2010 Gandel Orator - Professor Irwin Cotler
Member of Parliament (Mount Royal, Canada) Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
Irwin Cotler is Professor of Law Emeritus, at the prestigious McGill University Faculty of Law, Canada. He is the leading authority in the struggle against racism and an internationally recognised human rights lawyer.
Professor Cotler served as Counsel to former Prisoners of Conscience in the Soviet Union, South Africa, Latin America and Asia including such political prisoners as Natan Sharansky, Andrei Sakharov and Nelson Mandela.
A constitutional and comparative law scholar, he has litigated every section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including landmark cases in the areas of free speech, women's rights, minority rights, war crimes justice, prisoner's rights and peace law. He has testified as an expert witness on human rights before Parliamentary Committees in Canada, the United States, Russia, Sweden, Norway and Israel.
He is a long-time advocate of the rights of visible minorities and Counsel to numerous national and international NGOs and chair of the Canadian National Conference on Aboriginal Rights. He has also been a regular Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Professor Cotler was in Melbourne for the 1998 ADC Annual Oration where his topic,
"From The Final Solution to The Stolen Generation: An International Perspective on the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights & The United Nations Genocide Convention" was extremely well-received and his presentation most highly regarded.
Melbourne Oration: Sunday, 18 July 2010. St Kilda Hebrew Congregation 7.30 pm
Sydney Oration: Wednesday 21 July 2010. Moriah College 7.30 pm
Links: http://irwincotler.liberal.ca/en/biography
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/cotler.html
Cotler speaking at the Yom Ha'Shoah Holocaust Commemoration ceremony,
Geneva, 20 April, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYS9K3yc9TE
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Antisemitism 
