Political Science

‘Not in my wildest dreams’: Refugee Jaivet Ealom on his journey to become a ��ϲ�� grad

mattimar — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 14:05:45 +0000

‘Not in my wildest dreams’: Refugee Jaivet Ealom on his journey to become a ��ϲ�� grad

mattimar Mon, 06/24/2024 - 10:05

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Jaivet Ealom, who arrived in Canada in 2017 after fleeing Myanmar four years earlier, stands in front of ��ϲ��’s Convocation Hall (photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

Mariam Matti

Topic

Global Lens

Convocation 2024

Economics

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Political Science

University College

Subheadline

A member of the persecuted Rohingya minority in Myanmar, Jaivet Ealom fled the country in 2013 and travelled across three continents in search of asylum – surviving a near-drowning and several detentions along the way

As a teenager in Myanmar, Jaivet Ealom says he could hardly have imagined one day graduating from the ��ϲ�� with a double major in economics and political science.

“Not in my wildest dreams,” he says, noting that he’s now taking steps “to bring everything I’ve gained and learned” to help others who are suffering around the world.

Ealom’s incredible journey to ��ϲ��’s Convocation Hall began in 2013 with a harrowing escape from the Southeast Asian country where, as a member of the persecuted Rohingya minority, he faced systemic discrimination and was denied citizenship rights.

He left everything he knew behind, travelling through six countries and across three continents in search of asylum – and surviving a near-drowning and multiple detentions along the way.

(photo by Lisa Lighbourn)

Arriving in Canada in 2017, Ealom later began studies in ��ϲ��’s Faculty of Arts & Science as a member of University College. He also co-founded the Rohingya Centre of Canada and a refugee-focused non-profit called Northern Lights Canada, is a member of the Refugee Advisory Network of Canada and has attended forums for the UN Refugee Agency on resettlement.

Amid his advocacy work, he also found time to write his first book: Escape from Manus Prison: One Man’s Daring Quest for Freedom, detailing his triumphant journey.

As he crossed the stage inside Convocation Hall last week, Ealom says a sense of relief washed over him – the closing of one chapter and beginning of another.

He says his time at ��ϲ�� has helped him make sense of his tumultuous journey – and define his goals for the future.

“I only understood the symptoms of the problem because I have been the one on the suffering side,” Ealom says, adding that he initially viewed the issue purely as a humanitarian one.

“Academia helped me understand that it’s also a political problem and the refugees are a result of policies and discriminatory law.”

(photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

After graduation, Ealom plans to dive into his policy work and advocate for representation of the Rohingya people in Myanmar’s politics following decades of persecution and disfranchisement.

He is currently working with a group of about 40 to form the Rohingya Consultative Council, which is hoping to feed into the National Unity Consultative Council – an advisory body to the National Unity Government of Myanmar.

“The Rohingya are the only group who don’t have a representative body there,” says Ealom, adding that through the Rohingya Consultative Council he hopes to achieve two goals: have a seat at the table; and define and build capacity for who sits in that seat.

He says he feels a sense of responsibility to use his privilege – and his ��ϲ�� education – to do what other members of his community may not be able to do on their own: achieve equality and justice for the Rohingya community in Myanmar.

What Now? AI, Episode 5: This Is Not Real

mattimar — Thu, 23 May 2024 19:33:08 +0000

What Now? AI, Episode 5: This Is Not Real mattimar Thu, 05/23/2024 - 15:33

Topic

Our Community

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

What Now? AI

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Artificial Intelligence

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Information

Political Science

��ϲ�� Mississauga

Artificial intelligence presents new opportunities to strengthen democracy even as it threatens to cast a shadow over election integrity and further the spread of misinformation.

In the fifth episode of What Now? AI, ��ϲ�� hosts Beth Coleman and Rahul Krishnan are joined by experts Harper Reed and Peter Loewen, who is also from ��ϲ��, to explore the impact of AI on the political realm.

Listen to episode five on Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio and Amazon. Watch episode five on YouTube.

Loewen, director of ��ϲ��’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and a professor in the department of political science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, explains how AI removes the human touch from politics, potentially making the public uneasy.

“We still don't like the fact that it might be a machine that we're talking to,” said Loewen, who is also the associate director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.

“But then if you layer on this dimension of not knowing if this is actually the campaign that’s doing it, I think that’s probably orders of magnitude worse because what it does is it takes us from the realm of kind of feeling uneasy about something into feeling like this thing is corrupted.”

Reed, meanwhile, spoke about his experience as the chief technology officer on former U.S. president Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012.

“The technology we built was not about convincing someone at the time that Mitt Romney was a bad person or a good person,” said Reed during a conversation with Coleman about AI and democracy that was filmed live at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society’s annual conference Absolutely Interdisciplinary, a portion of which was used in the podcast episode.

“The tech was more about making sure you got to vote.”

When asked about the biggest threats to AI and democracy, Reed emphasized that he is less worried about the technology itself and more with ensuring it’s beneficial to societal use.

“I’m worried about who has access to it and how they are using it.”

About the hosts:

Beth Coleman is an associate professor at ��ϲ�� Mississauga’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and the Faculty of Information. She is also a research lead on AI policy and praxis at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Coleman authored Reality Was Whatever Happened: Octavia Butler AI and Other Possible Worlds using art and generative AI.

