Past Events

Michael Klein 
Professor Emeritus of Family Practice Medicine and Pediatrics (2003)

Michael C. Klein, MD, CM, CCFP, FCFP, FAAP (neonatal/perinatal), FCPS, is emeritus professor of family practice at the University of British Columbia, adjunct professor of family medicine at McGill University and senior scientist emeritus at the Child and Family Research Institute in Vancouver.

As a researcher, he is best known for his landmark study of episiotomy, demonstrating that it caused the very trauma that it was supposed to prevent, which is credited with contributing to a large drop in routine episiotomy use and a concurrent fall in maternal birth trauma. He teaches at UBC in family practice and midwifery and is a long-time member of the editorial board of Birth and a member of the Board of Canadian Doctors for Medicare.

He was head of a McGill teaching centre and the Department of Family Medicine at the Jewish General Hospital, a McGill teaching hospital in Montreal for seventeen years, and head of the Department of Family Practice at Children’s and Women’s Hospitals in Vancouver for ten years.

He is a recipient of the Order of Canada, Award for Lifetime Contributions to Primary Care Research from the North American Primary Care Research Group, Family Medicine Researcher of the Year Award from the College of Family Physicians of Canada, the Founders Award from DONA International, the annual research award from Lamaze International and the Lifetime Achievement Award in Family Medicine Research from the College of Family Physicians of Canada. He and his wife, Bonnie, emigrated from the US to Canada in 1967 because he refused to be a military physician during the Vietnam War. His son, Seth, and daughter, Naomi, were born, raised and work in Canada. Bonnie is a filmmaker, writer and disability rights activist.

Jerry Wasserman - moderator
Professor Emeritus of English and Theatre (2017)

Jerry Wasserman retired in 2016 after 44 years teaching at UBC. Jerry is also an actor and theatre critic with Lifetime Achievement awards from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research and the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Association. He is a member of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame.

Jan. 27 - Hannah Arendt (2012) – directed by Margarethe von Trotta - is part of a trilogy of films by her on prominent women intellectuals, also including films about Rosa Luxembourg and Hildegard von Bingen.  Von Trotta presents the life of this key 20th century intellectual (played, as in the other films of the trilogy, by German actor Barbara Sukowa) by focusing on her contentious response to the Adolph Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.  A Reform German Jew, Arendt was forced into exile to France then the US by the rise of Nazism.  Her attack on Zionism, crystalized in her Eichmann trial reports and book, made her a pariah of her own Jewish people and her conservative personal life has placed her outside of feminism.   

Jane Coop
Professor Emeritus of Music (2012)

Jerry Wasserman - moderator
Professor Emeritus of English and Theatre (2017)

Jerry Wasserman retired in 2016 after 44 years teaching at UBC. Jerry is also an actor and theatre critic with Lifetime Achievement awards from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research and the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Association. He is a member of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame.