Michael Hart

Emeritus Professor, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs

Michael Hart retired in 2015 from Carleton University where he held the Simon Reisman chair in trade policy at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. He taught courses on the laws and institutions of international trade, Canadian foreign policy, and the politics of climate change. He held the Fulbright-Woodrow Wilson Center Visiting Research Chair in Canada-US Relations in 2004-05. Concurrently, he was also a Scholar-in-Residence in the School of International Service and a Senior Fellow in the Center for North American Studies at American University in Washington. Hart is also a policy advisor for The Heartland Institute. 

He is a former official in Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, where he specialized in trade policy and trade negotiations. He was involved in the Canada-US Free Trade Negotiations, the North American Free Trade Negotiations and various GATT, textile, and commodity negotiations.

He was founding director of Carleton’s Centre for Trade Policy and Law and stepped down in September 1996 after a second term as director. As a distinguished fellow of the Centre, he has led training and advisory missions to Russia, Vietnam, the Caribbean, and Central America, and taught training courses for the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Monterey Institute for International Studies, and various universities in Canada and the United States.

He holds an MA from the University of Toronto in medieval history and is the author, editor, or co-editor of more than a dozen books and numerous articles and chapters in books on international trade and public policy issues, including A Trading Nation, short-listed for the Donner Prize (Public Policy), the J.W. Dafoe Prize (History), the Donald V. Smiley Prize (Political Science), and Purvis Prize (Economics) in 2003  and Decision at Midnight, short-listed for the for the Gelber Prize and the Canadian Business Book Award in 1995.  His last book, From Pride to Influence: Towards a New Canadian Foreign Policy, is available from UBC Press. He has just completed a new book on science and public policy: Hubris: The Troubling Science, Economics, and Politics of Climate Change. For further information, go to http://compleatdesktops.com/hubris-the-troubling-science-economics-and-politics-of-climate-change/