Event Date: December 10, 2025 - 4:30pm to 6:30pm
Location: FSS 4007, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Registration: Microsoft Forms

Presented by CIPS and the Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC)

Alex Neve is the 2025 CBC Massey Lecturer. At a time of a deepening climate crisis, genocide and mass atrocities, and the rapid rise of hate and divisiveness around the world, his five lectures explored what we need to collectively do to renew and strengthen the vital promise of universal human rights. Marking International Human Rights Day, Alex’s talk will offer an overview of the lectures, including the fractured state of our world and a hopeful way forward. He will be joined by four other members of the uOttawa community, reflecting on what universality means in their human rights work and studies:

• Nadia Abu-Zahra | Associate Professor, School of International, Development and Global Studies (SIDGS), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa
• Mayyu Ali | Rohingya refugee, poet and human rights defender
• Anne Levesque | Holder of the Gordon F. Henderson Chair in Human Rights & Associate Professor, French Common Law Program, Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, University of Ottawa
• Valeria Navarette | Master’s degree candidate, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA), University of Ottawa

Speaker:

Alex Neve is a visiting and adjunct professor in international human rights law at the University of Ottawa and Dalhousie University, and a Senior Fellow with the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He served as Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada from 2000 – 2020. He is a lawyer, with a Master’s Degree in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex. Alex is an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has honorary doctorate of law degrees from the University of New Brunswick, the University of Waterloo and St. Thomas University.