Academy of Ideas

A keynote from the Battle of Ideas 2016 ‘If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all.’ Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? (1784) When One Direction announced they were splitting up, child psychologists offered parents of grieving tweenies advice on how to console their offspring. In the same month, parents were also told by researchers how long they should read to their children each day. Business Secretary Sajid Javid has ordered university heads to establish a taskforce to take on sexist ‘lad culture’ and guide students to conduct their interpersonal relations in line with enlightened mores. Of course, not everyone follows expert advice on any of the above. Policy advisers and academic experts frequently complain about those who refuse to acknowledge their wisdom and carry on smoking, drinking sugary pop, being laddish. Cutting-edge techniques of behavioural psychology are being marshalled to deal with this problem. The UK’s Behavioural Insights Team, now a private company, has quadrupled in size since it was spun out of government in 2014. It is now working for the World Bank and the UN, while ‘nudge’ teams are being established in Australia, Singapore, Germany and the US. The ubiquity of nudge heralds a new renaissance for unapologetic paternalism. But where does that leave the great Enlightenment breakthrough, the idea that individuals should be self-determining and capable of making their own choices? Kant’s description of ‘mankind’s exit from his self-incurred immaturity’ seems strangely at odds with today’s enthusiasm for paternalistic intervention. For Kant, the outcome of any particular choice was less important than the cultivation of moral autonomy. The Enlightenment idea was that we should stop ‘outsourcing’ decisions about how to live to external agencies, whether the church, the monarchy, or some natural order. Today, though, new forms of authority have taken their place, leaving us just as childlike in relation to the new experts. Sceptics about the idea of autonomy suggest breakthroughs in neuroscience have revealed we are less rational than Enlightenment thinkers suggested. They argue it is wrong for strong-willed individuals to run rough-shod over vulnerable groups with less power. In a complex world of multiple choices, what is wrong with people seeking help to make informed decisions? Is autonomy really undermined if students themselves demand university authorities provide safe spaces, issue trigger warnings on course materials, make lessons in consent compulsory? If we are nudged into the good life, what harm is done? Should we grow up and accept new paternalism or does this mean sacrificing self-dominion and consigning ourselves to a life of permanent dependence? Is individual autonomy an outdated myth? Speakers Dr Tim Black books and essays editor, spiked Dr Katerina Deligiorgi reader in philosophy, University of Sussex; author, The Scope of Autonomy Dr Daniel Glaser director, Science Gallery London, King's College London Professor Mike Kelly senior visiting fellow, Behaviour and Health Research Unit, Institute of Public Health, University of Cambridge; researcher in nudge theory and choice architecture Georgios Varouxakis professor of the history of political thought, Queen Mary University of London; author, Mill on Nationality Chair Claire Fox director, Institute of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze

Student Elrica Degirmen on her fight for free speech on campus In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas Rob Lyons speaks to Elrica Degirmen who is leading the fight for free speech at the University of Manchester, and is currently running for election to the Student Union on a free speech platform. 

The polemical filmmaker talks about his crowdfunded documentary making the case for leaving the EU. With the date for the UK’s referendum on membership of the EU now set for 23 June, Rob Lyons speaks to filmmaker Martin Durkin about his forthcoming feature-length documentary, Brexit The Movie, which sets out the case for leaving the European Union and it’s anti-democratic technocracy behind. You can find out more about Brexit The Movie and contribute to the Kickstarter fund here. Donations close on Wednesday 2 March.

Physics teacher and communicator Gareth Sturdy discusses a major scientific discovery. Earlier this month, scientists confirmed the detection of gravitational waves, confirming an important conclusion from Albert Einstein’s work. But what are gravitational waves and what does their detection mean for our understanding of the universe? In this podcast, Gareth Sturdy from The Physics Factory talks to Rob Lyons about space-time, the Big Bang and the on-going debates in physics between quantum mechanics and relativity theory.

