--- id: "pisquared:interview/orbinski-james" type: "Pi-Squared interview" title: "Anita McGahan in conversation with James Orbinski" url: "https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/orbinski-james" date: "2025-07-23" people: ["Anita McGahan","James Orbinski"] summary: "Professor and Physician James Orbinski is the 7th Principal of Massey College at the University of Toronto, where he brings a lifelong commitment to..." recording: "https://vimeo.com/1103921829" source: "Pi-Squared (pisquared.theburnescenter.org), The Burnes Center for Social Change" licence: "none stated" --- # Anita McGahan in conversation with James Orbinski James Orbinski, Principal, Massey College, University of Toronto · 23 July 2025 ## About the guest Professor and Physician James Orbinski is the 7th Principal of Massey College at the University of Toronto, where he brings a lifelong commitment to civility and leadership for the public good. James believes in actively engaging and shaping our world so that it is more just, fair, and humane. He served as International Council president of Medicins Sans Frontieres during the 1990s and accepted the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize on its behalf. He was the founding director of York University’s Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, co-founder of Dignitas International, and co-chaired the founding and startup of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative. James is renowned for his ground-breaking research on medical humanitarianism, infectious diseases, global health governance, and the health impacts of climate change. ## Reflections from the interview James, in your book called “An Imperfect Offering,” you defined humanitarianism as creating a moment of normalcy.  The context was your humanitarian experience in providing healthcare during the Rwandan genocide, where you had to face this incredibly powerful, incomprehensible escalation of intense violence.   How do you create a moment of normalcy in that kind of environment? James described how Imperfect Offering focused on his experience in a wide range of countries, but none with more extreme humanitarian conditions than Rwanda.   He described creating informal spaces of normalcy and moments of interpersonal human connection where one person responds fully to the circumstances of another.   James distinguished formal humanitarianism as occurring in a political context by invitation under a rule of law.   Informal humanitarianism, by contrast, occurs without the protections of a rule of law almost paradoxically in a place of profound political failure.   Informal humanitarianism is deeply interpersonal at the most basic of levels.   It requires seeing the dignity of the other.  Are we shooting for the same thing as we think about cultivating civility and leadership for the public good at Massey College?   I suppose what Im asking is whether civility rests on the same kind of mutual understanding – a hermeneutic of generosity. The basic dignity of each individual is often not seen.  Profound polarization arises when this occurs.  Confrontation.   Absent consideration of a shared future.  An example of this now is around climate change.   What can we do about this?  We can’t legislate civility, but we can declare principles that will guide our community.    And we have to recognize the potential of becoming conscious of each other’s dignity.   The skill of achieving this recognition can be cultivated and nurtured and grown. How do we do this?  Stating our principles.   In Canada, our Constitution includes some basic guarantees on what’s acceptable vs. unacceptable.  For example, we do not tolerate hate speech or an incitement to violence.   We’re not afraid of energy, emotion, passion, or differences of opinion, but they must be civil. This gets to a basic Socratic and Platonic principal that the art of rhetoric requires passion, legitimacy, and reasonableness.   We have to try to persuade each other of our views under this conceptualization.  And that means listening.  Debate and dialogue are effective when we listen to each other not to win but to common to a common understanding.   As Plato and Socrates describe, civil discourse arises from mutual recognition of the dignity of the other. What is the public good? It has a lot to do with rights and the actualization of the individual in relation to others.   In Canada, we each have certain rights that hold regardless of gender or religion.   If you live here, you have to abide by those as a matter of law.   This is what it means in part to be Canadian.   James gets the final word. We shouldn’t aspire to lead.  We should aspire to do the best we can given where we are and what we value as a community.  We should aspire to achieve civil discourse on matters of contemporary concern.  We must recognize that we are not perfect; that we make mistakes; that we sometimes should apologize; that we recognize each other’s strengths.  We aspire to be humble and to create a cushion for failure.   We aspire to learn by doing, trying, persevering, and forgiving. ## Related resources - [James’s website at Massey College](https://www.masseycollege.ca/about/staff/) - [James on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Orbinski) - [James’s website at the Munk School at the University of Toronto](https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/person/james-j-orbinski) - [The movie, Triage, on James](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1158333/) - [Story on James’s journey](https://www.trentu.ca/news/story/42569) ## Recording Video: https://vimeo.com/1103921829 ## Category [Where Do We Go From Here?](https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/category/where-next) * * * Original page: https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/orbinski-james · Licence: none stated