Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe

PUTTING THE PAST ON TRIAL: BURNING DEAD WITCHES?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2013/session_detail/7851

Denouncing racism in football, Prime Minister David Cameron recently declared, ‘we will not let recent events drag us back to the bad old days of the past,’ exemplifying a new trend to look back at the past from a position of moral superiority. Past decades are routinely disparaged today as a toxic legacy, particularly in the discussion about revelations of child abuse in the 1960s and 70s, but also in debates about ‘old-fashioned’ patriotism, traditional religion and ‘dead, white European males’ being taught in school curriculum, not to mention football hooliganism.

Far from celebrating the achievements of the past, the cultural script of the 21st century seems ever-hostile to the practices and values of yesteryear. When it comes to parenting, for example, the experience and insights of previous generations are castigated as dangerously old-fashioned prejudices, far too out-dated for our progressive, enlightened times. And in the debate about Baby-Boomers betraying today’s ‘jilted generation’, the older generations are admonished for the allegedly hedonistic, selfish and unsustainable lifestyles of their youth. Geoffrey Wheatcroft declares, ‘If there is any hope at all, it must be that our crappy generation can slink away in shame, and let a younger generation see if they can manage things better’.

Against this, Irish writer John Waters has warned against a dangerous condescension to the past and what he characterises as an ‘unlimited appetite for past obscenities’. Certainly we seem to have a morose fascination with excavating yesterday’s culture for secret scandals and hidden abuse. In the aftermath of the Savile scandal and amid Operation Yewtree, the police are openly encouraging people to examine their past for any possible abusive behaviour. For critics, this means inviting individuals to make sense of their current problems by seeing them as part of the damage inflicted by past wrongs. Should we accept the implication that their lives today were scripted by past childhood traumas? And are we being encouraged to reinterpret past experiences through the prism of present day preoccupations, obscuring our understanding of the past in its own terms? Why are we so keen to turn backwards and put the past on trial today, rather than concentrating on an optimistic embrace of the future? And was the past so bad anyway?

Speakers
Jennie Bristow
senior lecturer in sociology, Canterbury Christ Church University; author, The Sociology of Generations: New directions and challenges and Baby Boomers and Generational Conflict; co-author, Parenting Culture Studies

Allan Massie
author, nearly 30 books, including 20 historical novels, including A Question of Loyalties and Dark Summer in Bordeaux; columnist, Spectator

John Waters
Irish newspaper columnist; author, Jiving at the Crossroads and Was It For This? Why Ireland Lost the Plot

Professor Sir Simon Wessely
president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists; head of the Department of Psychological Medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London

Chair:
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

Battle of Ideas 2013

Putting the past on trial: burning dead witches?

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe

SOUL ON THE SLAB: IS THERE NO LIMIT TO WHAT NEUROSCIENCE CAN DO?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2013/session_detail/7848

Neuroscience provides previously unimagined access to the inner workings of the brain. For enthusiasts, it could be the scientific holy grail, unravelling the mechanics of consciousness and uncovering the biological basis of the human character. Certainly, astonishing claims are made for new techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Every new advance in brain scanning technology leads to greater claims for the power of science. Scanned subjects’ response to different stimuli, when regions of the brain ‘light up’, are said to correlate with emotions, intentions, and feelings. Might an ability to visualise the mind within the brain provide a window into our innermost thoughts, reveal the sources of our deepest desires?

Despite the tremendous potential of breakthroughs in neuroscience, there is now increasing disquiet at the alleged exaggerations made in its name. Critics such as Thomas Nagel, Sally Satel and Raymond Tallis argue the overzealous application of brain science undermines notions of free will and responsibility, reducing all human behaviour to crude determinism. Others fear the rise and rise of neuroscience is side-lining centuries of insights into the human condition provided by the humanities, philosophy, psychology, politics, even religion. But such concerns are often dismissed as outdated and ill-informed, and even heretical when voiced by scientists themselves. So neuroscience’s colonisation of all aspects of life looks unstoppable, spawning a range of new disciplines such as neurolinguistics, neurogenetics, neuroeconomics, as well as educational, behavioural, cognitive and evolutionary neuroscience. Meanwhile, the supposed unlocking of the secrets of the human mind has attracted fashionable enthusiasm far beyond the world of science: policy makers, marketeers, pollsters, artists, lawyers now see neuroscience as the key to unlocking everything from why consumers make certain choices to why people vote left or right, from why we listen to music to why some of us commit crimes.

Has the explanatory power of neuroscience been overestimated or is it the key to reading our minds? Are those calling for a radical neuro-transformation of criminal responsibility, education, public health, social policy too credulous about what some term ‘neurobollocks’? Or is scepticism about neuroscience driven by a stubborn refusal to accept that we are less autonomous than we think? Should we anyway be seeking to keep what goes on in our brains out of public policy?

