UTP Insights – serie

After a century of warnings, the 500-year reign of the work ethic is over. The work ethic has shaped our character, given purpose to our lives, and driven civilization forward. Now, as technology replaces human labour, we are faced with a profound dilemma; this crisis will leave us in a deep civilizational malaise, profoundly bored, ethically impoverished and without direction. In The Leisure Ethic, David Edward Tabachnick challenges the moral authority of work ethic and puts forth a long forgotten ancient alternative to work that can help reform and redirect our efforts toward building lives of ethical leisure. Through a historical and philosophical exploration of work, laziness, technological unemployment, and leisure, Tabachnick seeks to free our thinking and action from the shackles of the obsolete work ethic. Far from a curse, The Leisure Ethic demonstrates that the end of work can be a turning point that frees us from drudgery and opens the door to reimagining human purpose beyond productivity.

Red Alert is a timely exploration of a national institution that has lurched from crisis to crisis. Once a mainstay of the nation’s image, the future of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has become increasingly uncertain with Alberta and British Columbia proposing the establishment of provincial services to replace them and Justin Trudeau calling for the force to be reduced by two thirds to focus on national security. Policing and legal expert Kent Roach highlights the increasing challenges the RCMP faces as underlined by the 2020 massacres of twenty-two people in rural Nova Scotia and the underexamined 2022 mass murder of eleven people on James Smith Cree Nation. Red Alert explains how the RCMP’s insistence on boot camp training helps it retain its colonial and paramilitary nature, making it an incompatible fit for the specialized and dynamic world of modern policing. Roach emphasizes the need for restorative approaches to community safety including Indigenous peacekeeping and having police work with communities in both national security and local policing.A compelling portrayal of the pressures facing the RCMP, and the prospects for meaningful reform within and without it, Red Alert is essential for understanding the troubling state of law enforcement.

In 2010, the United Nations declared access to clean drinking water a human right. Yet billions still face scarcity while water is wasted, polluted, and undervalued. Water on Wall Street confronts this paradox with clarity and urgency.Arguing that water must be treated as both a right and a responsibility – two sides of the same coin that will shape our future – researchers Marcel Boyer and Maria Kouyoumijian explore how population growth, economic expansion, and climate pressures heighten global demand. They demonstrate that socially responsible management requires new tools: efficient pricing, regulated markets, and transparent institutions that promote conservation while ensuring equity.Spanning history, policy, economics, law, and technology, this book speaks to readers who want to understand water in all its dimensions. Accessible yet rigorous, it offers a bold, solution-driven framework showing how protecting humanity’s most vital resource demands both ethical commitment and economic ingenuity.

Hockey holds an important place in the Canadian imagination, thought to communicate quintessential stories about what Canada is and how it came into being. Within the hockey imaginary, Canadian hockey celebrity Don Cherry has loomed large. During his decades on Canadian public airwaves, he consistently sparked debate, engendering vitriolic hate from some and public adoration from others. Despite Cherry’s status as a significant Canadian celebrity and his ability to generate strong emotions – both positive and negative – in the Canadian public, he has been largely ignored by scholars and mocked in the mainstream Canadian press. In contrast, Hockey Divides takes Cherry, his audience, and those surrounding him seriously, arguing that the Canadian public’s attitudes towards Cherry tell an important story about the nation’s moral and social fault lines. Drawing on diverse media sources, including three years of Hockey Night in Canada’s “Coach’s Corner” broadcasts, Cherry’s many books, and Canadian press coverage of Cherry and other Canadian hockey celebrities, award-winning sociologist and sports researcher Kristi A. Allain addresses how Cherry signals, reifies, and fuels tensions in the nation. By examining Cherry in the context of tense public debates, Hockey Divides distils the persona and reception of Cherry as a paradigm of the polarizing state of affairs in the country.

Canada’s six-year military mission in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province was one of the most intense and challenging moments in Canadian foreign affairs since the Korean War. A complex war fought in an inhospitable environment, the Afghanistan mission tested the mettle not just of Canada’s soldiers but also of its politicians, public servants, and policy makers. In Adapting in the Dust, Stephen M. Saideman considers how well the Canadian government, media, and public managed the challenge.Building on interviews with military officers, civilian officials, and politicians, Saideman shows how key actors in Canada’s political system, including the prime minister, the political parties, and parliament, responded to the demands of a costly and controversial mission. Some adapted well; others adapted poorly or – worse yet – in ways that protected careers but harmed the mission itself.Adapting in the Dust is a vital evaluation of how well Canada’s institutions, parties, and policy makers responded to the need to oversee and sustain a military intervention overseas, and an important guide to what will have to change in order to do better next time.

