Elected Curator of the Global Shapers Ottawa Hub

Pleased to share that yesterday I was elected Curator of the Global Shapers Ottawa Hub, part of the Global Shapers Community founded by the World Economic Forum, of which I have been a member for the last year.

I am honoured to have been provided this leadership opportunity, and look forward to leading and executing many more projects, such as Shaping Davos: Rethinking Politics, which the Ottawa Hub hosted on January 22/23. Congratulations as well to the Hub's new Vice Curator, Ms. Maria Habanikova, who I look forward to working with. Special thanks to outgoing curator, Komal Minhas, for her strong example and for encouraging me to run for the position.

Be sure to check out the links for more info. - R.O.

"How to Be a Leader" - My Interview in the UTSC Commons Magazine

In January I had the great honour of being jointly interviewed with my dad for a feature article on "How to Be a Leader" in the University of Toronto Scarborough's 'Commons' magazine. Check it out on pages 7-8 here, or read it copied below. - R.O.
Magazine Source URL: http://read.uberflip.com/i/119514

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lieutenant Governor of Ontario The Honourable David C. Onley and his son Robert on what it takes to become a leader.

The Honourable David C. Onley (left) and Robert Onley.

The Honourable David C. Onley (BA, 1975), Ontario's 28th Lieutenant Governor, has held many leadership roles over his career in broadcasting and public service. His Honour's son, Robert Onley (BA, 2009), is an articling law student, a former student council president and a member of Youth Diplomacy, an international youth think tank. Both are proud UTSC alumni, so UTSC Commons asked them to sit down in His Honour's office at Queen's Park to explore the concept of leadership.

His Honour: When was the first time you realized somebody was a leader?

Robert Onley: In school, when I realized my sixth-grade teacher Mr. Hazlewood was influencing the way I was thinking.

HH: When I was student council president at Scarborough College (now UTSC) our principal was Wynne Plumptre. He was a remarkably dignified gentleman, a scholar and a diplomat. This was at a time in the early 1970s of great student activism. And there were many laudable attempts by the administration to reach out to student groups and involve students in the decision-making process. Principal Plumptre did this with great aplomb. He was a real conciliator. I remember being conscious of the fact that he was practicing a form of leadership that I found enormously impressive.

RO: A great leader creates opportunities for people. And if you want to lead, it's up to you to seize these opportunities. Universities can provide opportunities for people to exercise skills they might have deep inside them. That's huge. Leaders understand that if you don't have the opportunities, you'll never realize your potential.

HH: You learn bits of leadership as you go along. My late father, Robert's grandfather, was a navigator in WW2 with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Many of my Dad's friends had fought in the war. These were amazing guys. They flew Lancaster bombers and Hurricanes and Sunderlands. These guys were decision makers, and when they came home they moved into various leadership positions in society. I'm not sure how much of leadership can be taught, but I'm sure a good portion of it is something you can learn.

RO: We've transformed the way our generation rallies around causes and exhibits leadership. We'll never displace the old notions of political leadership and government, but the ability of young people to quickly coordinate and connect on ideas... we need to harness that for good. For three years I've been a part of Youth Diplomacy, an international NGO that runs G8/G20 Youth Summits. One year the summit was in Paris and I represented Canada as the Minister of Defense. This was, for me, a staggering event, a week-long set of negotiations with my counter-parts from the G8. We had some of the most intense debates over nuclear-proliferation policy, Iran, Libya, defense spending, piracy. And at the end of it we collaborated using Skype, Google Docs and Facebook Messenger to draft a communiqué that summed up the positions we could agree to. In a matter of five days we produced a mini-essay that consolidated the collective wisdom of the G8 youth. Here's what makes that so mind-blowing: for the first time in history, the leaders of tomorrow are already communicating with each other today. This is unprecedented. The rules of the game have changed.

HH: A leader still has to lead, though. The principles of leadership are still the same: you have to inspire people. You have to convince them that they can trust you to make the right decisions even when they don't fully agree with it, whether that's in the boardroom, in cabinet or in the prime minister's office. From my experience, one of the great leadership skills is the capacity to listen to other people. As long as people are being listened to, and they know their input is valued and appreciated, they'll follow you.

RO: A good leader is also able to find and keep the right people.

HH: That's crucial. You just can't do it yourself. If you try to, you won't succeed. History is littered with presidents and prime ministers who tried to do it all by themselves.

RO: As a leader, I don't just want "Yes" people. I want people who will stand up to me or make me sit down and listen. You need a counterweight, someone who puts you in your place a little bit. Because if you don't have that, you risk trampling the roses.

HH: There is such a thing as a born leader, but born leaders can still bomb out if they don't choose the right people or have the right skill sets.

RO: And if you're lucky, you might have good leaders at home, in your own family. I've always been inspired by how much my Dad has accomplished in his life. Having battled polio at a young age, and having fought through it all the way to today... I've always felt that if he can do that, with his condition, imagine what I can do! I have an unrivalled sense of optimism in my own capabilities because I see what can be done.

HH: Well, I was inspired by my Dad, but also inspired by my mother. She was the one who taught me how to be a pit-bull, to fight to get things fixed. When my grandmother came down with Alzheimer's in 1974, nobody knew what it meant. So my mother said, "Well then, we need to have an Alzheimer's Society." So along with another lady she founded the very first chapter of the Alzheimer's Society. That wasn't political or military leadership, but it was leadership.

RO: In the end, leaders are doers. They get stuff done. They say, "this is wrong," or "this needs to change" and they just make it happen. That's where universities come in. By presenting opportunities for students to engage with the world, UTSC can help create immense change. If you live intentionally and take opportunities and make decisions, you can do so much. That's what being a leader is all about.