Speakers
Dr Julian Baggini
founding editor, the Philosophers' Magazine; author, Freedom Regained: the possibility of free will and The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World

Professor Bill Durodié
head of department and chair of international relations, University of Bath

Professor Geraint Rees
director, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience; senior clinical fellow, Wellcome Trust

Dr Sally Satel
resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute; psychiatrist; author, Brainwashed: the seductive appeal of mindless neuroscience

Chair:
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

Soul on the slab: is there no limit to what neuroscience can do?

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe

LEVESON ONE YEAR ON: WHAT FUTURE FOR PRESS FREEDOM?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2013/session_detail/7846

It is a year since Lord Justice Leveson published his inquiry into the ‘Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press,’ but decisions about future press regulation are still far from being resolved. Attempts by Labour peers to include Leveson-type reforms in the recent defamation bill have failed, and the prime minister’s cunning plan to avoid state regulation of the press through a Royal Charter have floundered, as no publishers have agreed to sign up to the proposed regulator. Leveson and his team have been beset by scandals, and rumours that the future of press regulation was decided over pizza in the early hours by politicians and three members of the pro-regulation Hacked Off lobby group, but without a single member of the press present have marred the government’s approach. Even the ongoing support from celebs such as Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan has done little to keep it in favour. As the press formulate an alternative, what’s now been dubbed the ‘pizza charter’ seems doomed to failure.

Is the Leveson report now - as is widely reported in the press – discredited, or is all the muckraking and conspiracy theorising by the press a conscious attempt by the ‘feral’ press to dodge his proposals? With the public apparently supporting the implementation of Leveson –around two-thirds are in favour according to recent polls - how can it be in the public interest to have an unregulated press? Does the Royal Charter proposal does represent any sort of positive alternative to statute-backed regulation, or could the implications for free speech be even worse? Finally, with the so-called ‘blue-chip’ hackers - law firms and insurers – now under the spotlight, were offences by the press as grievous and isolated as was first made out?

Speakers
Professor George Brock
head of journalism, City University London; author, Out of Print: newspapers, journalism and the business of news in the Digital Age

Professor Roger Graef
CEO, Films of Record; award-winning filmmaker, including the Bafta winning Police series, Police 2001, Turning the Screws, and The Secret Policeman's Ball; visiting professor, Mannheim Centre for Criminology, LSE

Patrick Hayes
director, British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA)

Professor Tim Luckhurst
head, Centre for Journalism, University of Kent; author, Responsibility without Power: Lord Justice Leveson's constitutional dilemma

Chair:
Viv Regan
managing editor, spiked

Leveson one year on: what future for press freedom?

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe

BUILDING TRUST OR CLEANING UP THE PUBLIC REALM?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2013/session_detail/7826

The problem of collapsing trust has become all-pervasive. Many of society’s most treasured institutions, private and public, seem to have lost the faith of the public. Scandals have led many to question the integrity of the police, the Catholic Church, the banking system, parliament, newspapers, the BBC and the NHS. The responses to such crises now have a familiar script of their own: a public inquiry exposing institutional malaise, followed by swift calls for external regulation, tougher penalties, staff purges and ‘root-and-branch’ retraining. There have also been calls to protect whistleblowers and to ensure greater diversity at management level to guard against perceptions of cronyism.

While a bout of soul-searching is understandable following failures such as Mid-Staffs, however, the jury is out on how far such moves rebuild trust. External regulation is greeted with cynicism, provoking accusations of incompetence if the regulators are recruited from outside the profession (as in the NHS and police) and corruption if they are drawn from within (Libor). Self-regulation, meanwhile, is widely derided as, to quote Jeremy Paxman, akin to ‘the bloke down the pub telling you you’re sober enough to drive.’ For some, however, the crisis that engulfed safeguarding authorities over child abuse provides a salutary lesson of how efforts to restore trust can backfire: with ‘tainted’ senior staff replaced by inexperienced juniors and professional judgement eroded by bureaucratic exercises such as CRB checks. One doctor lamented, ‘every box ticked is a kindness lost’. More broadly, a concern with being seen to be whiter than white may be a distraction from the core work through which all institutions must ultimately win the public’s trust.

Does treating every individual as requiring constant scrutiny and supervision, and encouraging them to report on colleagues, risk undermining the professional ethos institutions draw their strength from? If a witchhunting dynamic is allowed to take hold – and those who seek to defend their reputations dismissed as arrogant troublemakers - are we in danger of driving anyone who doesn’t match up to a sanitised idea of the public servant out of our institutions? Do reasonable demands for accountability become too easily sacrificed to PR-friendly scapegoating and panicked reform? Or are such criticisms merely more buck-passing and resistance to much-needed change for failing organisations? Can anyone be trusted to restore the public’s faith in our institutions?