Economics has always been nicknamed the “dismal science,” but today the field seems a little more dismal than usual as governments, social movements, and even students complain that the discipline is failing to make sense of the major economic problems of the day.In Economics in the Twenty-First Century, Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson demonstrate how today’s top young economists continue to lead the field in the wrong direction. The recent winners of the John Bates Clark medal, economics’s “baby Nobel,” have won that award for studying important issues such as economic development, income inequality, crime, and health. Examining their research, Chernomas and Hudson show that this work focuses on individual choice,  ignores the systematic role of power in the economic system, and leads to solutions that are of limited effectiveness at best and harmful at worst.An accessible summary of the latest debates in economics, Economics in the Twenty-First Century takes on what is missing from mainstream economics, why it matters, and how the discipline can better address the key concerns of our era.

The first decade of the twenty-first century saw a number of best-selling books which not only challenged the existence of god, but claimed that religious faith was dangerous and immoral. The New Atheists, as writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett have become known, sparked a vicious debate over religion’s place in modern society.In After the New Atheist Debate, Phil Ryan offers both an elegant summary of this controversy and a path out of the cul-de-sac that this argument has become. Drawing on the social sciences, philosophy, and theology, Ryan examines the claims of the New Atheists and of their various religious and secular opponents and finds both sides wanting.Rather than the mutual demonization that marks the New Atheist debate, Ryan argues that modern society needs respectful ethical dialogue in which citizens present their points of view and seek to understand the positions of others. Lucidly written and clearly argued, After the New Atheist Debate is a book that brings welcome clarity and a solid path to the often contentious conversation about religion in the public sphere.

The need for an ambitious and forward-looking Canadian international strategy has never been greater. The worldwide changes that jeopardize Canadian security and prosperity are profound, ranging from the globalization of commerce, crime, and political extremism to the impact of climate change on the economy and environment. The reaction from Canada’s policymakers, at least so far, has been underwhelming.In The World Won’t Wait, some of Canada’s brightest thinkers respond. Covering both classic foreign policy issues such as international security, human rights, and global institutions and emerging issues like internet governance, climate change, and sustainable development, their essays offer fresh and provocative responses to today’s challenges and opportunities. The proposals are striking and the contributors diverse: Toronto’s chief city planner makes the case that Canada needs a global urban agenda, while a prominent mining executive explains how to revitalize the country’s position as a world leader in the sector. Their essays are sure to spark the kind of debate that Canada requires if its international policy is to evolve into the twenty-first century.

Gentrifier opens up a new conversation about gentrification, one that goes beyond the statistics and the clichés, and examines different sides of a controversial, deeply personal issue. In this lively yet rigorous book, John Joe Schlichtman, Jason Patch, and Marc Lamont Hill take a close look at the socioeconomic factors and individual decisions behind gentrification and their implications for the displacement of low-income residents. Drawing on a variety of perspectives, the authors present interviews, case studies, and analysis in the context of recent scholarship in such areas as urban sociology, geography, planning, and public policy. As well, they share accounts of their first-hand experience as academics, parents, and spouses living in New York City, San Diego, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Providence. With unique insight and rare candour, Gentrifier challenges readers' current understandings of gentrification and their own roles within their neighborhoods. A foreword by Peter Marcuse opens the volume.

Urban agriculture offers promising solutions to many different urban problems, such as blighted vacant lots, food insecurity, storm water runoff, and unemployment. These objectives connect to many cities’ broader goal of "sustainability," but tensions among stakeholders have started to emerge in cities as urban agriculture is incorporated into the policymaking framework.Growing a Sustainable City? offers a critical analysis of the development of urban agriculture policies and their role in making post-industrial cities more sustainable. Christina Rosan and Hamil Pearsall’s intriguing and illuminating case study of Philadelphia reveals how growing in the city has become a symbol of urban economic revitalization, sustainability, and – increasingly – gentrification. Their comprehensive research includes interviews with urban farmers, gardeners, and city officials, and reveals that the transition to "sustainability" is marked by a series of tensions along race, class, and generational lines. The book evaluates the role of urban agriculture in sustainability planning and policy by placing it within the context of a large city struggling to manage competing sustainability objectives. They highlight the challenges and opportunities of institutionalizing urban agriculture into formal city policy. Rosan and Pearsall tell the story of change and growing pains as a city attempts to reinvent itself as sustainable, livable, and economically competitive.

