This year, in place of its annual LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture on matters of democracy, citizenship and the public good, the Institute for Canadian Citizenship hosted two online panels. The first featured past lecturers who discussed challenges presented by the pandemic and beyond, and the second invited emerging leaders—including Luce President and CEO Mariko Silver—to suggest areas of focus and strategies for making progress.

“People have said this moment requires the full force of our imagination. […] But we need to dig into what that means. What does that mean in the doing? What does that mean in the work? What does that mean about who we’re centering, who we’re listening to, and how we reflect on our own complicity in our own culture, frankly, with the systems as they are; with our own privilege in the systems as they are. And how do we then think about how to disrupt them? And what kind of moral courage and moral imagination does that take? —Mariko Silver, President and CEO, Henry Luce Foundation

Ordinarily the Institute for Canadian Citizenship names one person to deliver the LaFontaine-Baldwin lecture on matters of democracy, citizenship and the public good.

But this is no ordinary year.

For 2020 the Institute convened two online discussions: one composed of nine previous lecturers, sharing observations and concerns about the time of pandemic and beyond, and one of emerging global leaders, who gave their responses.

Read the full article