Public talk to examine global health as a security issue

February 2, 2011 –A public talk focusing on the motivations and means of framing health as a national and global security issue has been postponed until February 9. Students interested in learning more about this topic are invited to attend the event which is part of the Forum's Global Health Lecture series and will be held in the McMaster Health Forum DialogueSpace.

Clifton van der Linden, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and a research fellow with the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Free University Amsterdam, will deliver the talk beginning at 6 p.m.

Van der Linden, a former journalist with the National Post, past-chair of the G8 Research Group at the Munk School of Global Affairs, and outgoing editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Law and International Relations, takes a special interest in international relations with a focus on security.

This talk will explore the increasing securitization of global health discourse and the impact of security language on domestic and global responses to health issues.

The cross-border flows of globalization now include forms of communicable diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, avian influenza and HIV/AIDS. From outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China and Canada to the spread of H1N1 between Mexico and the United States, pandemics demonstrate little regard for state borders or notions of sovereignty. Challenges in areas of communicable disease, development of health systems and education, and advancement of health sciences and technology are increasingly being framed as matters of global health security, thus falling subject to international coordination as opposed to local or regional authority.

Building on international relations and constructivist theory, the motivations and means of framing health as a security issue will be discussed as well as the implications of securitized speech acts on the configuration and operation of the global health governance regime. The importance of language in shaping the social and political realities in which global health professionals find themselves will be addressed. This talk will assess the benefits, challenges and implications of talking about global health as a national and global security issue.

The DialogueSpace is located on the fourth floor of Mills Memorial Library. The talk will run until 7:30 p.m. It has been organized in partnership with the Bachelor of Health Sciences program and with support from the McMaster Health Forum Student Sub-committee.

The talk will link with the curriculum of the Forum’s Global Health Advocacy course, taught by Steven Hoffman, an adjunct faculty of the McMaster Health Forum, but is open to the wider University community. If interested in attending, please RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , with van der Linden talk in the subject line.

Van der Linden is currently executive director of Vote Compass and a recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the Adel S. Sedra Distinguished Graduate Award. He has been a media contributor for CBC, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, Reuters, NPR, the Washington Post, and the Globe and Mail on topics including Canadian foreign policy, European integration, and global governance.