2005 - David Bornstein
So You Want to Change the World? The Emergence of Social Entrepreneurship and the Rise of the Citizen Sector

Author and essayist David Bornstein presented the Hart House Lecture on March 23, 2005. The lecture was titled, "So You Want to Change the World? The Emergence of Social Entrepreneurship and the Rise of the Citizen Sector". Bornstein discussed the concept of applying entrepreneurial concepts to invoke social change, and how these people are this century's pioneers of social change.

Raised in Montreal, Canada, Bornstein received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University in Montreal and a Masters of Arts from New York University. Bornstein is the author of several books on social entrepreneurship, including How to Change the World and The Price of a Dream. He lives in New York City with his wife, Abigail, and son, Elijah.

The lecture was broadcast on TVO Big Ideas and Ideas, CBC Radio. An excerpt from the lecture is available from the Globe and Mail. Full copies are available from the Porters' Desk, Hart House.

2004 - Jennifer Welsh
Where do I Belong? Exploring Citizenship in the 21st Century

The 2004 Hart House Lecture with Jennifer Welsh was a thought provoking talk about citizenship and Canada's place in the world. Dr. Jennifer Welsh, professor of International Relations at Oxford explored the idea of citizenship beyond the nation state in her lecture entitled "Where Do I Belong? Exploring Citizenship in the 21st Century".

Dr. Jennifer M. Welsh was born in Saskatchewan, educated in Canada and at Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.  She is currently teaching International Relations at Oxford University. She is the leading thinker on the Nexus Generation. Jennifer is the co-author of Chips and Pop: Decoding the Nexus Generation (1998). She also wrote a paper for isuma, a journal of Policy Research. Her most recent work, published in 2004, is At Home in the World: Canada’s Global Vision for the 21st Century (HarperCollins Canada).

The lecture was broadcast on TVO Big Ideas and Ideas, CBC Radio. A copy of the lecture may be downloaded here.

2002 - Alan Lightman
The World is Too Much With me

Alan Lightman, an internationally respected novelist, essayist, physicist and professor of science and creative writing at MIT, visited Hart House on March 20th, 2002 to give a lecture entitled “The World Is Too Much With Me: Finding Private Space in a Wired World”. In this lecture, Mr. Lightman expressed the importance of maintaining personal time and activity in an increasingly invasive world of cell phones, pagers, palm pilots and the fifty-hour work week.

In his speech, Lightman made the link between an examined life and thoughtful engagement with the outside world, believing that as people, and as a society, we need to be able to unplug from time to time and think about what is truly important in life. We, he stated, and the world we live in, will be better off for this increased level of self-awareness. The Lecture was broadcast on CBC Radio Ideas and was excerpted in The Globe and Mail.

A copy of the Lecture may be downloaded here.

2001 - Pico Iyer
Imagining Canada: An Outsider's Hope for a Global Future

On April 5th, 2001, esteemed author and 'Global Soul' Pico lyer delivered the first annual Hart House Lecture, entitled “Imagining Canada: An Outsider’s Hope for a Global Future”. In a lecture later broadcast on the CBC Radio program Ideas, lyer argued that Canada, with its freedom from expectation, its willingness to experiment, its long history of multiculturalism and its rare sense of imaginative space, is a model for the rest of the world.

lyer also turned a critical eye upon official attempts to manage diversity and legislate or engineer multiculturalism, believing it should be left to occur naturally, “it is only”, declared Lyer, “at the level of the imagination that we begin to think differently about one another, and make meaningful an acceptance so natural that we don’t need to have words for it.”

The lecture is available here.

Obtaining the Lectures

Physical copies of the lectures are availiable from the Hall Porters Desk at Hart House or by contacting the Lecture Committee at harthouse.lecture@utoronto.ca. Electronic copies may be downloaded from the right sidebar of this page.