The Phil Lind Initiative is hosted by the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs in the Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia. The initiative’s mandate is to invite prominent U.S. scholars, writers, and intellectuals to UBC to share ideas with students, faculty, and the wider community on some of the most urgent issues of our time.
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Critically acclaimed gender-fluid drag queen, visual artist, speaker, illustrator and author, Sasha Velour has been a force in the international drag scene long before her scene-stealing, rose-petal-filled win on season nine of the Emmy Award-winning RuPaul’s Drag Race. Her first book, The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag has been heralded as “a rousing tribute to a revolutionary art form and its practitioners” (Publisher’s Weekly).
In her Phil Lind Initiative talk titled The Big Reveal: Why Drag Matters, Velour will delve into queer history and the importance of drag as an expression of oneself, as a revolutionary act of visibility for queer culture, and as a rich, multifaceted and politically-charged art form that delights and disrupts. “Drag embodies the queer possibility that exists within each of us,” Velour states, “the infinite ways in which gender, good taste, and art can be lived.”
Pop Politics: Pop Culture and Political Life in the United States
Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (first name pronounced Shoe-Tez-Caht) is an advocate, leader, activist and hip hop artist with Indigenous Mexica roots. Now 23 years old, he has been on the frontlines of the climate and environmental movement since the young age of 6 and is widely recognized for his passionate and unwavering fight for climate justice. Named one of Rolling Stone Magazine’s “25 under 25” and one of Time Magazine’s “TIMES Next 100,” he has been involved as a plaintiff in multiple legal proceedings—calling out the U.S. government and giants of the fossil fuel industry for failing to take necessary action on climate change. Xiuhtezcatl has spoken multiple times at the UN, addressing the General Assembly and has also spoken on panels with the likes of Bernie Sanders, Van Jones, Shailene Woodley, Bill McKibben, and Pharrell Williams.
Xiuhtezcatl is also an artist at his core, using his music as a yet another platform to share urgent messages of Indigenous solidarity and care for the planet. Collaborating with musicians including Atlanta rapper Raury and Grammy nominated musician and actor Jaden Smith, his quick-witted lyrics challenge systems of injustice to envision a better future. He is joined by keyboardist Basi Cardona for a short musical number prior to the talk.
Pop Politics: Pop Culture and Political Life in the United States
Coming to the US as refugees during the Vietnam War in 1975, Viet was driven by lack of representation to write about the war from a Vietnamese perspective—globally reimagining what we thought we knew about the conflict. Now, almost a decade since his groundbreaking novel was published, he revisits the developing conversations on the polemic and polarizing narratives facing migrants in the US today with his Phil Lind Initiative talk titled Speaking for an Other. As displaced individuals contend with the physical perils of war, we consider a different conflict that has emerged within the global imaginary: how has storytelling been used by some to build a new sense of community within the United States, while being leveraged by other segments of American society to efface them? With time and memory dislocated, how do narratives have the potential to be wielded as both refuge and subterfuge in the United States of both today and tomorrow?
Pop Politics: Pop Culture and Political Life in the United States
Her Phil Lind Initiative talk—Who’s Afraid of Eating the Rich?—focused on the recent waves of TV shows and media that make the argument, with varying degrees of sophistication and subtlety, that extreme wealth is unjust, immoral, and corrosive to the human soul. What does this mean, when income inequality is only worsening and poverty itself is almost entirely absent from media and pop culture? Is critique in this case a release valve, a sign of unrecognized popular radicalism, or a form of elite capture? How might this change the way we think about our affective relationship to capitalism today?
Pop Politics: Pop Culture and Political Life in the United States
How do search algorithms perpetuate stereotypes and reinforce systemic inequalities? In what ways does technology further fuel the political divisiveness in our society? Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble shares expertise on these and other pressing issues in her Phil Lind Initiative talk, moderated by SPPGA Prof. Hugh Gusterson.
How does our current society perpetuate histories of inequality? Learn more about what really fuels political divide in Beyond Free Speech: Understanding the True Nature of What Divides us, with New York Times bestselling author John McWhorter. He is joined by moderator Celina Caesar-Chavannes for a discussion on America’s ever-divisive social landscape.
What can moral psychology teach us about better understanding those who hold opposing viewpoints? In the final event of the 2023 Phil Lind Initiative series, (Un)Civil Discourse, Jonathan Haidt discusses the state of political dysfunction and fracture in the US with his talk Democracy After Babel: Self-governance in an era of fragmentation, outrage, and anomie moderated by Kathryn Gretsinger.