Rahul Krishnan is an assistant professor in ��ϲ��’s department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. He is a Canada CIFAR Chair at the Vector Institute, a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and a faculty member at the Temerty Centre for AI Research and Education in Medicine (T-CAIREM).

Note: The artwork in the background of Peter Loewen’s interview belong to the Mirvish Family’s private collection. The large image, titled Floating Free, is by K.M. Graham. The smaller image is untitled and by the same artist.

Elite Africa Project shines light on the creativity, expertise and power that thrives on the continent

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 19:50:09 +0000

Elite Africa Project shines light on the creativity, expertise and power that thrives on the continent

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 02/23/2024 - 14:50

Cutline

Students on the upper gallery of the Alioune Diop University Lecture Building in Bambey, Senegal (photo by Chérif Tall/Aga Khan Trust for Culture)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Subheadline

An international group of African studies scholars has launched the Elite Africa Project, which seeks to redefine the notion of power in Africa and shift public perceptions about the continent’s most prominent and prosperous people.

A global hub of information for scholars, activists, journalists and practitioners, the initiative aims to foster deeper engagement with the expanse of creativity, expertise and power that thrives in Africa today while challenging negative portrayals of the region.

“We’re in a moment where Africans are playing a leading role in almost every field of human endeavor you can imagine,” says Antoinette Handley, a professor in the ��ϲ��’s department of political science in the Faculty of Arts & Science who is the project’s principal investigator.

“For example, several of the world’s top prizes for literature have gone to a range of African authors in recent years, the 2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize was awarded to a native of Burkina Faso – the first African and first Black architect to receive the honour — the World Health Organization is currently headed by an Ethiopian public health researcher and the World Trade Organization is headed up by the former finance minister of Nigeria.”

In addition to Handley and fellow ��ϲ�� scholars Dickson Eyoh, Sean Hawkins and Nakanyike B. Musisi, the project is led by Gerald Bareebe of York University, Peter Lewis of Johns Hopkins University, Landry Signé of Arizona State University and the Brookings Institution and Thomas Kwasi Tieku of King’s University College at Western University.

Despite the many achievements emerging from across the world’s second-most populous continent, the researchers say most popular and academic treatments of Africa tend to feature people commonly regarded as weak and poor or villainous and despotic.

Calling for a reassessment of former approaches, the scholars’ aims are to:

Challenge the narrow and sometimes racist popular understanding that the continent is composed largely of poor or disempowered populations and a class of individuals who are either corrupt, self-serving or puppets of international forces.
Map the dynamics of elite formation in Africa.
Present power as more multidimensional: comprising “soft” forms of power such as knowledge, skills and creativity, as much as it also comprises the more commonly considered “hard” forms of power, such as coercion or material resources.

“Ultimately, our goal with the Elite Africa Project – aptly named to refer to the people who are unusually influential in agenda-setting and decision-making – is to challenge academic and public perceptions of influential Africans as grasping and self-interested, a framing that perpetuates negative depictions of the continent and its peoples and draws on a simplistic understanding of power and how it is wielded,” Handley said.

“Our focus is on the burgeoning ranks of globally renowned artists, prominent intellectuals, innovative businesspeople, accomplished scientists and many others who are flourishing and, in the process, transform both Africa and the global fields within which they work.”

Clockwise from top left: Antoinette Handley, Dickson Eyoh, Sean Hawkins, Nakanyike Musisi, Thomas Kwasi Tieku, Landry Signé, Peter Lewis and Gerald Bareebe (photos courtesy of Elite Africa Project)

The project’s central feature is a database curated primarily for scholars and students of African studies that’s designed to be an entry point into more research about – and a better understanding of – elites and elite accomplishments across the continent.

“With the help of our team from across the globe, we're building an essential hub of information for scholars, activists, journalists and practitioners – anyone intrigued by Africa's vibrant domains ranging from politics and economics to religion and the arts, and everything in between,” said Eyoh, an associate professor in ��ϲ��’s department of political science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the African Studies Centre at New College.

The database contains key academic works, a curated assortment of relevant podcasts and videos, and a collection of biographies of personalities and organizations.

“Whether someone is looking for information about highly regarded African photographers or fashion designers, or some background on the political history of any one African nation, or the roles of religious leaders across many African societies, our hope is that the database can serve as a starting point or a source of supplementary information in the course of their investigation,” Handley said. “It could also be used as a teaching tool for students at any level.”

Another key feature of the project’s website is a weekly roundup of news articles offering insights into a wide variety of people, places and proceedings making headlines both domestically and internationally.

“We're very conscious about presenting items that are not just limited to politics or big economic stories, but represent accomplishments by leading Africans in every imaginable sphere of human activity,” said Handley.

“There’s a huge amount of news stories and data about Africa out there – we’re trying to present a shorthand, easy overview that provides a more well-rounded picture. It lands in your Instagram feed once a week and you can keep track broadly of what’s happening on the continent.”

Handley says her hope for the project is “to go beyond negative stereotypes and ensure a broader, balanced, perhaps more positive view of all that Africa has to offer.”

��ϲ�� researcher explores how rent banks help prevent homelessness

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 21:13:03 +0000

��ϲ�� researcher explores how rent banks help prevent homelessness

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 12/18/2023 - 16:13

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Renters would benefit from long-term measures such as designated affordable housing units – such as those included in this Toronto rental complex – says Alison Smith, an associate professor at ��ϲ�� Mississauga (photo by Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Subheadline

Research shows that rent banks can protect people from eviction in the short-term – but come with downsides

In many communities across Canada, renters who can’t make their next payment have a safety net that can protect them from getting evicted: rent banks.

