Concordia faculty, staff and alumni/ae pop up in the media more often than you might think!

Robert Tittler (History) wrote a thoughtful essay that was published in The Gazette on March 10 about the squeeze imposed on universities by Quebec’s performance contracts. He said, among other things, that cost-effectiveness forces the cancellation of valuable courses; that the government cannot bring itself to increase tuition; and that neither middle-class parents nor big corporations have a strong tradition of supporting university education.

Homa Hoodfar (Sociology/Anthropology) was interviewed on Radio-Canada’s Zone Libre about women and Islam. She and Roksana Bahramitash wrote an essay about Western stereotypes of Muslim women that was published in The Gazette on March 15, and took the newspaper to task for praising the recent movie The Circle.

Clarence Bayne (DIA/DSA) was interviewed for CBC’s Culture Shock on the subject of colourism, the practice of social discrimination within the black community based on gradations of colour.

Gazette book columnist Joel Yanovsky visited Trevor Ferguson’s creative writing class at Concordia to do a profile on him and his alter ego John Farrow, the pseudonymous and highly successful author of the thrillers City of Ice and Ice Lake. Ferguson was also the cover subject of the Montreal Review of Books, inserted locally in the Globe and Mail March 30.

Neurobiologist Jim Pfaus (CSBN) was quoted in The Gazette as saying that sex is not “an animal instinct,” but a highly cerebral activity in which learning and choice play a part.

Sociologist Fran Shaver was the subject of profile on CBC Radio’s All in a Weekend.

Scholar François-Marc Gagnon and benefactor Stephen Jarislowsky were interviewed on CBC Radio’s Art Talks about the inauguration last month of the Jarislowsky Institute in Canadian Art Studies. Dr. Gagnon was also interviewed on Home Run.

Luggie, a poem by Stephanie Bolster (English) from her collection Two Bowls of Milk, was featured in the Globe and Mail’s “How Poems Work” column on March 17 and given an insightful analysis. She was also quoted in a recent issue of Quill and Quire on the state of Canadian literary magazines.

John Jordan, say it isn’t so. John has just quit his job doing publicity for the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall, and Elizabeth Bromstein wrote about it in her column in The Gazette. His next job will be to run a pornographic movie house, Cinéma l’Amour, where he hopes to show art films after-hours. His parting shot, perhaps fueled by his farewell party at a Crescent St. karaoke bar: “I never thought I’d say this, but moving from academia to porn is definitely a step up.”

Anouk Bélanger (Sociology/Anthropology) was interviewed on CBF radio about a literary conference at McGill that discussed, among other things, how a city may become a character in a novel.

Guy Lachapelle (Political Science) and John Parisella (Board of Governors) appear together on CBC Newsworld, giving their views from opposite sides of the sovereignist/federalist debate. For example, on March 7, they discussed Bernard Landry as Quebec’s new premier. Daniel Salée (SCPA) was interviewed on the same subject the following day on CTV’s national newscast.

Laura Lesley, a stellar women’s hockey player and now an athletic therapist, was interviewed on CFCF-Pulse News about research going on at Concordia into concussions in sports.

Adrian Tsang (Biology) was interviewed on Pulse News about the fungus found at the Royal Victoria Hospital.

Olivier Asselin (Art History) was interviewed on CBC radio’s Home Run about an exhibit on seminal painter Charles Gagnon, the subject of three current shows.

Denise Tanguay and Stephen Snow were interviewed on Télé-Québec’s Zone X about Concordia’s Creative Arts Therapies program and how it has developed into a unique resource for learning and community outreach.

Hervé Fischer (Daniel Langlois Chair in Digital Image/Sound) was interviewed on Radio-Canada’s Les Affaires et La Vie about the knowledge economy in Quebec. Fischer also wrote an essay on the subject for La Presse, published March 20. As a member of the group Science pour tous, he urged Premier Landry, in an article in Le Devoir on March 1, to take a leadership role in this new field.

Frederick Bird (Religion), is conducting an international study of business ethics, and was interviewed about it on CBC Radio.

Avtar Pall developed his earthquake-resistant building technology at Concordia; he sponsors scholarships in the field, and his dampers were installed—and exposed—in our J.W. McConnell library complex. He was interviewed recently by Journalism graduate Catherine Solyom for The Gazette. Her first sentence was fun: “As a naughty little boy in his native India, Avtar Pall quickly learned a slap in the face hurts less—no matter how well deserved—if you move to cushion the shock.”