Formerly the Executive Director of the Conference of Defence Associations Institute (CDA Institute), Youri Cormier now teaches at the University of Ottawa and works as an independent consultant. Prior to this, he lectured at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean, the Canadian Forces College, Johns Hopkins University, and King’s College London in a variety of disciplines including political philosophy, military strategy, leadership, international relations, and human rights and justice.
An alumnus of Concordia University (BComm/BA), the Royal Military College of Canada (MA) and King’s College London (PhD), he has held senior executive roles in the non-profit sector in documentary theatre, environmentalism, and youth civic & electoral engagement, and throughout his career has forged multi-year partnerships with Elections Canada, the Canadian Red Cross, the Department of National Defence, NATO, the U.S. Department of State, and the European Commission.
In his formative years, Youri canoed from Montreal to Winnipeg and bicycled from Canada to Mexico, where he volunteered as a human rights observer in the autonomous Zapatista zones of Chiapas. He then undertook a research and speechwriting fellowship at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Brussels, contributing research on climate change and food/water security, NATO-Russia relations, and countering improvised explosive devices.
In 2016, he published the book “War as Paradox: Clausewitz and Hegel on Fighting Doctrines and Ethics” (McGill-Queen’s University Press), which traces the origin and contemporary implications of dialectical war theory. The work was critically acclaimed, received a prestigious scholarly book award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and was later nominated for the Canadian Philosophical Association Biennial Book Prize.