In the West, news about the Middle East is dominated by an endless stream of reports and commentary about civil war, sectarian violence, religious extremism, and economic stagnation. But do they tell the full story? For instance, who knew that university enrolment in the war-torn Palestinian territories exceeds that of Hong Kong, or that more than a third of Lebanese entrepreneurs are women?Change is on its way in the Middle East, argues Bessma Momani, and its cause is demographic. Today, one in five Arabs is between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. Young, optimistic, and increasingly cosmopolitan, their generation will shape the region’s future. Drawing on interviews, surveys, and other research conducted with young people in fifteen countries across the Arab world, Momani describes the passion for entrepreneurship, reform, and equality among Arab youth. With insightful political analysis based on the latest statistics and first-hand accounts, Arab Dawn is an invigorating study of the Arab world and the transformative power of youth.

Although difficult to imagine, sixty years ago the Holocaust had practically no visibility in examinations of the Second World War. Yet today it is understood to be not only one of the defining moments of the twentieth century but also a touchstone in a quest for directions on how to avoid such catastrophes.In Lessons of the Holocaust, the distinguished historian Michael R. Marrus challenges the notion that there are definitive lessons to be deduced from the destruction of European Jewry. Instead, drawing on decades of studying, writing about, and teaching the Holocaust, he shows how its “lessons” are constantly challenged, debated, altered, and reinterpreted.A succinct, stimulating analysis by a world-renowned historian, Lessons of the Holocaust is the perfect guide for the general reader to the historical and moral controversies which infuse the interpretation of the Holocaust and its significance.

US President Barack Obama has called economic inequality the “defining issue of our time.” It has inspired the “Occupy” movements, made a French economist into a global celebrity, and given us a new expression – the “one percent.” But is our preoccupation with inequality really justified? Or wise?In his new book, William Watson argues that focusing on inequality is both an error and a trap. It is an error because much inequality is “good,” the reward for thrift, industry, and invention. It is a trap because it leads us to fixate on the top end of the income distribution, rather than on those at the bottom who need help most. In fact, if we respond to growing inequality by fighting capitalism rather than poverty, we may end up both poorer and less equal.Explaining the complexities of modern economics in a clear, accessible style, The Inequality Trap is the must-read rejoinder to the idea that fighting inequality should be our top policy priority.

Canada’s six-year military mission in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province was one of the most intense and challenging moments in Canadian foreign affairs since the Korean War. A complex war fought in an inhospitable environment, the Afghanistan mission tested the mettle not just of Canada’s soldiers but also of its politicians, public servants, and policy makers. In Adapting in the Dust, Stephen M. Saideman considers how well the Canadian government, media, and public managed the challenge.Building on interviews with military officers, civilian officials, and politicians, Saideman shows how key actors in Canada’s political system, including the prime minister, the political parties, and parliament, responded to the demands of a costly and controversial mission. Some adapted well; others adapted poorly or – worse yet – in ways that protected careers but harmed the mission itself.Adapting in the Dust is a vital evaluation of how well Canada’s institutions, parties, and policy makers responded to the need to oversee and sustain a military intervention overseas, and an important guide to what will have to change in order to do better next time.

The first decade of the twenty-first century saw a number of best-selling books which not only challenged the existence of god, but claimed that religious faith was dangerous and immoral. The New Atheists, as writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett have become known, sparked a vicious debate over religion’s place in modern society.In After the New Atheist Debate, Phil Ryan offers both an elegant summary of this controversy and a path out of the cul-de-sac that this argument has become. Drawing on the social sciences, philosophy, and theology, Ryan examines the claims of the New Atheists and of their various religious and secular opponents and finds both sides wanting.Rather than the mutual demonization that marks the New Atheist debate, Ryan argues that modern society needs respectful ethical dialogue in which citizens present their points of view and seek to understand the positions of others. Lucidly written and clearly argued, After the New Atheist Debate is a book that brings welcome clarity and a solid path to the often contentious conversation about religion in the public sphere.

