Academy Of Ideas

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: Some suggest that marginalising unpleasant and offensive people – not doing business with them, not giving them a platform, not employing them in your business – is an entirely reasonable, personal decision. When do such actions become a systematic marginalisation of certain views – and what’s wrong with marginalising repulsive views anyway? Many seem eager to ‘fight fire with fire’ – calling out the double standards of their opponents in a tit-for-tat round of cancellations – but how can we expect that to lead to a greater range of opinion and debate? Perhaps we need to ask a fundamental question: what does it mean to live in a genuinely tolerant democracy? Nick Buckley MBE, Alex Deane, Claire Fox, Helen Pluckrose and Calvin Robinson discuss.

ARTS & SOCIETY FORUM: Gabriella Swallow, one of the most versatile and exciting cellists of her generation, gives a lecture on her twin inspirations: German composers JS Bach and Helmut Lachenmann. These two musicians - 200 years apart - tackled the same instrument. Both were experimental and strove for the same kind of experience, but in completely different ways.

SOCIAL POLICY FORUM: While the nation has been getting behind the NHS and care workers, stepping onto doorsteps to ‘clap for carers’ battling with Covid-19; there has been a growing sentiment that we don’t appreciate enough the vital – and sometimes dangerous – work they do. But is the wartime rhetoric and applauding of ‘heroes’ overdone, and the list of key workers overlong? Will everything return to normal after the crisis is over, or will public support and gratitude lead to better pay and services, and a new appreciation of public service? Jon Bryan and Dr Frankie Anderson discuss.

ECONOMY FORUM: In their different ways, Italy and South Africa are very important economically. Italy is the eighth largest in the world by nominal GDP and the third largest in the EU. South Africa is the second largest economy in Africa and the only African country in the G20. Moreover, both countries have been badly hit by the crisis. Dominic Standish and Russell Grinker discuss.

ACADEMY OF IDEAS BOOK LAUNCH: Limits, boundaries and borders are increasingly unfashionable. Whether its support for the ‘no borders’ approach of Europhiles or the rejection of binaries by gender-theory enthusiasts, arguing for borders is difficult these days. In his new book, Why Borders Matter: why humanity must relearn the art of drawing boundaries, Professor Frank Furedi argues that the key driver of the confusion surrounding borders and boundaries is the difficulty that society has in endowing experience with meaning. Timandra Harkness and Professor Frank Furedi discuss.

ARTS & SOCIETY FORUM: Theodore Gericault’s ‘The Raft of the Medusa’ is not only an enormous painting of high drama and tragedy on a cinematic scale, but it is also an assertion of the power of underlying geometry, shape and colour to carry a narrative. It is a constant inspiration to me for the creation of meaning in art through composition, a balance of both form, shape and subject. Picasso’s ‘Three Dancers’ is equally assertive through its brightly coloured, flat geometric shapes, and like Gericault’s ‘Raft’ it also has a complex human narrative. Dido Powell is a painter who rejects the separation of the painting categories ‘abstract ‘ and ‘figurative’. For years, she has been interested in including abstract shapes in my paintings that she has observed from her surroundings, such as reflections and shadows. Painter Dido Powell explains how these paintings, separated by a century, convey their meanings and deal with poignant human struggles.

ARTS & SOCIETY FORUM: Dante’s Divine Comedy, composed 700 years ago, is one of the foundational texts of Western literature. It was written in Dante’s own Florentine dialect, and according to those able to read the original, no translation has ever adequately conveyed both its poetic force and imaginative power. Even in translation though - and there are hundreds in English alone - the poetry, narrative and imagery of Dante’s work have made a lasting impression on generations of readers, as they have followed the author on his own tour of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. And of the three parts of the poem, it is Hell that is most loved. Why, asks writer and author Dolan Cummings.

EDUCATION FORUM: Should we welcome the de-colonisation of the curriculum as a way of correcting white Anglocentric bias and institutional racism? Or, however well-intentioned, will it encourage tokenistic box-ticking lessons? Might more diversity in the curriculum allow our BAME students to better see their identities affirmed or is this superficial gesture politics? The answers to these questions may depend on how we see schools. Are they microcosms of society and community, where diversity and identity are explicitly celebrated? Or are knowledge transfer and the curriculum a specific domain which should be immune from the external preoccupations of the world of politics and pressure groups? What should be the aim of a good education: to affirm a young person’s identity or take them beyond it? Tarjinder Gill, Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, Gemma Rees and Andre Ediagbonya-Davies discuss.

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: How best can work and life return to normal post-Covid? Will normality ever return? Many argue we will have to learn to live with the ‘new normal’, accepting facemasks, elbow-bumps, and under-filled pubs. Some even celebrate it, arguing that office life is dreary compared with the extra time to spend with family and friends that working from home allows. Do we need to make a more full-throated case for a return to normal life, or is this too risky when the virus still causes deaths across the world? Should we celebrate the chance to re-evaluate social norms and working practices, or do we risk leading narrower, more parochial lives? What exactly has been missing during the lockdown – and why should we care? Dr Clare Gerada, Ben Habib, Norman Lewis, Rebecca Lowe and Anne-Elisabeth Moutet discuss.

