Colin Goad comes from Toronto. He is an MPhil candidate in Political Theory at St. Hugh’s College, University of Oxford, having completed his Honours BA in Political Studies and History at Queen’s University in Kingston.
Colin’s research lies at the intersection of the debate between cosmopolitanism, and statism and nationalism. Cosmopolitans tend to believe that all persons are deserving of equal treatment, regardless of their personal attachments (perhaps with the notable exception of familial attachments). In practice this means the cosmopolitan believes a Canadian national has the same obligations to foreign nationals as they do to fellow Canadians or even neighbours. Statists and nationalists by contrast believe that there are special associational duties we all owe to our co-nationals. Colin hopes to develop an intermediary account to bridge these two often opposing perspectives.
He starts from a position that assumes all individuals have an interest in leading an autonomous life — free from undue constraints — in which they can make choices between meaningful opportunities. Colin holds that realizing this interest in autonomy entails uncontroversial individual rights to freedom of speech, freedom of association and basic subsistence. However, Colin contends that necessary to the exercise of autonomy is that individuals exist with contextual frameworks which imbue their choices with meaning; and that these frameworks are well provided by national collectives. From this grounding interest in autonomy, the collective/national rights necessary to protect the existence of this framework can be derived. Importantly, these national rights remain secondary to the specified prerequisite individual rights.
By emphasising both the individual and the collective, Colin hopes to develop a framework which can adjudicate between individual’s claims on the collective, the claims of the collective on the individual, and claims made by collectives on one another. This last point is prescient in the Canadian context, as Indigenous nations seek to renegotiate their relationship with the Crown, forcing Canada to reconcile with its historic injustices. The ability to identify principled solutions to such nation-to-nation disputes is a guiding goal of his project.
Colin’s work speaks to the challenge of addressing conflicts among co-nationals (such as ethnic or minority groups) based on a principled moral argument. His arguments are intended to legitimize an inclusive multinational civic nationalism and provide a framework to assess the justness of existing states in relation to their nations and citizens. In developing these arguments in an accessible way, Colin hopes to help to resist the pernicious effects of xenophobic and nationalist sentiment that are becoming increasingly prevalent in society.
While not studying, Colin has worked for the Strategic Regional Research Alliance on public transport policy issues in Toronto and in the Office of the Mayor of Toronto on a range of constituency issues. He also leads wilderness white-water canoe trips in remote areas of Northern Quebec and Ontario, and can play a mean hand of Euchre.
