As our post-secondary institutions respond to the Calls to Action set forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, they grapple with how best to respectfully accommodate both Western and Indigenous worldviews within academic teaching, research and service in mutually supportive ways.

Are Western and colonial epistemologies inherently hostile to Indigenous perspectives and culture? Can that tension be resolved? And what does that mean for universities?

Brandon University Interim President Dr. Steve Robinson probes the history of Western philosophy, science and what we call “truth” as he explores these questions and more in his talk: “Rival Knowledges in Ancient Greece and Present-Day Canada”.

Ancient Greece evolved through fundamental and disruptive challenges to traditional forms of authority as it adopted early, populist-style democracy at the same time as it witnessed the emergence of philosophy and the beginnings of Western science. Those interconnected struggles continue to offer timely lessons for the present day.

Dr. Robinson, a social and political philosopher who specializes in ancient Greece, now serves Brandon University as Interim President, and is uniquely qualified to find inspiration in the past which is of value to the present.