Norman Hillmer: Doctor of Laws - honoris causa
Norman Hillmer’s commitment to excellence in the study of Canadian history and public policy spans more than four decades. He is Distinguished Research Professor at Carleton University, the Slater Family Scholar at the Max Bell School of Public Policy, McGill University, and a former Senior Historian at the Department of National Defence. Educated at the University of Toronto, where he graduated as a gold medalist, and at Cambridge University, Dr. Hillmer is a scholar of international affairs, Canadian politics, and military history, with a concentration on policy and leadership, on the Canadian-American relationship, and on conflict and its avoidance. He is a member of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Senior Fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, University of Toronto.
Professor Hillmer has authored, co-authored, and edited thirty-two books. His research has been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Japan, and China, and his books have been translated into French, Japanese, and Chinese. He is a two-time winner of the Charles P. Stacey Award for studies of Canadian society and conflict. His Stacey Prize-winning O.D. Skelton: A Portrait of Canadian Ambition (University of Toronto Press, 2015) is a biography of the architect of the modern Canadian public service and the Department of External Affairs. The book was a finalist for the Canada Prize in the Humanities, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and the J.W. Dafoe Book Award, the only volume to appear on all three shortlists. Dr. Hillmer’s peers recognized its significance, a reviewer describing it as a book that “will rank highly among the foremost studies of Canada in the first half of the twentieth century.” Professor Hillmer is also a recipient of the Canada-Japan Prime Minister’s Publishing Award and the Distinguished Service Award of the Canadian Historical Association.
Dr. Hillmer is a scholar whose research, publications, and public outreach have shaped Canadians’ understanding of their country, history, and world. He was identified as one of “the key scholars in Canadian foreign policy today” in a reputational study carried out by John Kirton, University of Toronto, which named his books among those “most often cited on the syllabi of undergraduate courses on Canadian foreign policy” and chosen as “most important” by “leading scholars in the field.”
Professor Hillmer’s influence extends beyond his publications. During a thirty-five-year tenure as President of the Canadian Committee for the History of the Second World War, he broadened the committee’s work to include examinations of twentieth-century international relations, nationalisms, and societal change in Canada, fostering research into and publications on these areas. As Senior Historian at the Department of National Defence from 1981 to 1990, he built a cohort of historians whose research and publications outside of their government work he enthusiastically encouraged. He has advised a wide variety of institutions on historical matters, notably as a Founding Consultant of the Canadian Encyclopedia and a long-time advisor to the National Capital Commission and the Mackenzie King Estate.
Dr. Hillmer joined Carleton University full-time in 1990 and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in international, military, and diplomatic history for over 30 years. In 2016, he was appointed a Chancellor’s Professor. He won his first teaching award in 1994, and has been awarded five more since then, making him a faculty member who has been honoured with every teaching and mentorship award offered by the university. Between 2008 and 2019, Dr. Hillmer served as an adjunct professor at RMC, where he taught courses and supervised graduate students. At Carleton and RMC, he has supervised 95 graduate theses; fourteen of his students became university professors. He has also participated as a guest lecturer at the Canadian Forces College’s Canadian Security Studies and Joint Command and Staff Programmes.