Features
The Personal Is the Political
New chair believes tomorrow's voter begins with tapping today's inner activist
BY DAVID DICENZO
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| Prof. Byron Sheldrick thrives on a blend of activism and teaching. Photo by Martin Schwalbe |
Growing up in Ottawa, Prof. Byron Sheldrick was always well aware of the political climate in Canada. The growing steam of the Quebec separatist movement and the FLQ crisis in 1970 are images that remain etched in his mind.
“I would go downtown with my parents and see soldiers on the streets of Ottawa,” says Sheldrick, who joined U of G as chair of the Department of Political Science last August. “I can remember clearly the buzz that took place when René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois first won power in Quebec in the 1970s. Because Ottawa is right on the border, those issues really played prominently in the consciousness of everyone growing up there.”
Sheldrick figures those early experiences had a subconscious impact on his eventual choice of an academic career in political science, but it was actually his decision to study law that steered him further down the path.
After earning a BA in political science at Carleton University in 1984, he headed off to law school at the University of Toronto. There, the recent patriation of the Canadian Constitution and the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were hot topics that sparked an interest in human rights and questions of social change and justice for many law students, says Sheldrick.
“There was a huge debate about whether or not the charter was going to be a good thing or a bad thing for social movements — whether it would draw them away from their social movement roots and divert all their energy into court cases and hiring lawyers, with the result that it might actually lessen their political activism.”
Sheldrick has been actively involved with social movements ever since, from both a hands-on and teaching perspective. His 2004 book Perils and Possibilities: Social Activism and the Law, a guide of sorts for activists in navigating the law, is a byproduct of his interest in both movements and the legal system. It's that combination of being on the ground — actively working with anti-poverty groups, for example — and being in the classroom that has allowed him to have an impact and make change, he says.
After graduating from law school in 1987, Sheldrick returned to political science, earning an MA and a PhD at York University. He spent three years teaching law at Keele University in England, then returned to Canada in 1998 to teach politics at the University of Winnipeg.
Here at Guelph, he spent the fall semester settling into his administrative role but is teaching a course on Canadian politics this semester and will teach the first-year “Introduction to Politics” course next September.
Sheldrick is a rarity among professors in that he relishes teaching first-year classes. He wants his students, especially younger ones, to get excited about politics. He also wants them to understand that the opinions, attitudes, biases and perspectives that inform their daily lives are all inherently political.
“Once students start to recognize that the world around them is highly politicized, that starts to peel away layers of assumptions they have about the way things are and the way things must be,” he says.
“People need to understand that politics is much broader than what happened in the House today or what Stephen Harper is saying. It manifests itself in all sorts of ways, whether it's a local citizens' group fighting the building of a landfill site in its backyard or AIDS Awareness Week on campus. There are lots of ways students can get involved in things that are political without necessarily thinking about party politics or what's happening in Ottawa or at Queen's Park. That broadens people's horizons, and I like doing that at the first-year level.”
Sheldrick says he's been impressed by the political spirit he's seen at U of G, citing last semester's campus vigil against hate crimes as an example of the strong conscience among students, faculty and staff.
After a relatively quiet period in the 1980s and '90s in terms of activism, he believes there's been a definite resurgence of late. Some movements, like anti-globalization, are reminiscent of the civil rights movement in the '60s, although with noticeable differences in the range of coalitions and the internationalization of the movements, he says.
“A lot of it has been made possible by new information technology. The Internet and e-mail have allowed these movements to organize and operate on a much different scale in a much different way. You can easily form coalitions now that span a whole cross-section of people, entire continents and time zones.
“When you had the demonstrations in Quebec City and Seattle, you had people from all over the world showing up. You had activists from South America concerned about indigenous people's rights joining with people concerned about sweatshop labour in Mexico. That creates movements that are very dynamic and that I think are really exciting.”