Thomas Homer-Dixon | |
---|---|
Born | |
Alma mater | Carleton University (BA) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD) |
Website | https://homerdixon.com/ |
Thomas Homer-Dixon (born 1956) is a Canadian political scientist and author who researches threats to global security. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia. [1] [2] He is the author of seven books, the most recent being Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril.
Homer-Dixon was born and raised in a rural area outside Victoria, British Columbia. [3] In his late teens and early twenties, he worked on oil rigs and in forestry. [4]
In 1980, he received a B.A. in political science from Carleton University in Ottawa. [5] He then established the Canadian Student Pugwash organization, a forum for discussion of the relationships between science, ethics, and public policy. [6] [7] He completed his Ph.D. in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989, specializing in international relations and conflict theory under the supervision of Hayward Alker. [8]
Homer-Dixon began his academic career at the University of Toronto in 1990 where he led several research projects examining links between environmental stress and violence in poor countries. [9] In 1993, he joined the faculty of University College and the Department of Political Science, progressing to full professor status in 2006. Meanwhile, he was director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, University College, before he moved on to be the Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies until 2007. [10] [11]
In 2008, Homer-Dixon moved to the University of Waterloo, Ontario, to assume the role as the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the newly created Balsillie School of International Affairs. [12] [13]
He was the founding director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo between 2009 and 2014. [14] [3]
In 2019, Homer-Dixon was appointed a University Research Chair at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. [15] In 2020 [16] he became the executive director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. [17]
In the early 1990s, at the University of Toronto, Homer-Dixon led a team of researchers that pioneered study of the links between environmental stress and violent conflict. [18] [19] Two of his articles in the Harvard journal International Security identified underlying mechanisms by which scarcities of natural resources like cropland and fresh water could contribute to insurgency, ethnic clashes, terrorism, and genocide in poor countries. [6] [9] This research culminated in his book Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, which won the Caldwell Prize of the American Political Science Association. [20]
In the mid-1990s, Homer-Dixon worked on the determinants of successful social innovation in response to key threats and challenges like climate change. [21] [22] He coined the term “ingenuity gap,” [23] [24] and his work resulted in the book The Ingenuity Gap. The book was published in six countries and won the 2001 Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction in Canada. [25]
In the 2000s, Homer-Dixon studied the links between major crisis and societal renewal—a phenomenon he called “catagenesis.” Using the Roman Empire as a case study, he focused especially on the relationship between energy inputs, social complexity, and social crisis. [26] [27] This work led to the book The Upside of Down (book) which won the 2007 National Business Book Award. [28] The book introduced the concept of “synchronous failure,” which was further developed in a co-authored 2015 article in Ecology and Society. [29]
After 2010, Homer-Dixon's work became more prescriptive, focusing on how humanity might address its crises, and in particular on the essential role of the emotion hope. These ideas were brought together in the book Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril. [30] [31] [32]
In an opinion piece published in The New York Times in April 2013, Homer-Dixon stated that Alberta's oil sands industry "is undermining Canadian democracy" and that "tar sands influence reaches deep into the federal cabinet." Homer-Dixon also said that "Canada is beginning to exhibit the economic and political characteristics of a petro-state" and that the oil sands industry "is relentlessly twisting our society into something we don't like." [33] [34] [35]
In 2022, Homer-Dixon expressed the belief that the United States could be ruled by a right-wing dictator before 2030. [36]
Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen, a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum.
Lloyd Norman Axworthy is a Canadian politician, elder statesman and academic. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Following his retirement from parliament, he served as president and vice-chancellor of the University of Winnipeg from 2004 to 2014 and as chancellor of St. Paul's University College. He is currently the Chair of the World Refugee & Migration Council.
Anatol Borisovich Rapoport was an American mathematical psychologist. He contributed to general systems theory, to mathematical biology and to the mathematical modeling of social interaction and stochastic models of contagion.
Peace and conflict studies or conflict analysis and resolution is a social science field that identifies and analyzes violent and nonviolent behaviors as well as the structural mechanisms attending conflicts, to understand those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition. A variation on this, peace studies, is an interdisciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, de-escalation, and solution of conflicts by peaceful means, based on achieving conflict resolution and dispute resolution at the international and domestic levels based on positive sum, rather than negative sum, solutions.
The Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto is an interdisciplinary academic centre. It offers various research and educational programs related to the field of globalization. It is located in Toronto, Ontario, offers master's degrees in global affairs and public policy, and a master's degree in European, Russian and Asia-Pacific studies. This school is a member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA). It also works in group of schools that educate students in international affairs. The Munk School's Master of Global Affairs program typically receives 500 and 600 applicants per year and offers 80 students entry into its program.
Environmental security examines threats posed by environmental events and trends to individuals, communities or nations. It may focus on the impact of human conflict and international relations on the environment, or on how environmental problems cross state borders.
The Ingenuity Gap is a non-fiction book by Canadian academic Thomas Homer-Dixon. It was written over the course of eight years from 1992 to 2000 when it was published by Knopf. The book argues that the nature of problems faced by our society are becoming more complex and that our ability to implement solutions is not keeping pace. Homer-Dixon focuses upon complexities, unexpected non-linear results, and emergent properties. He takes an inter-disciplinary approach connecting political science with sociology, economics, history, and ecology.
A progress trap is the condition human societies experience when, in pursuing progress through human ingenuity, they inadvertently introduce problems that they do not have the resources or the political will to solve for fear of short-term losses in status, stability or quality of life. This prevents further progress and sometimes leads to societal collapse.
ProfessorRohan Gunaratna is a threat specialist of the global security environment. Professor Gunaratna has over 30 years of academic, policy, and operational experience in national and international security. He is Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technology University, Singapore.
Tony Clarke is a Canadian activist.
Dr. Andrew Price-Smith (1968–2019) was a political scientist and academic writer best known for his work on 'health security' and 'environmental security.' An expert on the effects of Influenza pandemics and government efforts to contain them, his consilient works analyzed the complex linkages among environmental change, infectious disease, history, economics and security. He held appointments at Columbia University, the University of South Florida, and Colorado College, where he served the chair of the Political Science Department from 2013 to 2016.
An energy superpower is a country that supplies large amounts of energy resources to a significant number of other countries - and therefore has the potential to influence world markets for political or economic gains. Energy superpower status might be exercised, for example, by significantly influencing the price on global markets or by withholding supplies. Nowadays, the term "energy superpower" is increasingly used to characterize nations at the forefront of energy transition and the development of renewable energy resources.
The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (ISBN 0-676-97722-7) is a non-fiction book published in 2006 by Thomas Homer-Dixon, a professor who at the time was the director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at University of Toronto.
A resource war is a type of war caused by conflict over resources. In a resource war, there is typically a nation or group that controls the resource and an aggressor that wishes to seize control over said resource. This power dynamic between nations has been a significant underlying factor in conflicts since the late 19th century. Following the rise of industrialization, the amount of raw materials an industrialized nation uses to sustain its activities is heightened.
Howard Adelman was a Canadian philosopher and university professor. He retired as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at York University in 2003. Adelman was one of the founders of Rochdale College, as well as the founder and director of York's Centre for Refugee Studies. He was editor of Refuge for ten years, and since his retirement he has received several honorary university and governmental appointments in Canada and abroad. Adelman was the recipient of numerous awards and grants, and presented the inaugural lecture in a series named in his honor at York University in 2008.
Security studies, also known as international security studies, is an academic sub-field within the wider discipline of international relations that studies organized violence, military conflict, national security, and international security.
The Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA) is a centre for advanced research and teaching on global governance and international public policy, located in Waterloo, Ontario. As one of the largest social sciences initiatives in Canada, the school is a collaborative partnership between the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University, and the Centre for International Governance Innovation. The BSIA is an affiliate member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, a group of schools that educate leaders in international affairs. The BSIA is housed in the north and west wings of the CIGI Campus. Admission to BSIA is highly selective.
Ernie Regehr, is a Canadian peace researcher and expert in security and disarmament. He co-founded Project Ploughshares, a peace research organization based in Waterloo, Ontario, with Murray Thomson in 1976 and served as its Executive Director for thirty years. Project Ploughshares is an ecumenical project supported by the Canadian Council of Churches. Regehr has been a Canadian NGO representative and expert advisor at numerous international disarmament forums including UN Conferences on Small Arms.
Fen Osler Hampson is Chancellor's Professor and Professor of International Affairs at Carleton University and President of the World Refugee & Migration Council. He was a Visiting Fellow at The New Institute and a Distinguished Fellow and Director of Global Security Research at The Centre for International Governance Innovation. He was Co-Director of the Global Commission on Internet Governance. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
David Andrew Welch is a Canadian political scientist. He is a university research chair and professor of political science at the Balsillie School of International Affairs of the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)