Howard Adelman

In December 2016, Adelman was named a Member of the Order of Canada.

In 2008 Adelman was honored as the keynote speaker at the First Annual Howard Adelman Lecture in celebration of the Centre for Refugee Studies’ 20th anniversary. Held during Refugee Rights Week in Toronto, Adelman reviewed recent research on refugees, suggesting it is probably more beneficial than detrimental to assist refugees.

After retiring in 2003, Adelman was appointed visiting professor at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 2004. In 2008, Adelman became a senior research fellow at the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. He serves as the deputy convener of GovNet, a consortium of researchers on governance issues in Australia, and as research director of the International Consortium of Research on Governance of the Health Workforce. He is producer and host of a weekly television program, Israel Today, broadcast in Canada and parts of the United States.

The author, coauthor or editor of 23 scholarly books and over 100 articles and book chapters, in addition to numerous other papers, addresses, and professional reports, Adelman has written extensively on the Middle East, humanitarian intervention, membership rights, ethics, early warning and conflict management, refugee repatriation, policy and resettlement, including his contribution in 2000 to the Institutional Component of the Early Warning and Conflict Management System set up by IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development) for the Horn of Africa.

Perhaps best known for his work in applied philosophy concerning refugees, immigration policy and genocide, Adelman published a major study entitled Early Warning and Conflict Management: Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda (1996) as part of the 5 volume study International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience. In 1999, he co-edited The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire, already regarded a classic on the subject. Adelman served as an associate editor for the Macmillan three-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (2005). These efforts earned international acclaim.

Adelman was the founder and director of York's Centre for Refugee Studies (1988–1993) and for ten years he was editor of Canada's periodical on refugees, Refuge until 1993.

Adelman served in many university positions at York University, including acting dean of Atkinson College, two terms as director of the graduate program in philosophy, and chair of the Department of Philosophy at York University. He served as Vice-Chair, York University Senate (1980–81), and as its Chair (1981–82). Adelman served as National Chair of Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East (1983–84), and Director of the Refugee Documentation Project (1982–86).

His earlier works included publications on social criticism and reform of universities, including The University Game, co-edited with Dennis Lee (1968), The Beds of Academe (1970), and The Holiversity (1973).

Howard Adelman CM (born January 7, 1938) is a Canadian philosopher and former university professor. He retired as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at York University in 2003. Adelman was one of the founders of Rochdale College, as well as the founder and director of York's Centre for Refugee Studies. He was editor of Refuge for ten years, and since his retirement he has received several honorary university and governmental appointments in Canada and abroad. Adelman was the recipient of numerous awards and grants, and presented the inaugural lecture in a series named in his honor at York University in 2008.

Howard Adelman was born January 7, 1938, in Toronto, Ontario. He earned a B.A. (1960), M.A. (1963), and Ph.D. (1971) in philosophy from the University of Toronto, and was a member of the faculty at York University in Toronto from 1966 until his retirement in 2003. As a nineteen-year-old philosophy student, Adelman was hired in 1958 by the Campus Co-operative to meet a growing need for student housing at the University of Toronto. With Adelman's advice, Campus Co-op acquired additional properties and formed Co-operative College Residences Inc., a non-profit offshoot. Later, while a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Toronto (1963–1964) and assistant professor at York University (1966–1970), Adelman was one of the principal founders of Rochdale College, an experimental "free university" organized on the cooperative principle of its British namesake. After obtaining federal mortgages at well below market rates, Campus Co-op incorporated Rochdale College in 1964. An energetic and entrepreneurial spirit with boundless imagination and a playful sense of humor, at that time Adelman was prone to saying he "teaches at the University of Toronto and studies at Rochdale."