Westerner's who fuel the Muslim world's grievance culture

As violent protests rage across the Middle East at the "Innocence of Muslims" film, this article challenges Western condemnation of the film and poses one simple truth: "It stands to reason that those who are genuinely enraged by this film have a choice about their behaviour. To suggest otherwise is to paint Muslims as backward people who cannot respond to insults except by the sword or the bomb." So then why does the West continue to bow to medieval extremists bent on igniting violence by condemning the film as much as the protesters? - R.O.   (Update: Another excellent article.)

Westerner's who fuel the Muslim world's grievance culture
Condemning the "grievance" as much as the perpetrator is fast becoming the default response to mass Islamist violence. This must not be allowed to stand.

By: Jeremy Havardi

Rather predictably, The Guardian this week argued that the wave of violence sweeping the Middle East was a spontaneous reaction to the anti Islamic film, "The Innocence of Islam". The film, we were told, set off a "long fuse that led to an explosion of violence that killed the US ambassador to Libya".

The Independent adopted a similar line with its article headlined: "An incendiary film –and the man killed in the crossfire". It added: "The mob enraged by film mocking Prophet Mohamed kills US ambassador in Benghazi rocket attack".

Then on BBC Newsnight on Thursday, ex-Foreign Office mandarin Sir Jeremy Greenstock waded in. The film, he declared, was definitely the "immediate, proximate cause" of the bloodshed.

Nor was this a British reaction alone, for in the US Hilary Clinton made the same causal linkage. The Guardian's Andrew Brown went even further. "The Innocence of Islam" was an "incitement to religious hatred" that deserved to be banned.

Those who blame this murderous mayhem on an obscure film miss the point by the proverbial country mile. The killing of the ambassador appeared to be the result of a carefully planned assassination by jihadist extremists, such as the violent Sunni group, Ansar al Sharia, rather than a mere spontaneous act of anger.

Far from being an expression of Muslim protest in Libya, it was a deranged act of militancy from radicalised Muslims for whom America and all western influences are mortal enemies. The same can be said for much of the violence sweeping every major Arab capital right now. Reducing murderous violence to "protest" risks legitimising behaviour or at least failing to understand its true motivations.

Certainly, one can understand why this amateurish production, a 13 minute clip of which appeared on YouTube, was insulting to Muslims. Its depiction of Muhammad as a pervert and child molester was certainly designed to be intensely provocative. But so are the venomous anti-Semitic and anti-Christian cartoons and images that proliferate in the Middle East. These too cause outrage but we never see mosques or the embassies of Muslim states torched as a result, and rightly so.

It stands to reason that those who are genuinely enraged by this film have a choice about their behaviour. To suggest otherwise is to paint Muslims as backward people who cannot respond to insults except by the sword or the bomb.

It attributes to them a complete inability to defuse their rage by more democratic forms of protest, effectively viewing them as savages from which little better can be expected. Such a view panders to the Islamist grievance culture rather than demanding that Muslims, like everyone else, behave better.

But condemning the "grievance" as much as the perpetrator is fast becoming the default response to mass Islamist violence. In 2002, Muslim mobs went on a murderous rampage in Nigeria, following newspaper comments that Mohammed would have approved the Miss World pageant which was being held in that country. Afterwards, some commentators condemned the organisers of Miss World in more forthright terms than the violent jihadists.

In 2006, there was a prolonged and outrageous display of global violence following the publication of satirical Danish cartoons in Jyllands-Posten. Some of the cartoons depicted the prophet Mohammed in unflattering terms though again, much of the violence was stoked up by local agitators using these cartoons as an excuse.

But as well as condemning sword bearing, embassy burning fanatics, former British Foreign Minister Jack Straw and some of his European counterparts condemned "irresponsible" Danish newspaper editors for publishing the material.

There was another global outpouring of Muslim rage following a speech by the Pope in September 2006 in which he quoted an obscure medieval Emperor, Manuel II. Manuel had condemned Muhammed’s command to "spread by the sword the faith he preached" and the Pope noted, quite correctly, that Islam had a history of using force to spread and defend the faith.

Indeed the instant frenzy of anti-Christian violence was evidence for that very point. Again, many non-Muslims made the mistake of criticising the Pope’s comments, rather than condemning the illegitimate responses of the extremists. Some media outlets gave airtime to the outrageous and incendiary comments of the Islamist Anjem Chaudhry who argued that "capital punishment" would be an appropriate punishment for the Pope.

Lumping offensive remarks or publications with barbaric behaviour excuses the latter while nurturing the extremists’ own victim mentality. But in one sense, this already mirrors the Zeitgeist in liberal Europe. Islamic fanaticism and its terrorist offshoots are seen as the understandable response of a minority aggrieved at "unjust" foreign policy. It is our "provocative" policies in Iraq, Afghanistan or "Palestine" that cause a violent reaction among Muslims.

Hence, it is necessary both to condemn the terrorism and address its "root causes" in foreign policy. As well as being an intellectually false argument, it is morally dubious because it suggests that there is only one inevitable way for enraged Muslims to respond to "our" behaviour. Terrorism remains a choice, and a highly illegitimate one.

Certainly, "The Innocence of Muslims", like the Danish cartoons, is provocative and, for most Muslims, blasphemous. But mob terror and the slaughter of innocents is the preserve of those with an unyielding hatred for western values.

To truly defend those values, our leaders must uphold a system in which we can be offended and, in turn, give offence. The alternative is that we cease to be a magnet for those fleeing from repressive and backward societies.

Jeremy Havardi is a journalist and the author of two books: Falling to Pieces, and The Greatest Briton