Dr. W.Y. Alice Chan,Director & Co-Founder of the Centre for Civic & Religious Literacy (CCRL) Alice worked in private and public international corporations, and international religious and non-religious NGOs. These experiences inform her work at CCRL and raise her desire to foster religious literacy among industry professionals, an understanding that was lacking in her corporate environments. Her work at the Centre is also inspired by her teaching experience as a Toronto-area middle school teacher, McGill University lecturer, and her research on the intersections of religious bullying, religious literacy, and religious discrimination, such as violent extremism. In recent years, she has worked with the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP), the Interfaith Youth core in the US, the Tony Blair Institute for Change, the Hindu American Foundation, the Islamic Council of North America, and the Religious Freedom Center in the US.
Dr. Víctor Muñiz-Fraticelli, Faculty of Law & Department of Political Science, McGill University Víctor M. MUÑIZ-FRATICELLI is Associate Professor of Law and Political Science at McGill University. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2008, and his JD from the University of Puerto Rico in 1999, where he also served in law review. In 2000 and 2001, he clerked at the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico for the Hon. Antonio S. NEGRÓN-GARCÍA (until the Justice's retirement) and the Hon. Federico HERNÁNDEZ-DENTON. His interests range across philosophy, politics, and law. He is currently working on the justification and institutional requirements of associational autonomy. He also works on contemporary liberal theory, with special emphasis on the work of John Rawls, on intergenerational justice, and on the relationship of private law to sovereignty and constitutionalism. In 2019, he received a New Directions Fellowship . from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Dr. André Gagné, Associate Professor, Department of Theological Studies, Concordia University André Gagné joined Concordia University in 2008 as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science (Dept. of Theological Studies) and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2011. In 2017, Dr. Gagné was Directeur d'études invité at l'École pratique des hautes études in Paris. He works on the Christian Right, Charismatic Dominionism, fundamentalism, religious violence and the interpretation and reception of the Bible. In his public scholarship, Dr. Gagné seeks to explain how sacred texts and traditions are used by fundamentalist groups and individuals to cultivate violent ideas and/ or incite politico-religious violence. He also has a marked interest in studying the beliefs, practices and political inclinations of dominionist movements such as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and Christian Reconstructionism. Professor Gagné is regularly consulted by the media and invited to lecture on the Christian right, religious violence, fundamentalism, and the interpretation and reception of the Bible. Dr. Gagné is also a Co-Researcher with the Centre d'expertise de formation sur les intégrismes religieux, les idéologies politiques et la radicalisation (CEFIR) and a Full Member of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (Concordia).
Dr. Martin Geoffroy, CÉGEP Édouard-Montpetit, Director of Centre d’expertise et de formation sur les intégrismes religieux, les idéologies politiques et la radicalisation (CEFIR) Né à Montréal, le sociologue Martin Geoffroy a vécu à New York, Winnipeg et Moncton avant de revenir dans la métropole québécoise en 2012. Il enseigne la sociologie au Cégep Édouard-Montpetit depuis 2013, après avoir été professeur adjoint en sociologie à l'Université de Moncton (2006-2009) et au Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface (2004-2006). Il est détenteur d’un doctorat et d’une maîtrise en sociologie de l’Université de Montréal et d’un baccalauréat en communication de l’UQÀM et a été chercheur post-doctoral (FQRSC) à la Fordham University à New York (2003-2004). Reconnu à l'international dans le domaine des religions et des intégrismes religieux, il est aussi spécialiste des médias au Canada. Il est l’auteur de plus de 20 articles et chapitres de livres et a co-dirigé deux livres et six numéros spéciaux de revues savantes internationales telles que International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society et Australian Religion Studies Review. Il est aussi blogueur pour le Huffington Post Québec. Martin Geoffroy dirige présentement le Centre d’expertise et de formation sur les intégrismes religieux, les idéologies politiques et la radicalisation (CEFIR) du cégep Édouard-Montpetit, subventionné par le programme Fonds d’innovation sociale destiné aux communautés et aux collèges du CRSH.
