The U of M welcomed Canadian Governor General Louise Arbour to St. Paul’s College for a closed-door meeting with graduate students in the peace and conflict studies (PACS) program.
The meeting, held at Hanley Hall, followed a request from the office of the governor general to the Arthur V. Mauro (AVM) Institute for Peace and Justice to arrange a discussion with PACS students.
Christopher Adams, St. Paul’s College rector and chair of the AVM Institute’s board of directors, said the visit was part of Arbour’s first-year visits to Canadian provinces, which is a tradition when a governor general assumes office.
Adams said the meeting offered students an opportunity to engage with Arbour, whose career includes work in human rights, migration and war crimes, as well as service as a Supreme Court justice.
“She looked very happy to meet the students,” Adams observed. “The students were [likewise] very happy to see her.”
Paula Thorne, a PACS PhD candidate and event attendee said, “she was very welcoming of all questions and very candid in her answers, but also candid in what she could not answer, which I appreciated.”
Thorne said Arbour’s remarks on human rights challenged the assumption that people necessarily share the same understanding of their rights.
She pointed to freedom of speech as an example of how individual interpretations can conflict.
“Having human rights is not the final conclusion of the topic,” she said. “It is being able to continue to have a conversation and be humble in that conversation.”
PACS PhD candidate and U of M Graduate and Postdoctoral Society vice-president academic affairs & senator Laleema Senanayake, who also attended the event, said Arbour’s comments on consensus and political empathy connected with her studies in peacebuilding.
Senanayake said the discussion covered how consensus can help societies manage disagreements without resorting to violence.
She also recalled an anecdote Arbour shared about a young judge in Quebec who felt disrespected when people did not stand as he entered a courtroom.
“What I found particularly interesting was the idea that democracy depends not only on formal institutions and laws, but also on a shared willingness to uphold and respect them,” Senanayake shared.
Adams said Arbour emphasized “the issue of dealing between different camps with different values. There has to be a sense of listening rather than of talking.”
Adams also recalled Arbour mentioning the ability to work with different cultures while continuing to defend human rights, listen to different sides of an argument and discern between competing perspectives, as skills needed to work in the field.
“The underlying message was, how do you bear yourself? How do you work with your values? And it’s not what you say, it’s how you behave,” Adams said.
Arbour is Canada’s 31st governor general and represents the Crown in Canada, carrying out constitutional duties and representing the country at home and abroad. She was officially installed in her role in June.
