Speeches on Multiculturalism

Former Prime Minister of Great Britain, David Cameron, held a famous speech on multiculturalism in 2012 at the Munich Security Conference. Current Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, held a famous speech in 2015 at the Assembly of First Nations, where he announced that Canada was going to renew its relationship with its native groups.

After having seen Cameron’s speech, write a blog post of about 400 words where you present the basic ideas of the speech, comment on the speaker’s attitude and way of presenting his ideas to the audience. Also, choose one of the following statements and discuss them in writing on your blog.

  • Non-violent extremists are just as dangerous as violent ones.
  • Universities are bastions of freedom of speech and democracy; therefore, all ideologies no matter how extreme should be allowed to be taught.
  • Multiculturalism separates groups of people from each other, assimilation should be encouraged.

On Wednesday, January 10th, we are going to watch Trudeau’s speech and blog the assignment handed out to you in class about how the Prime Minister and Canadian politicians have followed through on the promises made in this 2015 speech.

 

 

Gran Torino

Gran Torino is a film released in 2008, staring Clint Eastwood – a war veteran trying to comes to terms with the multicultural society his neighborhood is turning into.

Gran_Torino_poster

(Gran Torino movie poster, picture taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Torino)

It is an excellent film, with a 8,2 rating on IMDB, portraying multiculturalism, its challenges and its benefits.

Before watching the film you will be given the movie poster and some questions about the symbolism and importance of cars, and the city of Detroit, about American war veterans and Asian Americans in the USA.

Write a short blog post where you analyze the movie poster – what kind of impression does it give of the movie?

Also, try to answer the questions you have been given in this blog post. It should be posted on your blog today, as you will have about 45 minutes to work with it in class.