Rent banks are essentially pools of money available to people who are at risk of eviction due to financial difficulties. While not a solution to the housing crisis, they’re an important service that can prevent people from becoming homeless, according to research by Alison Smith, an associate professor of political science at the ��ϲ�� Mississauga.

Smith is exploring the role that rent banks can play in helping prevent homelessness through her research project, Rent Banks as a Tool of Eviction Prevention: A comparative study of rent banks in Canada and Europe. For her research, which is supported by a Connaught New Researcher Award, Smith is studying rent bank programs available to Canadians and speaking with service providers across the country.

“Rent banks are an important intervention for the people who it is designed for,” says Smith, who is collaborating with colleagues from McGill University as well as service providers and research managers at Montreal’s Old Brewery Mission emergency shelter.

Alison Smith (supplied image)

Smith’s research shows that rent banks can help renters who need a month or two to get into a more stable position – whether that’s getting a new roommate, or a higher paying job.

“If people are evicted, there are a lot of consequences for that, that will follow them for a long time,” Smith says. “In the event that people are being evicted for financial reasons, research shows that there’s a downward trend in housing stability. Especially in this market, somebody is not going to be able to find an equivalent place to live in terms of cost or quality if they are evicted.”

While rent banks can help tenants in the short term, Smith is discovering downsides. For example, in some jurisdictions, tenants can only access a rent bank once every two years, which doesn’t help if they run into financial trouble again within that time.

Smith is also finding that rent banks might be a bandage solution to a larger, systemic problem. A risk of this kind of emergency intervention, especially amid rapidly rising rents, is that it may take funding away from other measures that could provide greater long-term benefit – for example, investing in more purpose-built rentals and non-market housing units.

“I think it’s a real challenge that housing providers and advocates are really confronted with,” says Smith. “They are trying to balance the very real emergency needs and crises that people are living in. They want the current moment to be stable for people, but that is very expensive.”

Associate Professor Alison Smith and her collaborators are working with Montreal's Old Brewery Mission emergency shelter and hope to establish a pilot rent bank there (photo by Andrej Ivanof/AFP via Getty Images)

In Ontario, rent banks are usually administered by local governments or non-profits, who provide funding to the landlord on behalf of the tenant. This funding covers rent arrears or provides emergency financial support to households that are suddenly unable to pay their full rent one month. While these payments may be grants that don’t need to be repaid, programs in other provinces, like Manitoba, provide loans that the tenant must repay.

Smith says the Connaught New Researcher Award will help her team explore rent banks in Europe, and how they compare to Canada. Ultimately, she hopes to use her research to help Old Brewery Mission, the largest emergency shelter and service provider in Quebec, establish a pilot rent bank to help residents.

“It would be so innovative for an emergency shelter to be working intensively on prevention. It would be an interesting shift,” Smith said.

Magazine uses fiction to explore the toll taken by climate change – and our response

siddiq22 — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 17:27:35 +0000

Magazine uses fiction to explore the toll taken by climate change – and our response

siddiq22 Mon, 07/24/2023 - 13:27

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From left: Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann and Teresa Kramarz are co-editors of We Did It!?, a new publication that examines aspects of life in a fictional world that has achieved its net-zero carbon emissions goals (supplied images)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

City & Culture

Environmental Governance Lab

Climate Change

Faculty of Arts & Science

Political Science

School of the Environment

��ϲ�� Mississauga

��ϲ�� Scarborough

A new publication launched by the Environmental Governance Lab (EGL) in the ��ϲ��'s Faculty of Arts & Science is using speculative fiction to examine the toll climate change may take on our planet in the years ahead.

Set in an imagined Canada of 2050, the stories, poems, interviews and even advertisements in EGL's magazine We Did It!? explore aspects of life in a world that has managed to achieve its net-zero carbon emissions goals – but has yet to fully realize a fair and equitable low-carbon society.

For example, emissions in the magazine’s fictional Canada of the future have been reduced by 80 per cent following public forays into biofuels and carbon capture. The country is also less meat-dependent and less focused on consumption, with a circular economy centred on the reuse of existing materials.

However, supply-chain disruptions from wars, floods and heatwaves have led to periods of rampant inflation.

Steven Bernstein (supplied image)

“The magazine is taking place in the future, and is informed by all the social, political and technological processes that were required to get there,” says Steven Bernstein, Distinguished Professor of Global Environmental and Sustainability Governance at ��ϲ�� and the co-director of the EGL.

“It shows that this will not be a straightforward process – and that even if our climate goals are met, they won’t necessarily be met in a way that we envisage now.”

Bernstein, who is also the chair of department of political science at ��ϲ�� Mississauga, is a co-editor of We Did It!?, along with EGL co-directors Matthew Hoffmann, a professor of political science at ��ϲ�� Scarborough, and Teresa Kramarz, assistant professor at the School of the Environment in the Faculty of Arts & Science. Together, the trio oversaw a large team of writers, researchers and designers involved in the magazine’s production.

Matthew Hoffmann (supplied image)

The project was inspired in part by the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act that enshrined the federal government’s Net Zero by 2050 pledge into law, and also by a magazine published by Lund University in Sweden that reflected on what higher education might look like 20 years into the future.