From 2000 to 2015 the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) mobilized external aid to finance life-changing services in the global South. However, in doing so, the organization failed to meet the challenges often associated with human rights initiatives, which are to make underprivileged communities independently prosperous, equitable, and sustainable.In Global Development and Human Rights, Paul Nelson assesses the current thirty-year effort to make transformative changes in the global South by exploring how this disconnect from human rights weakened the MDGs reputation as a successful aid organization. To overcome the failings of the MDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were formed in 2016 with the intention of managing the issues fundamentally ignored by the MDGs.Drawing on twenty-five years of research on development goals, human rights, and the organizations that promote them, Nelson reasons that transformative change arises out of national and local movements, and shows how human rights can offer leverage and political support that help drive transformative national initiatives.

A lively narrative account of the first case to appear at the International Criminal Court, A Conviction in Question documents the trial of Union of Congolese Patriots leader and warlord, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. Although Dyilo’s crimes, including murder, rape, and the forcible conscription of child soldiers, were indisputable, legal wrangling and a clash of personalities caused the trial to be prolonged for an unprecedented six years. This book offers an accessible account of the rapid evolution of international law and the controversial trial at the foundation of the International Criminal Court. The first book to thoroughly examine Dyilo’s trial, A Conviction in Question looks at the legal issues behind each of the trial’s critical moments, including the participation of Dyilo’s victims at the trial and the impact of witness protection. Through eye-witness observation and analysis, Jim Freedman shows that the trial suffered from all the problems associated with ordinary criminal law trials, and uses Dyilo’s case to further comment on the role of international courts in a contemporary global context.

This book focuses on the broad implications of the transformation of Canada from a peacekeeping to a war-making nation during the Conservative Party’s recent decade in power. Funds were poured into the Canadian Forces, and a newly militarized nation found itself entrenched in conflicts around the globe. For decades, Canada had played a leading role in UN peacekeeping, and when the Cold War ended, the prospect of international harmony was infectious. Yet in short order hostilities erupted in the failed states of Rwanda, Somalia, and the Balkans; terrorism – including 9/11 – raised its head; and Iraq and Afghanistan became war zones. In the face of these immense challenges, the UN was dismissed by its opponents as irrelevant.Structured around an anti-war perspective, The Lamb and the Tiger critically examines the ageless genetic and more recent cultural (civilizational) explanations of war, concluding with a close look at the impact of war and right-wing politics on women and Indigenous peoples. The Lamb and the Tiger encourages Canadians to think about what kind of military and what kind of country they really want.

Confronting the truths of Canada’s Indian residential school system has been likened to waking a sleeping giant. In The Sleeping Giant Awakens, David B. MacDonald uses genocide as an analytical tool to better understand Canada’s past and present relationships between settlers and Indigenous peoples. Starting with a discussion of how genocide is defined in domestic and international law, the book applies the concept to the forced transfer of Indigenous children to residential schools and the "Sixties Scoop," in which Indigenous children were taken from their communities and placed in foster homes or adopted.Based on archival research, extensive interviews with residential school Survivors, and officials at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, among others, The Sleeping Giant Awakens offers a unique and timely perspective on the prospects for conciliation after genocide, exploring the difficulties in moving forward in a context where many settlers know little of the residential schools and ongoing legacies of colonization and need to have a better conception of Indigenous rights. It provides a detailed analysis of how the TRC approached genocide in its deliberations and in its Final Report.Crucially, MacDonald engages critics who argue that the term genocide impedes understanding of the IRS system and imperils prospects for conciliation. By contrast, this book sees genocide recognition as an important basis for meaningful discussions of how to engage Indigenous-settler relations in respectful and proactive ways.

The Canadian Armed Forces has not always embraced diversity and inclusion, but its future depends on it. As the country’s demographic makeup changes, its military must adapt to a new multicultural reality and diminishing pools of people from which it can recruit. Canada’s population is increasingly urbanized, immigrant, and not necessarily Christian, white, or bilingual. To attract and retain CAF personnel, the military will have to embrace and champion diversity while demonstrating that it is inclusive.Using a number of cases to highlight both challenges and opportunities, Strengthening the Canadian Armed Forces through Diversity and Inclusion provides a timely look at an established Canadian institution in a rapidly changing world. The editors explore how Canadian Muslim youth, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, racialized minorities, Indigenous communities, and people of non-Christian faiths see their experiences in the CAF. While diversity is a reality, inclusion is still a work in progress for the Canadian Armed Forces, as it is for society at large.

