Canada Seminar

A Conversation with Ambassador Bob Rae, Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations, New York

Moderator:
Shiv Ruparell, Co-Chair, Harvard Kennedy School Canada Caucus

Introductory Remarks:
Ayelet Shachar, William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies, Weatherhead Canada Program, and Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Cosponsored by the Consulate General of Canada to Boston

Bob Rae is the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York. He has served in this post since August 4, 2020. Since assuming this role he has been active in all aspects of the work of the UN, culminating in his election to the Presidency of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) for 2024‑25, the second Canadian to assume this role, and joins Lester Pearson (President of the General Assembly 1952‑53) and George Davidson (ECOSOC 1958‑59) as Canadians elected in their personal capacity to preside over UN Charter bodies.

Mr. Rae served as Premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995, and interim Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 2011 to 2013. He was elected to federal and provincial parliaments eleven times between 1978 and 2013. He has been honoured by the alumni of both bodies for his distinguished service.

Originally from Calgary, AB, Shiv Ruparell is a joint Master of Public Policy and Master of Urban Planning student at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Design, respectively. Prior to Harvard, Shiv worked in housing policy and public sector real estate development at CreateTO, a City of Toronto agency. He previously worked in urban mobility policy at the Canadian Urban Transit Association, transit-oriented development in the private sector, public affairs consulting at StrategyCorp, and geopolitical risk advisory at Greenmantle. He has also served as a senior policy advisor to the Mayor of Calgary and to Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. At HKS, he leads the Canada Caucus and the Mobility Professional Interest Council (PIC). Shiv earned his Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Economics from Vassar College and the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). He is bilingual in French and English.

Ayelet Shachar (LL.M., J.S.D., Yale Law School) is the Irving G. and Eleanor D. Tragen Chair in Comparative Law, University of California, Berkeley. Trained in law and political theory, Shachar’s areas of interest include American and comparative immigration law and policy, citizenship theory, borders and human rights, international and transnational law, jurisprudence and legal theory, and women’s rights and religious diversity.

She is the author of more than 100 articles and several award-winning books, including Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2001)—winner of American Political Science Association Foundations of Political Theory Best First Book Award; The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2009) named International Ethics Notable Book in recognition of its “superior scholarship and contribution to the field of international ethics;” and The Shifting Border: Legal Cartographies of Migration and Mobility (Critical Power Series, Manchester University Press, 2020)—shortlisted for the 2022 C.B. Macpherson Prize). Shachar is also the lead editor of the field-defining Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2017 & 2020). Together with Seyla Benhabib, she convened a series of transnational workshops culminating in the publication of Lawless Zones, Rightless Subjects: Migration, Asylum, and Shifting Borders (Cambridge University Press, 2025).