From the UN to Vic One: Bob Rae Returns to the Classroom

^{Photo by Neil Gaikwad.}

By Sally Szuster

Bob Rae has spent the past five years in one of the world’s most scrutinized rooms, representing Canada at the United Nations during a period defined by pandemic, war and geopolitical strain.

This fall, he returns to a very different setting: a first-year seminar at Victoria College, where those same global challenges will be examined through discussion and debate rather than high-stakes diplomacy.

Rae will teach in Vic One, the university’s flagship interdisciplinary program that brings small groups of students into discussion-based courses. He taught in the program before 2019; however, this return carries a different immediacy. He arrives fresh from the UN, with the global events his students are trying to understand.

On a recent afternoon, Rae sat down in the Common Room beside Burwash Dining Hall with David Wright, the Kenneth and Patricia Taylor Distinguished Professor of Foreign Affairs, who also teaches in Vic One.

Wright, a former Canadian ambassador to NATO, has spent years teaching at Victoria College, helping students navigate international events as they unfold. The two colleagues and diplomats were reconnecting while comparing notes on what it means to teach in a moment that feels unusually unsettled.

“It’s going to be a very challenging year for our students,” Wright says. Students are arriving after a year marked by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East “and Trump all over the map, creating chaos.”

Wright begins each lecture by asking what has happened since the previous week, inviting students to interpret events before he adds context. The approach keeps the discussion grounded in the present, but it also reveals how relentless that present can feel. “If you go sort of week by week, event by event… it drives you nuts,” he says.

Rae recognizes that same pressure. After years working within institutions designed to manage global crises, he has seen how quickly events accumulate and how difficult it can be to maintain perspective. The pace of change, he suggests, is part of what students are learning to navigate.

“Teaching is really about intergenerational dialogue,” he says. That dialogue reflects a shift in how this generation of students approaches learning. The difference is especially visible in how students gather information. “I find I’m asking students, ‘Have you read this? And they’ll say, ‘Are you listening to that podcast?’”

He plans to ground his teaching in writers like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, using their work to bring order to what can feel like a constant rush of events. The exercise, he explains, is about “looking at who got it right and who got it wrong” as a way of “trying to understand the movement of events as we see them,” from “displacement, famine and hunger and the results of conflict” to the reality that “we have more conflicts than we’ve ever had before.”

From there, the questions widen. “What does living through warfare tell us? … what does it tell us about how to find solutions?” Rae asks, extending that inquiry to newer pressures that echo the worlds Orwell and Huxley imagined, including “AI technology, surveillance societies that become very, very intrusive into people’s lives,” and the enduring importance of values like “freedom” and “equality.”

Both professors are working within a program that has built a reputation for this kind of dialogue-based learning. “I think Vic One has been a hugely successful experiment,” Rae says. He points to the way similar models have spread, but also to the students themselves. “I’m really impressed by their level of interest in making sure that what they’re getting is as good as possible,” Rae says.

That engagement is central to how both instructors think about their role. Wright emphasizes building confidence, asking students to write policy memos and make recommendations as if advising decision-makers. Rae focuses on something more foundational.

“The essential gift that really comes with a university education isn’t about filling your head with a certain fixed amount of knowledge,” he says. “It’s about how do I actually think and keep on thinking as I go through life.”

Back in the Common Room, the conversation moves easily between global institutions and classroom practice. The setting may be quieter than the UN or NATO headquarters, but the questions are not smaller. They are simply being asked earlier, by students who are just beginning to form their own answers.

Originally published in the Spring 2026 issue of Vic Report.

This edition features Kathleen Wynne reflecting on teaching at Victoria College, a Q&A with Professor Ira Wells on his role as president of PEN Canada, and Bob Rae’s return to Vic One after his UN tenure.

Read the full issue →