In recent years, a number of controversies have emerged from inside Canadian universities. While some of these controversies reflect debates occurring at a broader societal level, others are unique to the culture of universities and the way in which they are governed. In University Commons Divided, Peter MacKinnon provides close readings of a range of recent incidents with a view to exploring new challenges within universities and the extent to which the idea of the university as ‘commons,’ a site for open and contentious disagreement, may be under threat.Among the incidents addressed in this book are the Jennifer Berdahl case in which a UBC professor alleged a violation of her academic freedom when she was phoned by the university's board chair to discuss her blog on which she speculated about the reasons for the university president's departure from office; the case of Root Gorelick, a Carleton University biologist and member of the university’s board of governors who refused to sign a code of conduct preventing public discussion of internal board discussions; the Facebook scandal at Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Dentistry in which male students posted misogynistic comments about their female classmates. These and many other examples of turmoil in universities across the country are used to reach new insights on the state of freedom of expression and academic governance in the contemporary university.Accessibly written and perceptively argued, University Commons Divided is a timely and bold examination of the pressures seeking to transform the culture and governance of universities.

In this important new book, Paul T. Phillips argues that most professional historians – aside from a relatively small number devoted to theory and methodology – have concerned themselves with particular, specialized areas of research, thereby ignoring the fundamental questions of truth, morality, and meaning. This is less so in the thriving general community of history enthusiasts beyond academia, and may explain, in part at least, history’s sharp decline as a subject of choice by students in recent years.Phillips sees great dangers resulting from the thinking of extreme relativists and postmodernists on the futility of attaining historical truth, especially in the age of "post-truth." He also believes that moral judgment and the search for meaning in history should be considered part of the discipline’s mandate. In each section of this study, Phillips outlines the nature of individual issues and past efforts to address them, including approaches derived from other disciplines. This book is a call to action for all those engaged in the study of history to direct more attention to the fundamental questions of truth, morality, and meaning.

Course Correction engages in deliberation about what the twenty-first-century university needs to do in order to re-find its focus as a protected place for unfettered commitment to knowledge, not just as a space for creating employment or economic prosperity. The university’s business, Paul W. Gooch writes, is to generate and critique knowledge claims, and to transmit and certify the acquisition of knowledge. In order to achieve this, a university must have a reputation for integrity and trustworthiness, and this, in turn, requires a diligent and respectful level of autonomy from state, religion, and other powerful influences. It also requires embracing the challenges of academic freedom and the effective governance of an academic community.Course Correction raises three important questions about the twenty-first-century university. In discussing the dominant attention to student experience, the book asks, "Is it now all about students?" Secondly, in questioning "What knowledge should undergraduates gain?" it provides a critique of undergraduate experience, advocating a Socratic approach to education as interrogative conversation. Finally, by asking "What and where are well-placed universities?" the book makes the case against placeless education offered in the digital world, in favour of education that takes account of its place in time and space.

As things stand, a commitment to weak democracy and strong constitutionalism ensures that a range of elite groups, actors, and institutions – political, economic, intellectual, and legal – hold considerable sway over constitutional matters, leaving less room for the participation of ordinary people. With the continued primacy of liberal constitutionalism, constitutional law has come to represent and facilitate the centrality of judicial power and authority. In Democracy and Constitutions, Allan C. Hutchinson warns against this deference to a legal elite on questions of constitutional meaning. For Hutchinson, an over-reliance on constitutional law, and a lack of attention to democratic politics, keeps people from influencing the moral and political character of society; it saps civic energies and relegates ordinary people to the sidelines.Engaging and provocative, Democracy and Constitutions charts a course away from the elitism of the present and toward a more democratic future, one that re-balances society’s commitment to both democracy and constitutions. Advocating for a strong democracy and weak constitutionalism, this book places ordinary people at the institutional heart of government and politics, arguing that such a re-calibration is better for democracy and for society.