Podcast: Frank Furedi discusses his new book in conversation with Russell Celyn Jones. Have we forgotten how to read well? Is there a tendency to reduce reading to a minimalist set of functional skills? Or is reading over-fetishised as a signifier of civil and enlightened society? In The Power of Reading, Frank Furedi addresses twenty-first-century anxieties about the future of reading. He takes a wide-ranging historical approach to examining the changing meanings attributed to the act of reading. From ancient Rome to contemporary society, his book focuses on the relationship between reading and social discourses about morality and culture. He questions key contemporary beliefs such as that the internet damages our ability to digest information and that boys don’t read, and argues for the art of reading, not as a mechanism to moral good or social and economic advancement, but as a humanist pursuit. In this podcast, recorded at the launch of the book earlier this month, Furedi delivers a talk on reading followed by a discussion of the book with Russell Celyn Jones. SPEAKER Frank Furedi sociologist and social commentator; former professor of sociology, University of Kent in Canterbury; author of numerous books, including Authority: A Sociological History, On Tolerance and Wasted: Why Education Is Not Educating. CHAIR Russell Celyn Jones professor of creative writing, Birkbeck, University of London; prize-winning novelist and short-story writer; book reviewer, The Times; Man Booker Prize judge.

Listen to the team discuss Brexit, the US presidential election and public-health naggers. In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden discuss the lacklustre start to the EU referendum debate and how the lack of cohesion in the pro-Brexit camp doesn’t bode well for the campaign ahead. In the US, politics is also in disarray, with anti-establishment candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both narrowly missing out on winning their respective caucuses in Iowa, signalling a crisis for both the Republicans and Democrats. The team also discuss the latest killjoy advice from the UK’s most senior doctor, Dame Sally Davies, who believes that women should ask themselves whether they want to raise their risk of breast cancer every time they’re tempted by a glass of wine. 

From the Battle of Ideas 2015When Roland Barthes infamously declared ‘the death of the author’ in 1967, he also intended it as a celebration of ‘the birth of the reader’. And while literacy campaigners continue to fight the Reading Wars over literacy rates, by most measures reading is in a healthier state than ever. Polls indicate the number of Americans reading books has doubled since the 1950s, and reading is increasing among under-30s, while sales of printed books are proving remarkably robust in competition with e-books. The announcement that Harper Lee would be publishing her sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird generated a storm of international media interest, as did Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he was launching his own online book club with 31 million members. Meanwhile, that once-seemingly doomed literary form, the essay, seems to have enjoyed a resurgence, as new media embraces the ‘long-read’ and serious literary journals and small publishers continue to thrive rather than face extinction online. Nonetheless, many others share Philip Roth’s concern over the long-term health of ‘people who read seriously and consistently’. He warned that ‘every year 70 readers die, and only two are replaced’. Perhaps the stress should be on reading ‘seriously’: young people may be reading more than before, but by far the largest spike comes from young adult fiction, with no strong evidence they are moving on to more serious material. Moreover, adult society seems increasingly ambivalent about drawing the kind of sharp divisions between the nineteenth century’s ‘men of letters’ and the ‘unlettered’, though a special type of scorn seems to be reserved for the term ‘tabloid reader’. At the same, where reading was once closely associated with liberation and dangerous subversion – the prosecuting QC during the court case over Lady Chatterley’s Lover famously asked whether the jury would tolerate ‘your wife or servant’ reading such a text - increasingly university students demand the right not to read books that come with a real or imagined ‘trigger warning’. Is the twenty-first-century reader facing a crisis of cultural confidence like that of the author in the twentieth? Has the legacy of the millennial Reading Wars been that we focus too much on reading as a technical skill rather than on what we read? Can we still appeal to an ideal of ‘the reading public’, or is the reality one of many discrete audiences with only occasionally overlapping tastes? Is the digital age undermining erudition or broadening our horizons? Is society losing the ability to read serious and difficult literature, or are we simply becoming more selective and discerning? Speakers Teresa Cremin professor of education (literacy), Open University; trustee, UK Literacy Association; board member, Booktrust Professor Frank Furedi sociologist and social commentator; author, Power of Reading: from Socrates to Twitter, Politics of Fear, On Tolerance and Authority: a sociological history Sam Leith literary editor, Spectator; judge, Man Booker Prize 2015 Laurence Scott lecturer in English and creative writing, Arcadia University; author, The Four-Dimensional Human: ways of being in the digital world (winner of Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for 2014) Chair David Bowden associate director, Institute of Ideas

