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

La Presse made Michel Laroche (Marketing) the newspaper’s Personnalité de la semaine in its weekend paper on January 7, and devoted a full page to his accomplishments as a scholar. Dr. Laroche has received a number of significant honours recently, and the next will be an honorary doctorate from the University of Guelph, to be presented in October. Our heartiest congratulations are extended to him.

A feature article by The Gazette’s religion editor, Harvey Shepherd, was published on Christmas Eve about the work of Charles Kannengiesser (Theological Studies). A Catholic thinker, he spent much of his life in France, but got into hot water, as Shepherd put it, because of his liberal views. He is “critically optimistic” about the future of Christianity, and wants to see a faith that emphasizes experience rather than divine revelation.

Early in December, Rob Allen (English) was on CBC Newsworld with Ben Chin, talking about the controversy over authorship of Notes from the Hyena’s Belly, which won the Governor-General’s Award for Nonfiction. His friend, former Concordia creative writing lecturer Anne Stone, claims to have written much of the book without getting due credit from writer Nega Mezlekia.

Mary Vipond (History) and Andrea McCartney (Communication Studies) were on CBC Radio’s Home Run as part of a series on how things work. They explained the mysteries of radio to Judith Ritter.

It was reported in the Montreal media that Patrick Kenniff, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of Concordia from 1984 to 1994, will be on the council overseeing the merger of the municipalities on the Island of Montreal. The council will report to municipal affairs minister Louise Harel. Before he came to Concordia, Kenniff was a law professor at Université Laval and deputy minister of municipal affairs.

Clarence Bayne (Dec Sci/MIS, Dip Admin/Sport Admin) was quoted in La Presse on January 22 on the restoration of the old Cinema V building as a cultural centre for NDG. Bayne, a member of the board of the new centre and of the Black Theatre Workshop, said that this challenging restoration project will take a little longer than expected. Also on the Cinema V board is Peter McAuslan, president of the Concordia University Alumni Association.

A letter by Rector Frederick Lowy concerning the University Senate’s decision to allow students to defer final exams for the April protest against globalization (see CTR, Jan. 25) was published as an op-ed piece in Le Devoir and as a letter in The Gazette. Several editorialists and radio commentators had criticized the decision. Dennis Murphy, Executive Director of Communications, was interviewed on the CBC radio network (As It Happens) about the issue.

Journalism student Marie Valla was on the cross-Canada CBC Radio program C’est la Vie recently. On a visit with her family in Paris over the holidays, she did interviews with French-Canadians who live and work in France as part of a feature comparing differences in speech and attitude between the French and the québécois.

As an outstanding musicologist, arranger and conductor Andrew Homzy (Music) was invited by The Gazette to analyze the highly popular 19-part documentary series Jazz, which recently aired on PBS. He said while it had shortcomings (neglect of lesser-known artists; sometimes clumsy use of musical excerpts; stopped at 1960), it brings jazz to a much wider audience. He said, “I believe that musically, the 20th century will be known for jazz, and not for any of the dead ends that intellectually driven classical composers constructed after the dismantling of tonality and the rejection of human-based rhythm patterns.”

David McGimpsey (English/Creative Writing) is a member of the three-person Radio Noon Book Club, which meets monthly in a local CBC studio to discuss a single book with callers. The most recent was Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, which McGimpsey gave a “thumbs down.”

Lillian Robinson (Simone de Beauvoir) was the subject of a profile in The Gazette. A longtime social activist going back to the civil rights struggle in the U.S., she is teaching a women’s studies course in globalization issues this term. She was also interviewed on CBC Radio’s All in a Weekend.

Many Concordia scholars were interviewed in print and on radio and TV about the resignation last month of premier Lucien Bouchard, particularly Guy Lachapelle (Political Science), Daniel Salée (SCPA), Marcel Danis (V-R IR/Secretary-General) and Robert Keating (Political Science).

Dean Christopher Jackson was interviewed on French-language radio about plans for a new building for the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Balbir Sahni (Economic/CIAC) was in India last month to give the keynote address at a national seminar on Sustainable Economic, Social and Political Reforms in the Information Age. His call for a commission to monitor the implementation of reforms adopted by India in 1991 was favourably covered by the Hindustan Times, the Business Standard and the Financial Express, and he was interviewed by the Tribune.