Dr. Stephen Toope

President, UBC

Dr. Stephen Toope is the President of the University of British Columbia. At UBC Dr. Toope has led a broad commitment to implement the UBC Sustainability Initiative that establishes the university campus as a living laboratory of practical solutions to global urban problems. Dr. Toope will speak to the role UBC and universities can play to make our cities engines of research and innovation. 

Professor Stephen J. Toope was named the 12th President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of British Columbia on March 22, 2006. He will begin his second five-year term in July 2011.

An International Law scholar who represented Western Europe and North America on the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances from 2002-2007, Professor Toope’s academic interests include public international law, legal theory, human rights, international dispute resolution, and family law. Professor Toope is active with many associations, currently serving as Vice Chair of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), Member of the Research Council of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), and Chair of The Research Universities’ Council of British Columbia (RUCBC). He is a Past Chair, World University Services Canada (WUSC).

Prior to joining UBC, Professor Toope was President of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, a position he held since 2002. The Foundation is an independent, private, and non-partisan organization created to promote outstanding research and interaction between researchers in the social sciences and humanities and the wider society. From 1994-1999, Prof. Toope served as the dean of McGill University’s Faculty of Law. Previously, he served as Law Clerk to the Rt. Hon. Chief Justice Dickson of the Supreme Court of Canada from 1986-1987. He continues to conduct research on many aspects of international law and is currently working on issues of human rights and culture, and the origins of international obligation in international society. His most recent book, with Jutta Brunnée, is Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An Interactional Account, which won the American Society of International Law’s 2011 Certificate of Merit for Creative Scholarship. A Canadian citizen, Professor Toope earned his PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge, (1987), his degrees in common law (LLB) and civil law (BCL) with honours from McGill University (1983), and graduated magna cum laude with his AB in History and Literature from Harvard University (1979).

Stephen Toope is married to Paula Rosen and they have three high school and university-aged children.