The researchers say they strived to paint an even-handed portrait of the potential road ahead.

“Going between dystopia and utopia was definitely a goal from the outset,” Hoffmann says.

“We want readers to be able to see themselves in these pathways to 2050. That means telling stories about political and personal struggles, while also telling stories about things going well. It’s definitely a mix.”

Teresa Kramarz (supplied image)

One decidedly dystopian story is “Thirsty,” written by Kramarz, which depicts a lithium mine in the Argentinian desert that has displaced an Indigenous community – leaving its people fighting for water, food and electricity.

“In ‘Thirsty,’ I’m trying to call attention to the question of a just transition,” Kramarz says. “There’s no doubt we need to decarbonize, but it worries me that in doing that we aren’t paying enough attention to people and places.”

We Did It!? was crafted through an intensive workshop process, supported by the Alan Dean Family Symposium on Environmental Governance, where energy transition experts were brought in to provide writers with the accurate technical information they needed to develop and write their stories.

The EGL plans to work on more issues of We Did It!? and to devise other artistic, creative ways to engage citizens on the topic of climate change. In addition to the magazines, some ideas may include virtual reality or video games.

“There are all sorts of opportunities, as well as different kinds of media we may not have considered yet,” Bernstein says.

We Did It!? conveys public policy information in a clear, accessible way by showing how major climate decisions affect ordinary people – and, in turn, how people can play their part as consumers and voters in shaping those decisions.

“With this publication, we want to contribute to the public conversation around what’s going to have to happen in the next 25 years,” Hoffmann says.

“It’s not that there’s too little talk about the climate, but I’d say we’re not talking and thinking about the right things. We need to have a more expansive dialogue about what we want our society to be, and what large-scale choices we want to be making. We hope that storytelling like this is a good way to do that.”

From the oil sands to politics: New grad Eli Rose aims to use his voice to empower others

siddiq22 — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 20:29:21 +0000

From the oil sands to politics: New grad Eli Rose aims to use his voice to empower others

siddiq22 Tue, 06/20/2023 - 16:29

Cutline

Eli Rose says his undergraduate experience taught him how to articulate his ideas as an advocate (photo by Shayla Anderson)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Innis College

Political Science

Student Life

Subheadline

Getting involved in student leadership helped underscore ��ϲ�� political science graduate's interest in building community

Eli Rose has a reputation for asking challenging questions – and he intends to continue asking them, as an advocate for those who cannot.

A longtime mentor and community organizer, Rose – a member of Innis College – graduates this week from the ��ϲ�� with a degree in political science.

As he leaves the undergraduate life and prepares for graduate school, Rose spoke with Faculty of Arts & Science writer Cynthia Macdonald about how his many leadership activities have prepared him for his ultimate ambition: a career in politics.

How did you come to study at the ��ϲ��?

I had a full life before coming to ��ϲ��, having graduated from college with a marketing diploma. I worked in the oil fields of Alberta, then went back to school for another certificate. But it was always my dream to go to ��ϲ��. When my mom’s sister, to whom I was close, passed in 2018, I decided to dedicate the next part of my journey to honouring her.

You’re going to do a master’s degree in political science in the fall. Why did you decide on that field?

I have my own political aspirations, actually! Being in government has always seemed very interesting to me. I grew up in Malvern, in the northeastern part of Toronto. It’s a part of the city with many issues such as street violence and a lack of essential services. I was advocating for solutions to problems like that even before I knew that I could be an advocate professionally. I was already thinking about different ways to make life a little more just for people there, supporting communities that needed a bit more help.

But it wasn’t until I came to university that everything came together. I started to see who I am and what I wanted to do – the kind of change and impact I’d be able to create.

You’re the winner of a student leadership award and you’ve improved the student experience at your college and beyond. What initiatives did you participate in?

I first got involved with the Association of Political Science Students. That led me to get involved with the undergraduate chapter of Black Future Lawyers, where I was vice-president of finance and helped the founder recruit the rest of the board.

But where things really took off for me was when I became a student mentor at Innis College at the tail end of my second year. I helped with training and offered support. I met a lot of good people and found I was able to empower others, especially first-year students. From there, I started building relationships and worked on the Innovation Hub to help redefine the student experience.

All these experiences gave me the confidence and the courage to go after things I wanted, or even just to voice my opinion. One of my ideas was to create an identity matching system for mentors: aligning students with mentors who matched their backgrounds and interests. I was also one of the first two Black orientation coordinators and was on the working group of the Black Student Experience at Innis, making a point of ensuring that the group would be sustainable after its founders had graduated.

You seem to have a real focus on empathy, identity and the empowerment of individuals, whether at school, work or elsewhere.

I think that comes from my own experience of feeling undervalued – showing up to the workplace in a way where I’m not bringing my true self. There’s a lot of overlap between my working world and my academic world – it’s just different language.

As a young teenager growing up in my neighbourhood, I saw how power dynamics could negatively affect my friends. Now that I’ve gone through university, I’ve been able to better articulate and visualize ideas in order to find solutions.

Why have you decided to pursue a future in politics?

My senior thesis really changed me. I chose to research political career structures – in particular, how identity conditions people’s lived experiences and careers. Working on that gave me the clarity to proceed with where I’m going next.

We’re in an era of political mistrust and multiple truths – and that’s a barrier for those who might consider a career in politics. But if you really want to effect change, the political arena is the best place to do that. We elect people to represent us, and those are the people making the decisions. Why wouldn’t I want to have a seat at the table, especially to act for those who haven’t been represented?

