Category: What’s New

Check out this YouTube video, filmed on May 2, 2024, when I had the pleasure of speaking about my book Queer Diplomacy at the University of London! Many thanks go to Dr. Corinne Lennox and the Human Rights Consortium for hosting this event, which took place at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies within the School of Advanced Study. Academics, diplomats and community activists came together for a thought-provoking discussion on multilateralism and LGBTQ rights.

BELFAST
Tuesday, April 30, 2024, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Queen’s University Belfast, Canada Room, University Road, Belfast B27 1NN
More info and RSVP here.

GLASGOW
Wednesday, May 1, 2024, 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM
University of Glasgow, Room 916, 42 Bute Gardens (previously known as the Adam Smith Building) More info and RSVP here.

LONDON
Thursday, May 2, 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM
Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Room G35, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU
More info and RSVP here.

SOFIA
Friday, May 10, 6:00 PM
Rainbow Hub, Knyaginya Maria Luisa blvd. 45, 1000 Sofia
More info.

Posted on March 11, 2024 | Last year, I spoke about my book Queer Diplomacy to over a hundred people at five universities and a bookstore – in the US, Canada, Sweden and the UK. After years of incubating these ideas, it was so satisfying to set them free to circulate the world of ideas.

•  In January 2023, I spoke to graduate students at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. They came prepared – having read excerpts of my book – leading to a lively Q&A that touched on post-colonial constructs of sexuality and the role of US foreign policy. The Patterson School has a dynamic Master’s program with an impressive faculty that prepares graduates for careers as foreign service officers, business leaders and community advocates. In 2014 and 2015, I was in Lexington as Diplomat in Residence; the year was gratifying and intellectually stimulating at a time when I was travelling to Geneva and New York to research the UN human rights system.
  
  
• In April 2023, I travelled to Sweden to speak to students in the University of Gothenburg’s Gender and Diplomacy Program in the Department of Political Science, under the leadership of Dr. Ann Towns, an expert on the gendered practices and hierarchies in diplomacy. During my presentation and our frank discussion that ensued, I was impressed with the diverse backgrounds, interests and theoretical perspectives of the scholars I met. I wandered the rainy streets and explored the cozy cafes around the massive campus, eavesdropping on intellectual discussions percolating throughout a new and hopeful generation of global citizens. 
  
  
• In April 2023, I also visited Queen Elizabeth House, the nerve-centre of the University of Oxford’s Department of International Development. My lecture to graduate students about my book was organized by Dr. Corneliu Bjola, a global expert on digital diplomacy and strategies for countering disinformation and propaganda. The students took careful notes: very polite and a bit reserved! Some sought out my views on the UN Human Rights Council; others were probed the intersection of queer identity and diplomacy. As they pondered the careers in international affairs that unfolded before them, I fondly recalled a time of great idealism and my hunger to absorb, sponge-like, new ways of knowing.
  
  
• In May 2023, I spoke to members of the queer community about my book at the Glad Day Bookstore in Toronto. The event was organized by Dignity Network Canada, a coalition of Canadian organizations working to strengthen global LGBTQ rights, and moderated by Dr. Momin Rahman, a sociologist and expert on queer identity at Trent University. This talk was recorded, and excerpts appeared on a podcast on CBC IDEAS on February 7, 2024. 
  
  
• In July 2023, I was invited by Dr. Nadine Fabbi, a Canadian Studies scholar at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies, to do a lecture on global homophia. UW helped develop a two-day global studies seminar for community college faculty from across Washington state coming from a wide array of disciplines and perspectives. The overarching theme was a commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DIE), a movement now under attack in many quarters of the USA. I was struck by the difference in the questions of these participants – with more lived experience, they viscerally connected to the links I made between the personal and the political in my research. 
  