Dr. Shauna Van Praagh, Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University Shauna Van Praagh is Full Professor in the Faculty of Law, McGill, where she has taught and researched since 1993. She served as Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) from 2007-2010. Professor Van Praagh’s substantive areas of research and expertise are primarily children and law, religion and law, legal education and the private law of civil wrongs. Within each area, she adopts a methodological approach grounded in legal pluralism, a sensibility to identity-based narrative and critique, and a particular emphasis on literary sources and style. She recently co-edited, with McGill colleague Helge Dedek, a book collection (Stateless Law: Evolving Boundaries of a Discipline, 2015) in which her own chapter focuses on teaching, learning, and responding to the legacy of Residential Schools for Canada’s aboriginal children. Professor Van Praagh currently teaches Extra-contractual obligations/Torts to first year law students, Advanced Common Law Obligations to second year students, and a seminar in Legal Education to graduate and upper year students. In addition, she has taught Social Diversity and Law, Children and Law, Foundations of Canadian Law, Feminist Legal Theory, and specialized courses related to governance of diversity, law of armed conflict, and socio-economic justice within the Hebrew University – McGill human rights summer program. As past president (2013-2014) of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers, Shauna Van Praagh was appointed in 2015 as one of two academic members of the National Requirement Review Committee under the auspices of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. At the Faculty of Law at McGill, she chaired the 1995-96 Committee on Curricular Reform, which produced the blueprint for the revised program of legal education introduced in 1999. A recipient of the John W. Durnford Teaching Award, Professor Van Praagh has been intensively involved in the development of teaching and learning in law. Professor Van Praagh clerked for The Right Honourable Brian Dickson, Chief Justice of Canada, from 1989 to 1990. She has taught at Columbia Law School (1990-1992) and King’s College London (1992-1993), and was a visitor at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires in 2010-2011. She holds a B. Sc. (with High Distinction) (1986) and an LL.B. (with Honours) (1989) from the University of Toronto, and an LL.M. (1992) and J.S.D. (2000) from Columbia University. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled “Follow the Children: Identity, Integrity, Learning and Law”.
Rabbi Adam Scheier, Congregation Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue Rabbi Adam Scheier is Senior Rabbi of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim. He is Past President of the Montreal Board of Rabbis, Vice-President of the Rabbinical Council of Canada, and Senior Rabbinic Fellow of Jerusalem’s Hartman Institute. In 2015, Rabbi Scheier co-edited and published the Canadian Haggadah Canadienne, which received positive acclaim in Canada and worldwide. He is a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a leading Modern Orthodox organization consisting of over 200 rabbis, communal scholars, and clergy. He also serves on the Rabbinic Advisory Board of Yeshivat Maharat, the first institution to train Orthodox women as spiritual leaders. Rabbi Scheier is proud to be the rabbi of the first synagogue to hire a graduate of Yeshivat Maharat. He has been active in international Jewish concerns, and testified before a Canadian Parliamentary committee on the topic of human rights in Venezuela. Prior to his post in Montreal, Rabbi Scheier participated in the founding and development of the first Yeshiva in post-World War II Germany, and has continued to work extensively with the immigrant Jewish community in Germany. He is married to Rabba Abby Scheier, and they have been blessed with five daughters, Aviya, Ayelet, Annael, Allegra, and Arella.
Nathan B. Oman, Professor & Co-Director of Center for the Study of Law and Markets, William & Mary Law School Dr. Nathan B. Oman joined the faculty of William & Mary Law School in 2006. He earned his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he served on the Articles Committee of the Harvard Law Review and as an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. He graduated from Brigham Young University, where he was a Benson Scholar, and, prior to law school, worked on the staff of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Morris Shepard Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and worked as a litigation associate in the Washington, DC office of Sidley Austin, LLP. Dr. Oman's areas of research specialization include: Contract Law; the Economic Analysis of Law; Jurisprudence; Law and Religion; and Legal History.
Dr. Morton Weinfeld,Professor; Director of Canadian Ethnic Studies, Department of Sociology, McGill University PhD, Harvard University, 1977; EdM, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1973; BA, McGill University, 1970. Professor at McGill since 1977. Professor Weinfeld holds the Chair in Canadian Ethnic Studies, and directs the minor program in Canadian Ethnic Studies. He is the winner of the 2013 Marshall Sklare Prize for outstanding career contributions to the field by the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry. Among his recent publications are an edited collection The Jews in Canada, with Robert Brym and William Shaffir, 2nd edition, (Oxford, 2010); Like Everyone Else But Different: The paradoxical success of Canadian Jews (McClelland and Stewart, 2001) which was featured in One Hundred Great Jewish Books, by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman (Blue Bridge, 2011), Still Moving: Recent Jewish Migration in Comparative Perspective, with Daniel Elazar (Transaction, 2000); Ethnicity, Politics, and Public Policy, with Harold Troper (University of Toronto Press, 1999), and Who Speaks for Canada? with Desmond Morton (McClelland and Stewart, 1998). He has published Old Wounds: Jews, Ukrainians and the Hunt for Nazi War Criminals in Canada (with Harold Troper), Viking/Penguin, 1988, a case study of ethnicity and public policy. In 1989 he published Trauma and Rebirth: Intergenerational Effects of the Holocaust (with John J. Sigal), Praeger, 1989. He wrote The Social Costs of Discrimination in Canada, a research report for the (Abella) Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, 1983. Dr. Weinfeld's areas of research specialization include: ethnic and race relations; immigration; public policy analysis; survey research and data analysis; Canadian society; sociology of Jews; Canadian Jewish studies; and the sociology of education. Current research and thesis supervision interests are in areas of ethnicity and public policy, notably the role of minority-origin professionals in various policy domains. Professor Weinfeld has taught undergraduate courses on the sociology of ethnic relations, Jews in North America, an undergraduate seminar in Canadian ethnic studies and graduate seminars on the sociology of ethnic conflict, and social inequality and public policy.