Adjunct professor and former Canadian ambassador Michael Bell was surprised with an honorary degree from the University of Windsor on Friday.

Bell was bestowed with a doctorate of laws by University of Windsor chancellor Ed Lumley at a private dinner on campus with friends, family and colleagues. It was the first time in memory the University has bestowed an honorary degree to a recipient outside a scheduled convocation.

The private dinner also served as an opportunity to celebrate the first of three books detailing the Jerusalem Old City Initiative (JOCI) that Dr. Bell helped co-found in 2003. It was under that pretense that he was surprised with the degree.

“It’s thrilling. Absolutely thrilling,” Bell, 73, said of the honour.

Bell’s ties to Windsor run deep, but it has been his actions across the globe that earned him public respect. After receiving his undergraduate and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Windsor, Bell joined the Canadian Foreign Service and held positions in Kingston, Jamaica; Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; and Rome.

He then reached the highest pinnacle as a diplomat, serving for 16 years in the Middle East as Canada’s ambassador to Jordan, Egypt and twice to Israel.

“Bell has had an extraordinary career in international diplomacy for Canada,” said University of Windsor president Alan Wildeman. “It’s great to celebrate highly successful people, but it’s even greater when they are people who are from your own community.”

After 36 years of working in diplomacy, Bell made the transition to academia.

His first foray into research came at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs and later at the Munk School of Global Affairs.

“It was at the Munk Centre where he started thinking about what he wanted to do in his post-diplomatic life and began analyzing the complex problems of Jerusalem,” said long-time friend and colleague Tom Najem, an associate professor in the University of Windsor’s political science department.

Dr. Najem said it was around this time that he invited Bell to work at the University of Windsor as the Paul Martin Senior Scholar in International Diplomacy and embarked on a project that would soon marry his love of policy with academics.

Bell co-founded the Jerusalem Old City Initiative along with Michael Molloy, John Bell and Najem to develop creative options for the governance and management of the Old City of Jerusalem. The single issue of governing the Old City has been considered by many to be the main impediment to achieving peace between the Israeli and Palestinian governments.

Over the course of 10 years, members of the initiative met with prominent diplomats, policymakers, and influential personalities around the world and developed the Special Regime model which is still considered to be one of the most realistic options for the governance of the Old City.

The culmination of their work is being released this year in a series of three books by Routledge publishing.

“This initiative is the only study in existence that goes into the minutiae of zoning, public services, staffing, security and even archaeology,” Bell said. “(The initiative) will have a very long shelf life and will be a significant point of reference for anybody hoping to do something with Jerusalem.”

The first book, Track Two Diplomacy and Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Old City Initiative, was released in February and the following two will be released later this year.

If thoughts of the Middle East filled Bell’s head, it was the City of Windsor that flowed through his veins.

His great, great, great grandfather was soldier, prominent politician and businessman François Baby and his great, great grandfather was James Dougall. Dougall married Baby’s daughter and is credited for giving Windsor its name. Dougall Avenue is named after Bell’s ancestor and Victoria Avenue is named after Dougall’s daughter.

Bell’s maternal grandfather Urgel Jacques and his family are responsible for constructing many of the area’s most elegant buildings. Their names are attached to Ste. Anne’s Parish in Tecumseh, St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in River Canard, St. Alphonsus Parish, the Eldorado and LaSalle apartments on Hanna Street as well as Dillon Hall at the University of Windsor.

The dinner on Friday featured many distinguished guests, including former Chief of Defence Staff and former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. John de Chastelain, and U.S. ambassador to Yemen and Director-General of the Egypt-Israel Multinational Force Arthur Hughes.

“(The honorary degree) is such an honour and a surprise,” Bell said. “It was so nice to be surrounded by colleagues both here at the University where I spent eight years teaching, and the JOCI team.

“It was really a surprise and so nice to see the kind of warmth that was demonstrated.”

Following the tuition fee framework that has been set by the provincial government, the University of Windsor’s Board of Governors has approved an average annual tuition fee increase for domestic students that is capped at three per cent for the 2017-18 academic year and three per cent for 2018-19 academic year.