Speakers
Lord Victor Adebowale
chief executive, Turning Point; non-executive director, NHS England; chancellor, Lincoln University

Paul Davies
partner, PwC

Alex Deane
managing director, FTI Consulting; Sky News regular; BBC Dateline London panellist; author Big Brother Watch: The state of civil liberties in modern Britain

Brendan O'Neill
editor, spiked; columnist, Big Issue; contributor, Spectator; author, A Duty to Offend: Selected Essays

Jill Rutter
programme director, Institute for Government

Chair:
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

Building trust or cleaning up the public realm?

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe

LISTENING TO MUSIC: A PRIVATE OR PUBLIC ACTIVITY?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2013/session_detail/7849

ETA Hoffmann’s famous 1810 review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony declared instrumental music to be the highest of all art forms because it opened up to listeners the realm of the infinite, ‘a world that has nothing in common with the external world of the senses’. Precisely because of its independence from words, music could express that which lay beyond the grasp of conventional language and be interpreted by any one of us in a multitude of ways. In a celebrated passage in the novel Howards End, EM Forster captures a whole range of types of listener among six characters listening to Beethoven’s Fifth.  Responses ranged from the visceral (Mrs Munt tapping) to the technical (Tibby ‘versed in counterpoint’), from Helen ‘who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music’s flood’ to the nationalistic. What all listeners had in common was that they experience music in public, typically in a concert hall.

Today, however, music is a ubiquitous backdrop to everyday life, experienced in lifts, in TV jingles or on a multitude of radio stations. And who needs the concert hall when we access personal playlists in our own time and schedule? Even listening to music in public – on the street or on a train – can be an intensely private experience. Cultural attitudes have also changed. A new audiences initiative has declared ‘the most alienating of all classical music’s rituals is that concerts take place in concert halls’, which is all too much like a museum. What’s more, it’s suggested that in today’s visual culture, staring straight ahead at the musicians or closing your eyes and listening intently is not sufficient: a visual dimension is necessary to engage contemporary audiences.

Contemporary music ensembles are reminded that millions of people listen to music at festivals, nightclubs, discos and private parties, and expect a similarly immersive experience from concerts. But should all musical experiences really be the same, or is there something to be said for a degree of reverence in some circumstances? Does visual accompaniment distract us or help us concentrate on the layers and subtleties of music? Should we throw off the classical concert hall as a burden? How and where should we listen to music to really hear it?  Is really listening to music a public pursuit or a private passion?

Speakers
Ivan Hewett
chief music critic, Daily Telegraph; professor, Royal College of Music; broadcaster; author, Music: healing the rift

Marshall Marcus
CEO, European Union Youth Orchestra; chair; Sistema Europe

Gabriella Swallow
cellist, broadcaster and arts commentator

Chair:
Angus Kennedy
convenor, The Academy; author, Being Cultured: in defence of discrimination

Listening to music: a private or public activity?

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO: WHAT IS WRONG WTH HYPOCRISY?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2013/session_detail/7827

Of all scandals involving public figures, the ones that are relished most are those in which the protagonist has been found to be privately indulging in behaviour they have publicly condemned: the pious champion of family values who turns out to have a gay lover on the side, the politician who talks tough about border controls while employing an illegal immigrant as a maid, or the socialist who rails against unearned privilege while quietly sending her children to private school. The resulting charge of hypocrisy has always been an ambiguous one, however. Is the real issue the hypocrites’ inability to live up to their own high standards, or their moralistic condemnation of behaviour that is perfectly reasonable and ought to be blameless? Do the republican ideals of a Thomas Jefferson count for nothing because he was a slave owner, or can we uphold them even as we condemn his hypocrisy?

In recent years, there has been a greater focus on the private lives of politicians and other public figures. If there once existed a gentlemen’s agreement whereby the press turned a blind eye to the private indiscretions of ministers, no such niceties apply today. But should we really be judging people by what they do in their private lives, rather than by their public achievements, or lack of them? Does it really matter if a politician, business leader or sports person is a horrible and immoral person at home, if at work they enact policies that improve people’s lives, create jobs or perform on the sports field? Or should we expect and demand personal integrity and good character in anyone in a position of responsibility and influence? Should we demand more transparency and openness, so we can be sure our public figures are what they claim to be?

Or does a focus on their private lives reflect diminished expectations about what people can and should achieve in the public sphere, regardless of any personal flaws? And does a preoccupation with judging people’s private behaviour by their own public standards reveal a certain relativism – a reluctance to make an absolute judgement about what is and is not acceptable?

