What is left of our democratic ambitions?
It had been planned for several months, but as fate would have it, the University of Montreal hosted the Conférences de la montagne "Challenges of democracy" symposium less than a week after the attacks on Paris. No fewer than 1,000 people arrived at the University of Montreal's Ernest-Cormier Amphitheatre on November 19, 2015 to hear two great voices of political philosophy - Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of McGill University, and Michael J. Sandel, professor at Harvard University, exchange their views on the issues facing the contemporary world with regard to the rise of terrorism. Terrorism had forced another scheduled and highly anticipated speaker, the French sociologist and intellectual Pierre Rosanvallon, to return to France a few days before the conference.