Opening myself up to criticism will be difficult – but that’s okay, because I’m coming at public service from a space of truth and care and support. And I want to use my experiences – as a mentor, as a team lead, as a facilitator of discussions around identity – to help empower others and give them a voice. And this is the way I know how to do it.

��ϲ�� student, author and activist reflects on his incredible journey as a Rohingya refugee

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 20:18:58 +0000

��ϲ�� student, author and activist reflects on his incredible journey as a Rohingya refugee

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 06/15/2023 - 16:18

Cutline

��ϲ�� student Jaivet Ealom, a member of the persecuted Rohingya minority, recounts his harrowing escape to Canada at an alumni event June 15 (photo by Luis Mora)

Mariam Matti

Topic

Global Lens

Alumni

Faculty of Arts & Science

Rotman School of Management

On his first day in class at the ��ϲ��, Jaivet Ealom felt completely overwhelmed by his environment.

He sat at the back of the room and tried to absorb all the noise, technology and people. Nobody had any inkling of the harrowing journey he’d taken to get there.

A member of the persecuted Rohingya minority, Ealom had fled Myanmar in 2013. Before arriving at ��ϲ��, he had travelled through six countries and three continents seeking asylum – surviving a near-drowning and multiple detentions along the way.

“I essentially gave up everything overnight – all the support I had,” he says. “I was a lone stranger in this vast land without any safety net to fall back on.”

In those early years in Canada, Ealom – who is speaking at an alumni event on June 15 – was trying to fly under the radar. He was worried about being deported to Myanmar or sent back to a detention centre.

(Photo by Luis Mora)

Stephen Watt, who works at ��ϲ��’s Rotman School of Management and volunteers his time doing refugee advocacy, met Ealom about six months after he arrived in Toronto. Watt remembers how reserved Ealom was in the beginning.

“He’s not somebody who enjoys attention,” Watt says.

But the pair became good friends and now work together to support refugees and asylum seekers. Ealom, who plans to graduate from ��ϲ�� in the fall with a double major in economics and politics, co-founded the Rohingya Centre of Canada as well as a non-profit called Northern Lights Canada with Watt. He is a member of the Refugee Advisory Network of Canada and recently attended an annual forum for the UN Refugee Agency on resettlement.

He also wrote his first book: Escape from Manus Prison: One Man’s Daring Quest for Freedom. Published by Penguin Random House Canada, it details his unimaginable story of trying to become a refugee in another country.

Ealom was first hesitant to revisit painful memories and share his story publicly. But he felt assured when he received his permanent residence status and wanted to be a voice for his friends who were still suffering in the detention centre

“He [shared his story] because he knew it’ll have a bigger impact beyond himself,” Watt says.

Even so, the process of writing the book was difficult, Ealom says.

“I woke up every single night – sweating – from a nightmare of being in a different prison. The more I thought [about my journey], the more memories resurfaced. It was retraumatizing.”

Growing up in a town northwest of Myanmar, Ealom says he developed an understanding about his life early on. “If you wanted to live, then you needed to leave,” he says. He fled first to Jakarta, Indonesia, but encountered an asylum process he describes as “barely functioning, chaotic” so he arranged to travel by boat to Australia.

“The crew was supposed to sail us to Darwin, Australia, where, according to a rumour that everyone had heard at one time or another, Australians opened their hearts and their country to people like us – those on the run for torture, persecution and death,” he writes in his book.

But the trip was perilous. On the third day, the rickety boat started to sink. For Ealom, who could not swim, death seemed imminent – until the refugees were saved thanks to a fisherman who spotted the boat.

After returning to Jakarta, Ealom set his sights next on Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. This time, “I bought a truck tire and a pump in my backpack – a makeshift floatation device,” he says.

Ealom was mid-voyage when Australia, announced a change in the law: Asylum seekers arriving by boat without a visa would no longer be resettled in the country. Upon being intercepted by Australian authorities, he was handed a paper that stated he was an unlawful citizen.

“I thought, I didn’t do anything wrong, there must be some miscommunication.”

Ealom spent three and a half years on Manus Island, which he described as a “living hell” (photo courtesy of Jaivet Ealom)

He spent 148 days in a detention centre on Christmas Island before being transferred to Manus Island, where he would spend the next three and a half years in a “living hell” that he says felt like a psychological experiment complete with rotten food filled with maggots or bits of gravel.

After studying every detail of the prison’s operation and securing the help of those around him, Ealom managed to escape. Posing as an interpreter, he travelled to Solomon Islands, where he altered his appearance and took on a new identity.

He ultimately arrived at Toronto Pearson Airport on a cold and snowy night on Christmas Eve in 2017.

“I didn’t know a single soul and I didn’t know the weather could get this cold,” he says. “I learned everything the hard way. But not in my wildest dream did I think I would live here.”

Fast forward to today and Ealom now calls Toronto his second home – even if it took him awhile to adjust.

For one thing, he says studying at ��ϲ�� has been vastly different than any schooling he had done in Myanmar. “I wasn’t accustomed to challenging a professor,” he says. “I was taught that questioning anyone with slightly more authority than you is rude.

(Photo courtesy of Jaivet Ealom)

“There was no element of critical thinking. You can study philosophy [in Myanmar], but it’s watered down by the government. The textbooks are written by the military.”

