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Professor Alasdair Roberts is the 2026 J.A. Corry Lecturer and will speak on his forthcoming book, Why Great States Fail. 

This is a book about great states and why they fail. It matters for people who live in great states—almost half the world's population—since their quality of life will clearly suffer if the political order is collapsing around them. The other half of the planet lives in smaller states like Canada that neighbour and trade with great states. These people also need to understand why great states fail, because life in small states is so heavily influenced by the caprices of their giant neighbours. When great states stumble, small states suffer too.

Alasdair Roberts is a professor of public policy at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He writes extensively on problems of governance and public policy. His most recent book, The Adaptable Country: How Canada Can Survive the Twenty-First Century, was published by McGill-���˴�Ƭ Press in 2024. It was a finalist for the 2025 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. His preceding book, Superstates: Empires of the Twenty-First Century, was published by Polity in 2023. Eight earlier books have received five book awards. 

Professor Roberts grew up in Pembroke, Ontario, Canada. He received his BA from ���˴�Ƭ, his JD from the University of Toronto, and his MPP and PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University. 

Before University of Massachusetts Amherst, Professor Roberts held tenured faculty appointments at ���˴�Ƭ, Syracuse University, Suffolk University Law School, and the University of Missouri. In 2007, he became the first non-US citizen to be elected as a Fellow of the US National Academy of Public Administration. In 2014 he received the Grace-Pépin Access to Information Award for his research on open government. In 2022, he received the ASPA Riggs Award for Lifetime Achievement in International and Comparative Public Administration. 

From 2009 to 2017, Professor Roberts was co-editor of the journal Governance. He was Inaugural Director of the School of Public Policy at University of Massachusetts Amherst from 2017 to 2022. In 2022, he served as co-chair of the ASPA Presidential Committee on International Scholarly Engagement. In 2022-23, he was the Jocelyne Bourgon Visiting Scholar at the Canada School of Public Service.

His website is http://www.alasdairroberts.ca

“Democracy Bootcamp" is a special conversation with political philosopher and public intellectual Dr. Jason Stanley, focused on the mechanisms through which democracies erode – and how they can be defended. Open to graduate students in Political Studies, History and Art History.

The conversation with be facilitated by Dr. Oded Haklai, Political Studies Professor and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity. 

Coffee and light refreshments will be provided.

This conversation follows Dr. Stanley’s Dunning Trust Lecture “Fascist Erasures” on Thursday, January 15 in Grant Hall ().

Participants must read Chapter 4 of Stanley’s in advance of the discussion. A PDF copy of the chapter will be provided to registered students in advance.

Please RSVP to Bronwyn Jaques (Hub-1 Academic Programs Coordinator) by email: fas-hub1-apc@queensu.ca to receive your copy.

A light luncheon will be provided. RSVPs are appreciated.

Abstract: There is a broad consensus today that the international order is in crisis. Calls to protect, improve, or reform its institutions and rules are proliferating. Underlying these is a view of international order as self-evident and fixed, at least until quite recently, anchored in a broad consensus that is now being destabilized by revisionist actors. This lecture interrogates this premise and puts it in perspective, showing that the current crisis of international order is best understood as a clash of competing narratives about what a legitimate order ought to look like, who gets to be situated within or outside of it, and who is in a position to claim the authority of making this distinction. The talk makes a case for going beyond a focus on material interests and strategic motives in attempts to understand the ongoing transformation of world politics in the present era, highlighting the power of narratives, and the necessity of making international order strange instead of taking it for granted. 

Stéphanie Martel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies at ���˴�Ƭ, where she holds the Hardy Professorship. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and at the Centre for International Policy Studies. Her research is on multilateral diplomacy, gender and security, and regional governance, with a focus on Southeast Asia, ASEAN, and the Asia/Indo-Pacific.

Join us for an evening with Dr. Jason Stanley, the Bissell-Heyd Chair in American studies in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, on Thursday, January 15 at 6:30 pm. 

This lecture, free and open to the entire Queen’s community, is supported by the Dunning Trust Lecture series and brings to campus for the first time one of today's most influential public intellectuals whose acclaimed books How Propaganda Works and How Fascism Works have been translated into more than twenty languages. Stanley’s work exposes how language, myth making, and manufactured division erode democratic life, and why these forces are resurgent across the globe, and why Canadians should be deeply concerned.

A light reception will follow the lecture.

Co-sponsored by the Departments of Art History & Art Conservation, History, and Political Studies. 

Registration is required.

Jason Stanley is a philosopher, whose work ranges over philosophy of language, epistemology, linguistics, cognitive science, and social and political philosophy. Jason is the Bissell-Heyd Chair in American Studies in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, and also has an appointment in the Department of Philosophy. In addition to his position at the Munk School, he is a Distinguished Professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. Before coming to the University of Toronto in 2025, he held positions as a Professor of Philosophy at Yale University (2013-2025), Rutgers University (2004-2013), The University of Michigan (2000-4), and Cornell University (1995-2000).  

The author of seven books and dozens of scholarly articles in multiple disciplines, Jason won the American Philosophical Association Book Prize in 2007 for his book Knowledge and Practical Interests (Oxford University Press, 2005), and the Prose Award in Philosophy for his 2015 book, How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2015). In addition to his academic work, Jason writes for a broader audience on the themes of authoritarianism, propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, and democracy, most frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian, and Project Syndicate. Jason has also published in The Washington Post, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Folha de São Paulo, El Pais and many other outlets across the world.  A New York Times bestselling author, Jason’s work has been translated into over 30 languages.

Stanley is a member of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, a fellow of the African American Policy Forum, and serves on the advisory board of the Prison Policy Initiative. 

Join us for the next installment of the Corry Colloquium Speaker Series, featuring “Historical Narratives as an Obstacle to Peace: How Canadian Universities Can Help UN Peace Efforts,” with Colin Stewart. The event will take place on Friday, November 28, from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m.

Until August of this year, Colin Stewart served as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Cyprus, heading the peacekeeping force there (UNFICYP) and leading the UN’s mediation efforts on the ground.  Prior to that, he was the Special Representative in Western Sahara, heading MINURSO from 2017 to 2021.

Over the course of almost 20 combined years with the UN, he served in 5 peacekeeping missions and 3 political missions, working in Asia, Africa and Europe.  As Deputy Head of the UN Office to the African Union in Addis Ababa from 2011 to 2016, he played a lead role in building the UN-AU partnership in peacekeeping.  His work with the UN in putting on the successful referendum in East Timor in 1999 was recognized that year by Maclean’s Magazine.

In addition to his UN work, he has represented former President Carter and the Carter Center in Palestine and DR Congo, managing election observation missions for pivotal elections in each place. 

He was a Canadian diplomat from 1990 to 1997, serving in Ottawa (including as Legislative Assistant to then Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy) and Jakarta, with shorter assignments in Helsinki and Moscow. 

Mr. Stewart is a graduate of Laval University in Quebec City.  He is currently retired, living with his wife and son in Ottawa.