As things stand, a commitment to weak democracy and strong constitutionalism ensures that a range of elite groups, actors, and institutions – political, economic, intellectual, and legal – hold considerable sway over constitutional matters, leaving less room for the participation of ordinary people. With the continued primacy of liberal constitutionalism, constitutional law has come to represent and facilitate the centrality of judicial power and authority. In Democracy and Constitutions, Allan C. Hutchinson warns against this deference to a legal elite on questions of constitutional meaning. For Hutchinson, an over-reliance on constitutional law, and a lack of attention to democratic politics, keeps people from influencing the moral and political character of society; it saps civic energies and relegates ordinary people to the sidelines.Engaging and provocative, Democracy and Constitutions charts a course away from the elitism of the present and toward a more democratic future, one that re-balances society’s commitment to both democracy and constitutions. Advocating for a strong democracy and weak constitutionalism, this book places ordinary people at the institutional heart of government and politics, arguing that such a re-calibration is better for democracy and for society.

Drawing on research from across Canada and beyond, education policy expert Sue Winton critically analyzes policies encouraging the privatization of public education in Canada. These policies, including school choice, fundraising, fees, and international education, encourages parents and others in the private sector to take on responsibilities for education formerly provided by governments with devastating consequences for the democratic goals of public education.Unequal Benefits introduces traditional and critical approaches to policy research and explains how to conduct a critical policy analysis. Winton explains the role policy plays in supporting and challenging inequality in the pursuit of a strong democracy and the public school ideal. In these idealized education spaces, policy decisions prioritize collective needs over private interests, which are made in public by democratically elected officials, and, more importantly, every child is able to access high quality education programs and enjoy their benefits at no cost. Written for parents, educators, policymakers, and other interested citizens, Unequal Benefits sheds light on how to participate in efforts to resist educational privatization and achieve the public school ideal across Canada.

Highlighting ethical leadership strategies, Conversations on Ethical Leadership explores what makes for strong, well-informed, morally sound decision-making at all levels of an organization. In addressing a range of challenges faced by universities and applying those lessons to the broader community of the public and private sectors, Ingrid Leman Stefanovic and her contributors tackle a host of issues related to advancing ethics, diversity, inclusiveness, and the art of moral leadership.Each chapter, written by an author with roots in the academy, includes a subsequent commentary by a community leader who highlights the broader takeaways that emerge for society from the university experience. In this way, the book becomes a conversation between the academic and non-academic worlds about issues that affect any prominent organization. It offers a unique range of novel and timely topics, from responsibility-centred budgeting to post-pandemic planning, responsiveness to climate change, Indigenous leadership, free speech, academic integrity, and much more. In doing so, Conversations on Ethical Leadership ultimately reveals how we can build and preserve an ethically responsible sense of purpose at our post-secondary learning institutions and beyond.

To be effective, sovereignty must be secured through force or consent by those living in a territory, and accepted externally by other sovereign states. To be legitimate, the sovereignty claim must have the consent of its people and accord with international human rights.In Sovereignty: The Biography of a Claim, Peter H. Russell traces the origins of the sovereignty claim to Christian Europe and the attribution of sovereignty to God in the early Middle Ages. Transcending a narrow legal framework, he discusses sovereignty as a political activity including efforts to enshrine sovereignty within international law. Russell does not call for the end of sovereignty but makes readers aware of its limitations. While sovereignty can do good work for small and vulnerable peoples, it cannot be the basis of a global order capable of responding to the major existential threats that threaten our species and our planet.A brisk, often humorous, and personal exploration, Sovereignty: The Biography of a Claim will interest specialists and general readers alike, offering fresh insights on the limitations of sovereignty and the potential of federalism to alleviate these limitations now and in the future.

Canada’s public higher education system is in trouble. The economic and social benefits of the Canadian university system are widely seen as a public good, which raises a pressing question: Why should we aspire to anything less than a great system? For that to happen, everything about the way universities currently operate, from the boardroom to the classroom, must change – but this kind of operational and public policy transformation will not be easy.Nothing Less than Great provides an expert analysis of the current state and challenges of Canada’s university system, looking for positive change by reclaiming what a university is meant to offer for society and for citizens. Harvey P. Weingarten begins with the fundamental question that all students must ask about higher education: Is it worth going to university? From there, he stresses the need for transparency about what universities do and what they accomplish, addresses the importance of modernizing curriculum to emphasize skills over content, and provides recommendations for reform.Exploring how universities might – and should – change to reclaim their central purpose for Canadians, Nothing Less than Great will be of interest to anyone who cares about the future of our country and the important role universities play in determining that future.