His time in university has also helped him make sense of things that happened throughout his life. He learned that policy decisions that have enormous impact on people’s lives sometimes originate in academic research. “Without going to school, I wouldn’t be able to put a lot of things that I saw in a structured framework,” he says. “It helped me see the bigger picture. I was able to see some of the strategies driving the actions of the ruling regime in Myanmar.”

In his spare time, Ealom regularly volunteers with refugee organizations – and helped launch a couple himself. The Rohingya Centre of Canada, co-founded by Ealom and a friend, is a cause very close to his heart since it helps Rohingya newcomers connect with services and provide supports as they settle in a new home.

“When you come from an oppressed country, it’s easy to mistrust authorities,” he says. “That’s where we come in – we act as a bridge between the authority and the community.”

After graduation, Ealom is considering attending law school. He ultimately wants to return to Myanmar and make meaningful systematic changes – as long as his actions don’t put his parents in danger.

“I feel this moral obligation to help.”

Read ��ϲ�� Magazine’s in-depth profile of Jaivet Ealom

Once a teenage refugee, new graduate Omer Malikyar is now a powerful voice for the world’s displaced

siddiq22 — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 19:15:03 +0000

Once a teenage refugee, new graduate Omer Malikyar is now a powerful voice for the world’s displaced

siddiq22 Fri, 06/02/2023 - 15:15

Cutline

While on a ��ϲ�� Summer Abroad program, student Omer Malikyar attended talks on migration and the accommodation of refugees at the European Commission (all photos courtesy Omer Malikyar)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Political Science

Woodsworth College

Subheadline

After escaping Afghanistan, Malikyar set his sights on a post-secondary education at ��ϲ��

��ϲ�� student Omer Malikyar will never take education for granted.

On the road to his graduation with a degree in political science and Canadian studies from the Faculty of Arts & Science, Malikyar has had to summon courage and perseverance that is almost difficult to imagine.

He was born and raised in Ghazni, a trading and transit hub in southeastern Afghanistan. His father, a school principal, has spent the past 25 years operating a school for girls. Under the country’s extremist regime, the students are forbidden from pursuing formal learning past the Grade 6 level.

“Education has always been really important to my family,” Malikyar says. “Back home, we children spent most of our time studying and I did really well. So when I came to Canada, it was always a dream to attend a good school.”

Escaping to the West, while difficult, was an absolute necessity for Malikyar. During his high school years, he was involved in activities that unfortunately caught the eye of Islamic extremists.

“My friends and I created a summer camp where we taught girls and guys about their rights – how women can contribute to society, about gender equality and that sort of thing. It was [considered] scandalous, and we received threats. It became really scary for me after that. We were told that we were promoting Western values in an Islamic country.”

So in 2018, Malikyar made his way to New York state, enrolling in a summer camp for international students. But summer ended quickly.

“By that time, Ghazni had been taken over by the extremists, and all I was hearing was bad news,” he says.

As the Trump administration began enacting stricter policies toward undocumented immigrants, the teenager knew that neither his new home nor his old one would be open to him. He managed to cross into Canada at Roxham Road, a well-known entry point on the Quebec border that was used by many refugees until its closing in March of this year.

Finally, after an arduous and solitary journey to Toronto, Malikyar set his sights on post-secondary study.

“I found out about ��ϲ�� and really wanted to study here. I went to UTSC and took a campus tour – I wished I could enroll, but it wasn’t that easy because I didn’t have the requirements.”

Malikyar was frustrated – he had been an excellent student at home, and had already completed a year at Kabul University, one of the most prestigious in the country. But he did what he had to, returning to high school and completing his Grade 12 year. After entering Woodsworth College through the Diploma to Degree program, he was finally able to realize his dream: enrolling at ��ϲ��.

With his educational path set, he next turned his energies toward helping others.

As a volunteer with Children Without Borders, he has helped children in Afghanistan receive educational opportunities. With the Afghan Youth Development and Engagement Initiative, he currently mentors young refugees as they navigate new lives in Canada.

And while at ��ϲ��, Malikyar managed to realize yet another ambition.

“I wanted to re-establish the Afghan Students Association at the ��ϲ��, and I was so happy that we were able to create it as a charter student club this year,” he says with pride.

Omer Malikyar is set to graduate from the Faculty of Arts & Science this month and will begin graduate studies at the Munk School in the fall

This spring, the club convened students from a variety of different cultures to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

“Most of the students in our club were born and raised in Toronto,” Malikyar says. “It’s been really great to share my experience with them, and to learn from them as well.”

In addition to his activities at ��ϲ��, Malikyar has taken advantage of travel opportunities to further his interests in refugee issues and the politics of forced migration. He took part in the ��ϲ�� Summer Abroad program in Germany, taking extra time to meet and speak with Afghan refugees in Europe; he also attended talks at the European Union commission in Brussels to learn about that organization’s approach to migration and refugee accommodation.

For his academic and extracurricular efforts, Malikyar was recently selected as a McCall MacBain Regional Award recipient. He also received the Master of Global Affairs Fellowship Award from the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, where he will be pursuing graduate studies in the fall.

“My goal is to work with an organization such as the United Nations, or with the government of Canada,” he says.

His internship last year with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, where he raised funds for refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan, was a stepping stone to building such a career.