Pulitzer-winning journalist Linda Greenhouse calls the Supreme Court both a “symptom and a cause” of political polarization in the United States. In Who Owns the US Constitution?, Greenhouse discusses the state of the court and the historical rulings that have shaped its current character. This talk is moderated by Anna Maria Tremonti.
Enjoy this recording from the Phil Lind Initiative series on The Future of Media with Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning science staff writer for The Atlantic.
The conversation was held on April 19, 2022 at the UBC Frederic Wood Theatre and was moderated by Nahlah Ayed, Host of CBC Ideas.
This event was hosted by the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia.
Enjoy this recording from the Phil Lind Initiative series on The Future of Media with Kara Swisher, Silicon Valley’s ‘most powerful’ tech journalist, New York Times contributor, and co-founder of Recode.
The conversation was held on April 4, 2022 at the UBC Frederic Wood Theatre and was moderated by Kathryn Gretsinger, Associate Professor of Teaching, School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, UBC.
This event was hosted by the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia.
Enjoy this recording from the Phil Lind Initiative series on The Future of Media with Douglas Rushkoff, a world-renowned philosopher, futurist, and author of Team Human.
The conversation was held on February 3, 2022 and was moderated by Taylor Owen, Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications, the founding director of The Center for Media, Technology and Democracy, and Associate Professor, Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.
This event was hosted by the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia.
Enjoy this full recording from the Phil Lind Initiative series on The Anti-Democratic Turn with Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, as part of our 2021 Phil Lind Initiative series on The Anti-Democratic Turn.
The event was moderated by Charmaine de Silva, News Director, NEWS 1130 & CityNews Vancouver. The discussion touched upon how the problem of the growing discontent of democracy has many sources, not only economic.
This event was hosted by the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia on February 25, 2021.
Watch a clip from the discussion with Michael Sandel, political philosopher and Professor, Harvard University, as part of our 2021 Phil Lind Initiative series on The Anti-Democratic Turn. Professor Sandel discussed the renewal of the dignity of work, the reign of technocratic merit in current society, as well as what it takes to build a culture of public trust.
This event was hosted by the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia on January 21, 2021. This event was moderated by Sylvia Berryman, Professor, Department of Philosophy, UBC.
Watch the moderated discussion with Claudia Rankine, New York Times Bestselling Poet, MacArthur “Genius” Award Recipient, National Book Critics Circle Award Winner and Professor, Yale University, hosted by the Phil Lind Initiative at the University of British Columbia on January 15, 2020. This event was moderated by Kaie Kellough, novelist, poet, and sound performer.
Enjoy this snippet from Susan Rice’s keynote presentation, hosted in February 2018 by the Phil Lind Initiative at the University of British Columbia. Susan Rice is the former US Ambassador to the United Nations and former National Security Advisor to the Obama Administration.
The 2018 series explored the theme of “The Unravelling of the Liberal Order” with some of the foremost intellectuals on the subject.
Watch the keynote and moderated discussion with author and environmental activist Bill McKibben as part of the “America and the Climate Crisis” series, hosted by the Phil Lind Initiative at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C. on April 2, 2019. This event was moderated by Elizabeth May, environmentalist, writer, lawyer, leader of the Green Party of Canada and Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.
We hosted Winona LaDuke, a rural development economist, Executive Director of Honor the Earth, and author, as part of the Phil Lind Initiative 2019 series, “America and the Climate Crisis,” at the University of British Columbia on March 12, 2019. Watch her discussion with Duncan McCue, Adjunct Professor, UBC Graduate School of Journalism.
Watch the keynote and moderated discussion on “America and the Climate Crisis” with John Kasich, two-term former Ohio Governor, a New York Times best-selling author, and a Senior Political Commentator for CNN. This event was hosted by UBC Connects and the Phil Lind Initiative at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C. on February 26, 2019. This event was presented by UBC President Santa J. Ono and moderated by Professor Richard Johnston with UBC’s Department of Political Science.
We hosted Robert Bullard, considered the “Father of Environmental Justice” and a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University, as part of the Phil Lind Initiative series on “America and the Climate Crisis” at the University of British Columbia on January 15, 2019. Watch his discussion with UBC Professor David Boyd (School of Public Policy and Global Affairs; Institute for Environment, Resources and Sustainability).
We hosted Francis Fukuyama, one of the world’s most prominent scholars of the liberal order, as part of the Phil Lind Initiative series on “The Unravelling of the Liberal Order” at the University of British Columbia on January 25, 2018. Watch his full talk here.
We hosted Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, as part of the Phil Lind Initiative series for a talk on “The Rise of the Anti-Establishment” at the University of British Columbia on March 1, 2017. Watch his full talk here.
