Toronto conference celebrating Emanuel Adler

On the occasion of Professor Emanuel Adler’s 70th birthday and 35th anniversary of graduating Berkeley, his colleagues and former PhD students gathered on 12 May 2017 to recognize their intellectual and personal debts and to celebrate Adler’s many scholarly achievements in the time-honored academic fashion of a Fest conference hosted at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto.

The different papers presented at the conference intellectually and critically enegaged Adler’s extensive contributions in the theory of international relations, especially but not limited to issues such as progress, communities, practices, constructivism, the Middle East, complexity theory, and the European order. Special attention was given to Adler’s ongoing book project: A Social Theory of Cognitive Evolution: Change, Stability, and International Social Orders, which brings to fruition the different strands that interested him throughout his incredibly fruitful career. Interventions included papers by the three organisers Piki Ish-Shalom (Hebrew University), Markus Kornprobst (Diplomatic Academy Vienna), and Vincent Pouliot (McGill University), as well as Michael Barnett (George Washington University), Janice Gross Stein (University of Toronto), Peter Katzenstein (Cornell University), Chris Reus-Smit (University of Queensland), Alena Drieschova (Cardiff University), Peter M. Haas (University of Massachussetts Amherst) and Stefano Guzzini (DIIS).

Emanuel Adler is the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Chair of Israeli Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the European Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Professor at the University of Copenhagen, and former editor of International Organization. Previously, he was Professor of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is currently based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.