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Wilfrid Laurier University

Laurier students aren’t content with simply earning a university degree. To them, education is a springboard to something greater: it’s the key to shaping a life, building a community and making a difference.

For more than a century, Laurier has been known for academic excellence. But we’ve also been dedicated to the philosophy that our students’ success is measured through more than grades – it’s based on the quality of the lives they lead, and those they inspire.

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Displaying 101 - 109 of 109 articles
Unpaid interns protests in Geneva in 2016. Activism has played a big part in how unpaid internships are now being regarded with disdain. (Global Intern Coalition)

How youth activism is kicking unpaid internships to the curb

Greig de Peuter, Wilfrid Laurier University; Kate Oakley, University of Leeds, and Nicole Cohen, University of Toronto

Global activism has played a big role in outlawing unpaid internships. Here’s how protests and social media shaming spurred negative media coverage of unpaid internships.
A migrant worker picks peaches in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., in the summer of 2015. (Shutterstock)

The cruel trade-off at your local produce aisle

Donald MacLean Wells, McMaster University and Janet McLaughlin, Wilfrid Laurier University

Every year, migrant workers come to Canada to pick the fruits and vegetables we take for granted. They aren’t paid well and get none of the benefits they pay into. It’s time to treat them fairly.
Rey (Daisy Ridley), in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, ponders the light and dark sides of the Force. (Handout)

The Force of biology is strong in Star Wars

Allison E. McDonald, Wilfrid Laurier University

Star Wars: The Last Jedi leaves many questions about the saga in a galaxy far, far away unanswered. Fortunately, biology may offer a insights on the Force, midi-chlorians, clones, and Rey’s lineage.
The framing of Motion 103, combatting Islamophobia, may seem like a distant concern to the free speech debate in universities, but it is in fact related in the way the so-called “alt-right” uses free speech as a rhetorical prop in their campaigns of ideological intimidation. Here: Protesters rally over motion M-103, the Liberal anti-Islamophobia motion, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in March. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

Transphobia, Islamophobia and the free speech alibi

Jasmin Zine, Wilfrid Laurier University

Right-wing ideologues use free speech as an alibi for their transphobic and Islamophobic rhetoric.
U.S. President Donald Trump, right, talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Italy in May at a G7 summit. Trump has crowed about a “very quick” U.S.-U.K. trade deal. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

A ‘quick’ British-American trade deal? NAFTA suggests not a chance

Randall Mark Wigle, Wilfrid Laurier University

Donald Trump views himself as a deal-maker, so the prospect of a “quick” trade deal between the U.K. and the U.S. seems unlikely, despite the American president’s earlier optimism.
A patient suffering from dengue fever lies in a hospital bed in Peshawar, Pakistan, in October. Cases of dengue fever – a painful mosquito-borne spread disease – have doubled every decade since 1990. Environmental health experts are pointing the finger at climate change. (AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad)

Thank you for not driving: Climate change requires anti-smoking tactics

Simon Dalby, Wilfrid Laurier University

What if we treated climate change as a health problem rather than an environmental one? There are lessons to be learned from the successful public health campaigns against smoking.

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