BOOK CLUB: During a summer of pulling down statues and renaming buildings and streets, could the next step be the symbolic burning of books? Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a book about the burning of books in a future society that no longer reads them. Professor Dennis Hayes explores the construction and vision of the book as well as what it may or may not contribute to our understanding of the present.

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: Matt Ridley discusses his new book in conversation with Rob Lyons. Innovation is key to economic growth and the improvement of human welfare. In his new book, How Innovation Works, Matt Ridley examines how new technologies, products and medical advances come about. He notes that innovation is more than mere invention - the aim is not simply to create an interesting new device, for example, but to produce something that is genuinely useful and widely available. What drives innovation? Is he right to conclude that we cannot speed up innovation through central direction? What are the barriers to greater innovation now and in the future? Matt Ridley and Rob Lyons discuss.

SPORTSCAST OF IDEAS: For months the lockdown has starved us of sport. But in the past couple of weeks it has made something of a return. And not only are the back pages and sports channels sparking into life but football, rugby, tennis, cricket have all made the front pages too as they become entangled with the big issues of our times, whether the coronavirus pandemic or Black Lives Matter protests. Hilary Salt, Duleep Allirajah, Geoff Kidder, Rob Lyons and Alastair Donald discuss.

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: The Covid-19 pandemic has put an unusual strain on health systems around the world. What can we learn from how the NHS is dealing with the crisis? Should we continue with a model of healthcare that is both publicly funded and (mostly) publicly provided? Could we learn from other countries’ systems that have coped better? Are the problems the NHS has faced a result of politicians not backing up supportive words with adequate funding? Or has the NHS’s place as our ‘national religion’ prevented an honest debate about its future Kate Andrews, Dr Lee Jones, Henrik Overgaard-Nielsen and Patrick Vernon discuss.

ARTS & SOCIETY FORUM: When Patrick Marmion first saw Stephen Berkoff’s Greek as a student back in the Eighties at the Edinburgh Festival it blew his head off. A notoriously difficult man himself who has been accused of all sorts of sexual transgression, there are aspects of his writing which are gloriously uncomfortable for today’s audiences. And yet with all the repressive puritanism that’s accompanied the counter revolution against the liberalism of the Sixties and Seventies, too many writers have lost touch with their creative libidos and we have grown accustomed to a theatre that is led by bloodless, neutered moralists. Patrick Marmion and Wendy Earle discuss.

BOOK CLUB: Author Ella Whelan looks at how a modern interest in the politics of consent comes face to face with old-school romance in Sally Rooney's Normal People.

ECONOMY FORUM: Anyone who drives regularly will have noticed the sharp drop in petrol prices since the spate of lockdowns around the world and the fall in economic output. What’s going on? Robert Fig, a seasoned commodity risk practitioner, looks at what this all means for the future of world trade. Will negative pricing become a regular phenomenon? What does the future hold for commodity, bond and currency pricing in general?

EDUCATION FORUM: Passion and anger have greeted the Westminster government’s proposals for a phased return of school pupils. The largest teaching union, the National Education Union (NEU), says that 92% of its members feel unsafe at what it condemns as a “reckless” plan that is “too fast, too confusing and too risky”. It is advising members not to co-operate. Amid uncertainty around the degree of risk and public disagreement among scientists over the impact and necessity of the lockdown, what are teachers to do: focus on the worst-case scenario or rely on “good solid British common sense”, as exhorted by Boris Johnson? Claire Fox and Conor McCrory discuss.

BOOK CLUB: The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr Rieux, resist the terror. Sound familiar? David Bowden re-reads Albert Camus' classic. 

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: As we now all know, on 25 May, a 46-year-old black man named George Floyd was arrested on suspicion of paying for cigarettes with a fake $20 bill. Within 20 minutes he was dead - police officer Derek Chauvin had knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes. Almost immediately, protests, often violent, spread across the US. American cities seem to be burning in righteous rage at the injustice. Since then, largely under the slogan of Black Lives Matter, spontaneous, mass demonstrations have taken place in solidarity with Floyd across the world. What does this all mean for those of us living outside the US? In the UK, protests have taken place in Hyde Park, Parliament Square and other areas with large numbers of mostly young people understandably appalled at racist violence wherever it happens. But are the parallels between the UK and America so obvious? As groups of white people publicly take the knee, is it significant that these discussions about race in 2020 are framed in terms of white privilege

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: The worldwide response to the pandemic has challenged many long-cherished values. Democracy was put on hold, with elections postponed and parliaments in recess. Freedoms were curtailed, with extensive powers granted to police forces. Traditional markers of compassion, like funerals, were cancelled. And many say that essential workers, from nurses to shop-assistants, were put in harm’s way. Amidst such widespread moral challenges, how are we to decide what’s right? Whilst a rich tradition of philosophy reflects on how to be moral, can it be useful in such ‘unprecedented’ times? Is there anything we can learn from history? When we are urged to ‘follow the science’ and obey government guidance, is there any room for individual judgement and moral autonomy? Susan Neiman and Frank Furedi discuss.