Charlie Hebdo one year on, Corbyn's reshuffle, debating Brexit and more In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden discuss the state of free speech one year on from the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Labour’s seemingly interminable shadow cabinet reshuffle, David Cameron’s decision to allow his ministers to campaign for Brexit and the way the debate is shaping up, the latest absurd campaign in the war on sugar and Simon Danczuk’s texting shenanigans.

Anthropocene: are humans wrecking the planet?

Trigger warning: 'If you're easily offended you really shouldn't come.' - Claire Fox With just a few days to go before the Institute’s annual Battle of Ideas at the Barbican in London, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden get together to talk about what makes the festival unique and why it’s an unapologetically unsafe space where ideas are fought over and contested, as well as discussing some of the sessions they’re looking forward to most. To find out more about this weekend’s festival and buy tickets visit the Battle of Ideas website.

The Suffragettes’ fight to gain the franchise indicated the importance attached to participation in the public sphere at the turn of the 20th century. But the determination to deny suffrage to women, and the reluctance amongst many in the movement for women’s suffrage to extend the vote to working-class men, reveals that the idea of the public sphere was a partial one, designated as a democratic space for only a section of the public. The campaign for female suffrage also disturbed deep-seated ideas about nature, morality and sexuality, explicitly challenging the public/private divide.The militant Suffragettes were portrayed as unfeminine, unnatural, and profoundly immoral; depicted as man-haters and nation-breakers whose cause would ultimately harm women too. Yet many of the Suffragettes themselves held a maternalist outlook, believing that women’s role in the private sphere was a key argument as to why their involvement in politics would benefit public life, and exert a civilising impact on male behaviour. The extension of the franchise eventually happened alongside a shift in ideas about whether public and private were, or should be, separate spheres, and the development of an increasingly close relationship between politics and social administration.Lecture delivered by Dr Jennie Bristow

Discussion of the news, race and policing in America and Immanuel Kant In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and Dave Bowden discuss the big stories of the past few weeks, including the scandal at Kid’s Company, doping in sport and the row over falling milk prices. Rob speaks to Jean Smith from the New York Salon about race and policing in America ahead of her session on the subject at the Battle of Ideas, and we have Steve Murphy’s mini lecture from the Institute’s recent event University in One Day on Immanuel Kant and the nature of enlightenment.

Listen to Dr Adam Smith's lecture from The Academy 2015 This week’s podcast is taken from the history strand of the recent Institute of Ideas Academy. Dr Adam Smith from University College London argues that the American understanding of the idea of the public, or what Abraham Lincoln termed ‘public sentiment’, can explain both the outbreak and outcome of The American Civil War. 

In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and Dave Bowden discuss the big stories of the last few weeks including the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, the fall of Lord Sewell, the Ashley Madison leak, David Cameron's miguided strategy for tackling ISIS and the Brighton smoking ban.

Since the early twentieth century, liberalism has tended to sublimate its disappointments and anxieties through a critique of the behaviour of the public. The retreat of individualism was most vividly expressed through its rapprochement with the state and its reaction to the behaviour and attitude of the public. Instead of serving as a source of democratic authority, the public was increasingly seen as the target of initiatives of social engineering. The estrangement of liberalism from the public is most vividly captured by its ambivalent attitude towards democracy. This lecture explores the story behind contemporary liberalism’s tendency to trade off popular sovereignty for rights pertaining to the life styles of individuals.