Read the full 2023 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture
This edition of the Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture was held on Tuesday, May 23rd at an event in partnership with Toronto Metropolitan University’s Faculty of Arts. A special thanks to TMU Dean of Arts Pamela Sugiman for hosting this Broadbent Institute event.
Ellen Meiksins Wood was one of the left's foremost theorists on democracy and history, and often promoted the idea that democracy always has to be fought for and secured from below, never benevolently conferred from above. The Institute founded the annual Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize & Lecture to honour Professor Wood’s legacy as an internationally renowned scholar and to bring her work to new generations of Canadians.
The Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize is given annually to an academic, labour activist or writer and recognizes outstanding contributions in political theory, social or economic history, human rights, or sociology.
Each year’s recipient also delivers the Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture.
From left to right: Clement Nocos (Director of Policy, Broadbent Institute), Ed Broadbent (Chair Emeritus, Broadbent Institute), Armine Yalnizyan (2023 Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize recipient), Pamela Sugiman (Dean of Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University), Jennifer Hassum (Executive Director, Broadbent Institute).
The 2023 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture was delivered by economist Armine Yalnizyan—a leading voice on Canada’s economic scene.
Her lecture, entitled Progress vs. 2023: A Guide to the Fight Ahead, presented her sweeping vision of what it means to be a progressive in 2023, taking us on a tour of the evolution of progressive ideas, and its constancy. She showed how context has shaped strategy, and lay out the push and the pull of the moment: the challenges facing the progressive agenda and the momentum building for it.
