This year, the Department Political Science celebrates the 10th year of the Mark Zacher Distinguished Speaker Lecture. The Zacher Lecture was created to honour former UBC Political Science Professor Mark Zacher’s contribution to the teaching, understanding and scholarship of international affairs. Each year, the Department invites a prominent scholar, leader, or senior elected official who has made significant contributions to the field of international affairs to give a series of lectures and meet with alumni, students, faculty, and community members.
Mark Zacher
Mark Zacher was a Professor in the Department for almost forty years and a giant in the study of international affairs. Among his greatest contributions to the field was his writing on the international norm of territorial integrity and the idea that force should not be used to alter state boundaries – a topic that is even more relevant in our world today. The 2023 speaker, Professor Kathryn Stoner of Stanford University, referenced Zacher’s work in the opening remarks of her talk on Russia’s war in Ukraine, calling the ongoing war a “very specific case of breaking that norm.”
One of the first speakers in the Zacher lecture series was Ron Deibert (BA’88, PhD’95), Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and UBC alumnus. Deibert was accepted into UBC Political Science’s doctoral program after an initial rejection because Zacher advocated for his acceptance, and he went on to complete his PhD under Zacher’s supervision.
What stands out to Deibert about his experience studying under Zacher was the amount of time that he devoted to his students.
“I would meet with him for lunch, almost every day we had lunch together. And we would just talk about the world, talk about theory, talk about philosophy, talk about my research,” recalled Deibert. “He was extremely generous of his time.”
Zacher suggested to Deibert that he choose what Zacher called the “telecommunications revolution” as his research focus, and following Zacher’s advice set Deibert down an academic path that eventually led to his current position as the director of UofT’s renowned Citizen Lab.
“Mark played two major roles in my career development. One was rescuing me from this rejection and helping me get a spot in the program,” said Deibert. “And the second was directing me to what is probably the most profound change in world politics that’s happened, which is the internet and the information revolution, which I’ve been studying ever since.”
Deibert remained in touch with Zacher after completing his PhD and moving to Toronto shortly afterward. Though Deibert returned to Vancouver many times over the years to see family and speak at UBC, returning to the Department to deliver the Zacher Lecture in 2013 felt particularly significant.
“Mark had recently passed away. And I was the second person to deliver this talk. So, it was a great honor for me to do this,” he said. “Still makes me a bit verklempt.”
The Zacher Lecture honours not only the work that Zacher did in the field of global governance, but also his impact on the Department. He was a champion of cooperation and mentorship, focusing much of his time on fostering relationships with his students and encouraging intellectual exchange and community.
“An ongoing legacy of the Zacher series is that it continues to do what Mark did – it brings people together, focusing on issues of international relations,” said Allen Sens, a Professor in the Department who worked closely with Zacher. “And it honours his ongoing effort to try to develop relationships and collaborations, both personal and intellectual.”
Through his network of connections, Zacher brought scholars from around the world to UBC to deliver seminars and lectures. It is no exaggeration to say that the Lecture was made possible largely because of his emphasis on relationship building, with its funding from generous alumni donors, several of whom were former students of Zacher.
The Zacher Lecture’s transition to a new home in the Department of Political Science in 2018 after its first five years at the Vancouver Institute helped spur the Department’s efforts to engage more deeply with its alumni. The enthusiastic response to the lecture from Political Science and International Relations alumni pushed the department to create more opportunities for alumni engagement, like our annual “Politics to Watch” event.
“What’s exciting about the lecture is that it’s an event that combines intellectual content and continuing to learn about the world from experts in the field with social connection and community building,” said Alan Jacobs, Professor of Political Science and Head of the Department. “And that’s what we’ve tried to do in most of the alumni events that we’ve built over the last few years.”
This year, the Department will welcome Professor Oona Hathaway of Yale University to deliver the Zacher Lecture on February 28, and her talk will examine the history of the global legal order and the impact the war in Ukraine may have on it. Zacher’s legacy as a scholar, colleague and mentor will continue in this lecture and many more to come.
