William Leiss

William Leiss OC FRSC (born 1939) is an American-Canadian academic who served as President of the Royal Society of Canada from 1999 to 2001.

William Leiss OC FRSC
Born	1939 (age 81–82) Long Island, New York, US
Academic background
Alma mater	Fairleigh Dickinson University Brandeis University University of California, San Diego
Thesis	The Domination of Nature (1969)
Doctoral advisor	Herbert Marcuse[1]
Academic work
School or tradition	Critical theory
Institutions	University of Regina York University University of Toronto Simon Fraser University Queen's University University of Calgary
Doctoral students	Ian Angus[2] Sut Jhally[3]
Main interests	Environment science and society risk communication
Website	leiss.ca

Born on Long Island, New York, at the end of 1939, he grew up in rural Pennsylvania. He began his university education in New Jersey, at Fairleigh Dickinson University, graduating in 1956 with a Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude (major in history and minor in accounting); then in Massachusetts, with a Master of Arts degree in the history of ideas program at Brandeis University (1963); and finally with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego (1969). Leiss studied with Herbert Marcuse at the University of California.

Leiss started his academic career in the political science department at the University of Regina, before moving on in 1973 to two stints with the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University (also political science and the graduate programme in social and political thought there), interrupted by a brief stay at the University of Toronto's Department of Sociology; then in 1980 to the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, where he was department chair for six years and later Vice-President, Research. He was awarded the five-year, externally funded Eco-Research Chair in Environmental Policy at the School of Policy Studies, Queen's University, in 1994 and was then in the Faculty of Management at the University of Calgary where he held a five-year research chair, the NSERC/SSHRC/Industry Chair in Risk Communication and Public Policy, funded under the granting councils' Management of Technological Change program. He is now at the University of Ottawa, in the R. Samuel McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment as Scientist and Adjunct Professor.

His work on risk communication in science and policy has informed recent analysis on biotechnology governance in Canada by political scientists G. Bruce Doern and Michael J. Prince.[4]

In 2003, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Publications

• "Husserl's Crisis". Telos 8 (Summer 1971). New York: Telos Press.
• The Domination of Nature, first published in 1972
• The Limits to Satisfaction (1976)
• Social Communication in Advertising (1986)
• C. B. Macpherson: Dilemmas of Liberalism and Socialism, Second Edition (2009)
• Under Technology's Thumb (1990)
• Risk and Responsibility (1994)
• Mad Cows and Mother's Milk (1997)
• In the Chamber of Risks (2001)
• Hera (2006)
• The Doom Loop in the Financial Sector, & Other Black Holes of Risk (2010)

References

• "Canadian Who's Who 1997 entry". University of Toronto Press.
• "Leiss.ca web page".
• Interview with CTheory.net

1. http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/essentialmarcuse.doc
2. http://figureground.org/interview-with-ian-angus/
3. http://leiss.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Leiss-Full-CV-2018.docx p. 16
4. Doern, G. Bruce; Prince, Michael J. (2012). Three Bio-Realms: Biotechnology and the Governance of Food, Health, and Life in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442611542.

External links

• Official website