But although Malikyar’s future in Canada is secure, he will always have an eye on those seeking escape from his home country, as well as those languishing in refugee camps in Iran or Pakistan. He notes that even before the extremists’ return to power in 2021, they retained a stranglehold on activities in the cities and towns outside Kabul.

Right now, there is no end in sight – in particular, Malikyar underscores the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan today.

“Girls cannot go to secondary school. They don’t have any rights,” he says. “They cannot walk outside without male company.”

Prior to the regime’s ban on higher education for girls, his sister studied math at university in Ghazni.

“She is still teaching,” he says. “But I’m really concerned about what would happen to her if they banned all school for women and girls.”

Education is a basic human right, but in many places it is one that is far from guaranteed. Omer Malikyar’s long and difficult journey to convocation is a powerful reminder that learning is a precious resource – and one well worth fighting for.

��ϲ�� grad Alyssa Nurse built community through her Caribbean connections

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 31 May 2023 14:09:08 +0000

��ϲ�� grad Alyssa Nurse built community through her Caribbean connections

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/31/2023 - 10:09

Cutline

Alyssa Nurse, a member of Victoria College, immersed herself in campus life through student organizations and by editing a journal focused on the study of the Caribbean and its peoples (photo courtesy of Alyssa Nurse)

Sean McNeely

Topic

Our Community

Convocation 2023

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Political Science

Undergraduate Students

Victoria College

Alyssa Nurse remembers feeling a mix of trepidation and excitement as she stared out the window on a six-hour flight from Guyana to Toronto four years ago.

But she quickly overcame any nervousness and immersed herself in campus life at the ��ϲ��, as evidenced by her awards and long list of community-centric extracurricular activities.

“I knew I wanted to be in a very diverse university and a diverse learning environment,” says Nurse, who majored in economics and political science in the Faculty of Arts & Science as a member of Victoria College.

Nurse was born in Barbados and grew up in Providence, Guyana, a community on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Georgetown. She had only visited Canada once before arriving at ��ϲ��.

Alyssa Nurse at her Victoria College orientation in first year (photo courtesy of Nurse)

Even so, she says the culture shock proved to be minimal thanks to a thriving Caribbean culture in Toronto. “It's easy to find the Caribbean diaspora here,” she says.

Victoria College’s international student orientation, with its team of staff and upper-year international mentors, helped Nurse discover the city and offered support and programming to make the transition easier.

“That provided a unique experience to meet other students who were also new to Canada,” she says. “It gave us a way to make some connections before we were fully immersed with everyone. It definitely grounded me.”

When it came her courses, she says she appreciated ��ϲ��’s approach of giving students the time and space to figure out what they wanted to pursue.

“We were encouraged to take different courses from different backgrounds in our first year to see what we like before we commit to a major,” Nurse says. “I took a lot of anthropology. I took Introduction to Classical Mythology. I wanted to make sure that my experiences would be varied such that when the time came for me to declare my majors, it was coming from an informed place.”

With her main interest in development economics already established, she landed on political science. “It complemented my economics background really well, especially for things like policy,” she says.

These dual interests led her to an internship with the NATO Association of Canada (NAOC) through ECO400Y, a credit-based internship course offered by ��ϲ�� Mississauga and open to students across ��ϲ��’s three campuses.

Beginning in September 2022, the eight-month internship gave Nurse the chance to take on a variety of roles including writing, editing and posting articles on NAOC’s website. She also played a key role in organizing an event in Ottawa, working alongside the British High Commission.

Alyssa Nurse (holding first flag) and her high school class in Guyana during a Remembrance Day Ceremony (photo courtesy of Queen's College, Lictor Live Student Club)

“This was real-world diplomacy in action,” she says, adding that she was grateful for the opportunity to personally meet ambassadors and diplomats. “I appreciated being immersed in an entirely different world and encountering people that I otherwise probably never would have [met]. That experience, in itself, was completely worth it.”

In 2022, Nurse won student of the year awards from Experiential & Work-Integrated Learning Ontario (EWO) and Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada (CEWIL) for the work she performed during the internship.

Back on campus, she used her editing and writing skills to help create the most recent issue of the Caribbean Quilt – a student-run journal that offers creative works and critical thought focused on the study of the Caribbean and its peoples.

Nurse was the editor-in-chief as well as a contributor of two articles, including one that examines the relationship between colonial violence and capitalist development in a Caribbean context.

Though her work on the Caribbean Quilt made for some long hours and late nights of editing, she says seeing the published journal – titled Resurgence – followed by a launch party made it all worthwhile.

“It was so fulfilling to see everyone come together to celebrate the scholarship of these students,” Nurse says.

Nurse was also the co-president of the Caribbean Studies Students’ Union (CARSSU), a commuter don at Victoria College and the president of the student group Connections – a group for Black women at ��ϲ��.

“This year we were officially recognized as a student group by ��ϲ��,” says Nurse. “It started out as a humble gathering for Black female self-identifying students but over the years, it's really grown.

“It's more identity-based than academic, but we use the identity aspect to provide academic support as needed, or any mentorship. It’s just about having that sense of community to share our lived experiences while at ��ϲ��.”

Nurse intends on sharing those lived experiences with her younger sister, who is coming to ��ϲ�� next fall. “I'm telling her all the things I wish I knew, things she needs to be aware of, and all the mistakes that she needs to avoid altogether,” she says.