The approval follows a recommendation from the province that institutions seek a two-year tuition fee approval to align with the significant changes to student assistance being implemented by the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development.

The changes — to be fully implemented in 2018-19 — will result in easier access to aid, more grants for the students who need it most, and more assistance in both grants and loans to students from middle-income families.

The University of Windsor also continues to support students through a series of bursaries, scholarships and awards as well as all forms of aid and assistance.

While the provincial framework caps the average annual domestic student increase at 3 per cent, it allows flexibility for institutions within the overall increase.

As part of the average three per cent cap, tuition fee increases for full-time, undergraduate domestic students at UWindsor will range from zero to five per cent in both 2017-18 and 2018-19, depending on the program.

Graduate tuition fee increases for full-time domestic students will range from zero to five per cent in 2017-18 and one to five per cent in 2018-19.

International tuition fees are not regulated by the ministry, as universities do not receive government grants for international students. As a result, the provincial tuition fee framework does not apply to international students.

Tuition fee increases for full-time international undergraduate students will range from zero to eight per cent in 2017-18 and from zero to eight per cent in 2018-19. Tuition fee increases for full-time international graduate students will range from zero to 7.8 per cent in 2017-18 and zero to 2.5 per cent in 2018-19.

In addition to the tuition increase, the Board of Governors has also set student ancillary fees, meal plan fees and residence fees for only the 2017-18 year as many of these compulsory ancillary fees change each year based on the Consumer Price Index, student referendums, health insurance premiums, and any other student organization requirements.

To find fees approved by the board, visit the Fee Estimator webpage.

A gathering on the UWindsor campus Friday, May 5, will bring together high school guidance counsellors and representatives of Ontario universities to network and share information about admissions, programs, and more.

Lionel Walsh, assistant vice-president for North American recruitment, says Windsor is excited to host the Regional Dialogue, one of seven across the province organized by the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre.

“It is a chance for us to show off our revitalized campus to guidance counsellors from the local catchment area and our sister universities,” he says. “Guidance counsellors can get information about what is new on each campus and, in exchange, give the universities a sense of trends and hot-button topics among high school students.”

Activities will run through the morning in the Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering Innovation, with a tour through the campus to follow. Find more details on the event registration page.

The free public lecture “From Prohibition to Regulation — the Way Forward,” Friday in the Moot Court, will close a two-day conference at Windsor Law.

Anne McLellan, former deputy prime minister and attorney general of Canada, will discuss shifting Canadian drug policy in her talk, the 2017 Public Greenspan Cohn Lecture in Criminal Law. It will begin at 4:30 p.m. May 5 to cap the Transnational Criminal Law in the Americas conference.

The conference is also free and open to the public, but organizers ask that individuals seeking to attend register in advance at bit.ly/TLJN2017.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, says law professor Julie Macfarlane, and so a project she heads has launched a petition campaign to mobilize public support for allowing paralegals to represent clients in Ontario’s family courts.

The National Self-Represented Litigants Project is responding to a review of family legal services by Justice Annemarie Bonkalo for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney-General and the Law Society of Upper Canada. Noting that more than half of the parties in the province’s family court appear without a lawyer, her report recommends licensing paralegals to provide legal services for some family cases.

Dayna Cornwall, co-ordinator of the National Self-Represented Litigants Project, calls the proposal a “huge step forward for access to justice in Ontario,” since paralegals charge “much more affordable” rates than lawyers.

“This is an extremely important access to justice issue for Canadians,” Cornwall says. “The majority of us cannot afford full representation by a lawyer for any length of time, which is why 57 per cent of family litigants across Ontario are self-represented.”

Opposition from the legal establishment has prompted the petition, Dr. Macfarlane says, adding that the project is not usually in the petitions business.

“We are extremely concerned that the legal profession will circle the wagons and succeed in rejecting this reasonable proposal which offers more affordable options to family litigants in Ontario,” she says.

The petition, entitled “Access to Justice Crisis: Let Paralegals Represent Ontarians in Family Court,” is addressed to attorney general Yasir Naqvi and law society treasurer Paul Schabas. The ministry has invited public feedback on the review until May 15.