  

  

  
  
• In November 2023, I participated in a panel discussion in my hometown, at the University of Ottawa’s Centre for International Policy Studies. Titled “Queer Diplomacy,” the well-attended panel was organized by Dr. Stephen Brown, a leading scholar on global LGBT rights, decolonization, and the impact of decriminalization in the Global South. The event was co-sponsored by Dignity Network Canada, the German Embassy in Ottawa, and the Pride Network at Global Affairs Canada. I was in excellent company; the other speakers were: German diplomat Karina Hausimeier; Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity; and Caleb Orozco, Executive Director of UNIBAM – an LGBT human rights organization in Belize – who joined via videolink. We were peppered with a range of questions that reflected the diverse experience of the audience, which included foreign diplomats, Canadian policymakers, human rights advocates, and academics. I slept well that night, grateful in the knowledge that, a year after its publication, Queer Diplomacy did not live in an ivory tower: it was “out there” for the world to debate! A two-hour YouTube video of the panel discussion is available here.

Posted on February 8, 2024 | In 1984, activist Douglas Victor Janoff marched to the United Nations in New York to demand international LGBTQ rights. 35 years later, he became a Canadian diplomat – and started pushing for change from within. He reflects on the struggle for global LGBT rights, both as an insider and an outsider, in his book Queer Diplomacy: Homophobia, International Relations, and LGBT Human Rights.

There are 3 ways to listen to the full episode:

• Click on this link and you can automatically listen to the podcast on your computer or phone; or
  
• Click on this news article and then, at the beginning of the article, click on the link to listen to the interview; or
  
• Listen to CBC IDEAS wherever you get your podcasts, and click on the program for Feb. 7, 2024. 

Posted on October 13, 2023

Event Date: November 1, 2023 – 4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location: FSS 4004, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Registration: Google Forms

Presented by CIPS in partnership with the Dignity Network Canada, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Ottawa and GAC 2SLGBTQI+ Pride Network

Diplomats have become increasingly assertive in their promotion of the rights of sexual and gender minorities, both in their bilateral relationships and within multilateral bodies such as the UN, by developing strategic alliances with civil society organizations that aim to protect LGBTQI+ rights in the Global South. Join us for a panel discussion with participants from Canada’s and Germany’s foreign services and from LGBTQI+ rights organizations based in Canada and Belize to discuss their experience of directly or indirectly engaging in “queer diplomacy” and to reflect on its successes, its challenges and its future. Read more.

Welcome to my new website!

Posted on October 22, 2022 | Thank you for checking out my new website douglasvictorjanoff.com, a platform that will allow me put out the occasional blog. To kick things off on a high note, consider the image on the right, taken in Dubai in 2019 in the shadow of in the shadow of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.

As Sophia in the Golden Girls would say, “Picture this!” It was Christmas 2019. I was serving as the human rights officer at the Canadian Embassy in Afghanistan and had managed to sneak away for a few days of R&R, shopping at gourmet delis and luxuriating by the pool. It was the calm before the storm. Two months later, the US and the Taliban signed an agreement that triggered an explosion in the number of Afghan civilian casualties, including some of the human rights activists who had visited me at the Embassy just before this picture was taken – hunted down on the streets of Kabul and assassinated.

Meanwhile, the pandemic was beginning its grim global march. Less than three months after this picture was taken, as the first wave was decimating Europe, I ended up in a Madrid hospital. I was evacuated to Canada and spent several months recovering in a hotel room in Ottawa. There was tremendous suffering at that time: Jaime, a Colombian friend who had saved my life 37 years earlier, died in a New York hospital.

During the lockdowns, I channelled my energy into other projects, including finishing my Ph.D. dissertation, which provided the basis for my book Queer Diplomacy. For a detailed overview of the contents of the book, you can go to the publisher’s link, scroll down to the list of chapters, and click on each chapter to read an abstract.

Many thanks to Toronto artist, writer and director Raymond Helkio for patiently creating this website. It began as a platform for information about Queer Diplomacy and what people are saying about it – I also share a few details of my life, my professional experience, my previous writings and research, and how to contact me. However, since I’m not very active on social media, I’m hoping my book – and this website – will take me a step closer towards bursting the residual bubbles of grief and isolation and reconnecting me the wider world. Feel free to connect with me anytime.