspapers.
The 2007 UBC-Laurier Institution lecture will be delivered by Dr. Karim H. Karim, Director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University.
Dr. Karim H. Karim is an Associate Professor in Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication. He had appointments as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University in Fall 2004 and as a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, UK. He has previously worked as Senior Researcher and as Senior Policy Analyst in the Department of Canadian Heritage. Dr. Karim has also served as Chairperson of the Federal Digitization Task Force’s Working Group on the Accessibility to Digitized Collections and the elected Chairperson of Canadian Heritage’s Committee on Equal Access and Participation. Prior to his work in the Government of Canada, he reported on Canada for Compass New Features (Luxembourg) and for Inter Press Service (Rome). He continues to participate in government consultations and to publish occasionally in newspapers; he is also frequently interviewed by the media.
Dr. Karim has taught undergraduate, master’s and doctoral-level courses in transnational communication, communication and social relations, media construction of social issues, technology and culture, advertising, and hermeneutics at the School’s Mass Communication Program. He has also taught the Capstone Seminar in Communication and Information Technology Policy for Carleton’s Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs. He is an Associate Researcher of the Montreal Centre for Inter-university Research on Immigration, Integration and Urban Dynamics. He is the Book Review Editor of the Journal of International Communication and also serves on the editorial boards of the Canadian Journal of Communication and Global Media and Communication.
Dr. Karim H. Karim’s book, Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence (Black Rose Books, 2000) has been critically acclaimed in international journals and won the inaugural Robinson Book Prize of the Canadian Communication Association in 2001. It was re-issued in an updated edition in 2003.
He also edited The Media of Diaspora (Routledge, 2003). Dr. Karim has also published a number of chapters in edited works including Accounting for Culture; Journalism After September 11; The Global Dynamics of News; Media and Propaganda: A Global Perspective; Key Thinkers for the Information Society; The Language and Politics of Exclusion; Mediascapes: New Patterns in Canadian Communication; Civic Discourse and Cultural Politics in Canada; Islam Encountering Globalisation, and Muslims in the West.
His scholarly articles have appeared in Journal of International Communication; International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society; The Public: Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture; Information, Communication and Society; Canadian Journal of Communication; Journal of International Migration and Integration; Migratenstudies; Nord-Süd Aktuell and UNESCO’s World Culture Report.
Dr. Karim recently managed a major project on the depiction of diversity for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He is currently leading an international, SSHRC-funded research project on intellectual trends among Muslims in Canada, the U.K. and the U.K.
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