Alyssa Nurse taking part in Phagwah, an annual Hindu festival of colours celebrating the arrival of spring (photo courtesy of Queen's College, Lictor Live Student Club)

Nurse plans on staying in Toronto this summer, but will have a proper Guyanese celebration when she returns to see her family and friends later this year. In the meantime, she’s building her resume and plans to pursue a master's degree in development economics.

“But for now, I'm going to work for a bit,” she says. “I want to figure out what my focus is because when I do start graduate school, I want to have a clear picture of what it is that I want to get out of it.”

��ϲ�� Mississauga students lead efforts to understand justice in global conflicts

siddiq22 — Fri, 19 May 2023 14:12:01 +0000

��ϲ�� Mississauga students lead efforts to understand justice in global conflicts

siddiq22 Fri, 05/19/2023 - 10:12

Cutline

From left: Pedro Andrade, Fatimah Ahsan, Rohit Bahal, Nicole Fernando, Geoff Dancy, Joseph Mangin, Mary Kazek, and Farah Radwan are among the researchers working on the Transitional Justice Evaluation Tools project (supplied photo)

Topic

Global Lens

Global

Human Rights

International Relations

A group of students at the ��ϲ�� Mississauga are at the forefront of efforts to understand transitional justice across the globe – a scholarly field that confronts how to pursue accountability for human rights violations in the context of authoritarianism and violent political conflict.

Working with Geoff Dancy, associate professor in ��ϲ�� Mississauga's department of political science, nine students are collecting data on criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, legal amnesties and reparations policies in all the regions of the world.

Their goal is “to provide a comprehensive database for academic research, and to predict human rights trends internationally," says team member Pedro Andrade, a fourth-year undergraduate student from Brazil.

Dancy, post-doctoral researcher Oskar Timo Thoms and the group of undergraduate students received a $3-million grant from Global Affairs Canada – administered jointly between Harvard University and ��ϲ�� – for their Transitional Justice Evaluation Tools (TJET) project.

TJET's student researchers have developed a wide range of expertise while working on the project.

Mary Kazek, an undergraduate student studying international affairs and economics, has become a go-to authority on criminal proceedings against Chilean military and intelligence officers who were responsible for extensive human rights violations during the Pinochet regime.

Collecting data on over 500 prosecutions has also given Kazek an appreciation for detailed research.

“Political science tends to focus on the macro level and gloss over the details of atrocities and human rights violations, which prevents people from fully understanding the true horrors of what has happened," she says.

Third-year student Fatimah Ahsan, who is a ��ϲ�� Global Scholar studying political science, has helped finalize an exhaustive database of over 80 truth commissions that were established in the last 50 years – including Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which completed its work in 2015.

“I personally enjoy how much I am able to learn about the cases,” Ahsan says. “Every case I code, I learn something about the country I am working on, including its history and political state.”

Other researchers are focused less on specific mechanisms of justice, and more on overall themes. Political science and criminology student Farah Radwan has spent months studying prosecutions of state agents for sex- and gender-based violence, combing through information on over 17,000 accused rights violators.

“I think the biggest thing I learned while working on this project is that the workload can seem daunting, and it is really time-consuming," she says. "But it is extremely rewarding and fulfilling when it’s done – and done right.”

The detail-oriented work has been challenging yet fulfilling. Through her work with TJET, political science student Nicole Fernando has come to specialize in coding, converting publicly available information into useable data.

“I love the methodical nature of coding – there is a process to follow for examining each case," she notes.

Amid their exacting individual research, the TJET group has come together through regular group meetings and team hangouts on the fifth floor of the Maanjiwe nendamowinan building on the ��ϲ�� Mississauga campus.

“What has struck me the most is the team-oriented nature of the research. We regularly discuss with each other about our respective work, which gives us a better understanding of our contribution," says Joseph Mangin, a third-year student from France studying politics and international relations who has been going through news articles to collect data on global amnesty laws.

Dancy, who previously worked at Tulane University in New Orleans, brought the TJET project with him when he moved to ��ϲ�� last summer.

He's effusive about the ��ϲ�� student researchers currently taking part in the project.

"Not to diminish the work of other teams I’ve led, but this is probably the most joyful and committed group of students I’ve ever worked with," says Dancy, who gives each of his researchers coffee mugs labelled “Researching justice, one cup at a time.”

Dancy, along with colleagues from Harvard University, recently presented findings from TJET's data collection to Global Affairs Canada at a meeting in Ottawa.

“All of the hard work the students have done directly informed high-level policy conversations about how to proceed with transitional justice in contexts such as Ukraine and Ethiopia," he said.

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Read ������ϲ����� Magazine’s in-depth profile of Jaivet Ealom

Once a teenage refugee, new graduate Omer Malikyar is now a powerful voice for the world’s displaced

������ϲ����� grad Alyssa Nurse built community through her Caribbean connections

������ϲ����� Mississauga students lead efforts to understand justice in global conflicts

‘Not in my wildest dreams’: Refugee Jaivet Ealom on his journey to become a ��ϲ�� grad

Read more about Jaivet Ealom in ��ϲ�� Magazine

��ϲ�� researcher explores how rent banks help prevent homelessness

��ϲ�� student, author and activist reflects on his incredible journey as a Rohingya refugee

Read ��ϲ�� Magazine’s in-depth profile of Jaivet Ealom

��ϲ�� grad Alyssa Nurse built community through her Caribbean connections

��ϲ�� Mississauga students lead efforts to understand justice in global conflicts