This lecture is named after a famed Saskatchewan NDP politician who served as Education Minister and Treasurer in the Tommy Douglas government from 1944-61 and then succeeded him as premier when Douglas switched to federal politics, so the ideas that speakers address are usually pretty progressive.

Tonight’s lecture at the University of Regina (RIC119, 7 p.m.) is being delivered by Dr. Thomas Workman (pictured) from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. The title of his talk is “The Hedgehog, the Fox and Canadian Austerity”.

You can read an interview I did with Workman in our Feb. 6 issue here, and the topic does sound interesting. Workman intends to look at the neo-liberal revolution that took hold in the Thatcher-Reagan years in the early ’80s, and how advances that had been made from the 1930s through early ’70s toward a more democratic and egalitarian society have been successfully attacked and rolled back. One issue Workman especially intends to speak on is the use of economic pressure to force acceptance of reactionary right-wing policies through things like debt crises and market crashes.