Speakers
Anne Atkins
novelist, columnist and broadcaster; prize-winning journalist; regular contributor, BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day

Ruth Dudley Edwards
historian and journalist; author, The Seven: the lives and legacies of the founding fathers of the Irish Republic (forthcoming)

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick
writer on medicine and politics; author, The Tyranny of Health

Joe Friggieri
professor of philosophy and former head of department, University of Malta; poet; playwright; theatre director; three-times winner, National Literary Prize

Chair:
Dolan Cummings
associate fellow, Academy of Ideas; author, That Existential Leap: a crime story (forthcoming from Zero Books)

Do as I say, not as I do: what is wrong with hypocrisy?

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe

STATE VS. MARKET: IS THERE A WAY FORWARD?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2013/session_detail/7847

The free market has long been understood as a key aspect of freedom more generally. But critics also see the market as a place of exploitation, as a threat to, rather than an expression of, our freedom. And in the past 150 years there has grown up a counterbalance to the market in the form of the state: both the protector and regulator of the market. Should private businesses be compelled to obey the dictates of the public as personified by the state? Or, conversely, should they enjoy the same freedoms as private individuals – the freedom to buy what they want and sell what they want? Does that extend to discrimination in the labour market? Should employers be able to discriminate against employees they think are too old or customers they just don’t like?

Might it be that an increasingly top-heavy state is holding back the entrepreneurial dynamism of the market, or should we view it as vital life-support to a system far beyond the capabilities of private enterprise, however large? Is it right that the market should be involved in the traditional functions of the state like prisons, healthcare, even the army and the police? And must the state act as a prop to the market by subsidising industries that are failing or would never start up in the first place without a hand-out from the taxpayer? Can it, given the scale of public debt, even afford such largesse? Is it time to find a way past the opposition between state and market? Do the terms even make sense anymore, given the degree of mutual reliance and interpenetration they have now achieved?

Speakers
Louise Cooper
financial analyst and blogger, CooperCity.co.uk

Thomas Hylland Eriksen
professor of social anthropology, University of Oslo; novelist; author, Ethnicity and Nationalism and Globalization: the key concepts

Phil Mullan
economist and business manager; author, Creative Destruction: How to start an economic renaissance

Dr Andrew Sentance
Senior Economic Adviser to PwC (since 2011); formerly, external member, Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England

Chair:
Angus Kennedy
convenor, The Academy; author, Being Cultured: in defence of discrimination

State vs. market: is there a way forward?

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe

EAST ASIA: THE NEW GLOBAL HOTSPOT?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2013/session_detail/7845

Kim Jong-un’s North Korea may call for a ‘merciless, sacred, retaliatory war’ against the US imperialists and South Korean ‘puppet warmongers’ it blames for inching the Korean peninsula towards thermonuclear war. But China, despite distancing itself from its communist neighbour’s antics, also feels itself threatened by the US. In the East and South China Seas, across the Pacific, and even in its relations with India, China feels encircled, whatever successes are achieved by its ‘String of Pearls’ strategy of alliances with countries such as Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Is it paranoia or imperialist ambitions that lead China to hack Pentagon computers and build up a carrier fleet? What should we make of Xi Jinping’s talk of his ‘strong-army dream’ and desire for ‘the great revival of the Chinese nation’?

Japanese military posturing over the Senkaku Islands has led its military ally America to call for restraint and cooler heads. But some see the US guarantee of Japan’s security as a potential trigger of world war – analogous to the interlocking alliances that precipitated World War I a hundred years ago. How accurate is it to see conflicts in the East and South China Seas, and nearby, through the lens of the tensions that broke out in 1914? Is Myanmar really a new Serbia? What about the dangers of border skirmishes between India and China? India and Pakistan? And has the friction really gone out of the relationship between China and Taiwan?

Is East Asia really the key cockpit for tomorrow’s major wars? Perhaps saner voices will prevail against the national resentments that characterise China, Japan, America and other states in the region. But what is the exact nature and strength of the different nationalisms at work there, anyway? Does Asia’s arms race reflect rivalry for natural resources, historical resentments, or the simple fact of China’s rise and America’s decline? Could hothead nationalism – whether Japanese, Chinese or North Korean – be the spark that ignites war in the east?

Speakers
Ben Chu
economics editor, the Independent; author Chinese Whispers: why everything you've heard about China is wrong

Professor Steve Tsang
director, China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham

James Woudhuysen
visiting professor, London South Bank University

Chair:
Rob Lyons
science and technology director, Academy of Ideas; convenor, IoI Economy Forum

East Asia: the new global hotspot?

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe

IS NOTHING PRIVATE ANYMORE?
http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2013/session_detail/7825

‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’ is a phrase that sounds so quaint and dated today it’s hard to remember the ideal it expressed. This was a clear sense of a private sphere into which the state and public authorities had no right to enter and the individual enjoyed autonomy. Today, that private space is increasingly subject to public scrutiny. It is now official policy that family life and child-rearing be subject to greater external intervention and scrutiny. Concerns about domestic abuse seems to justify any amount of probing into the intimacy of marital disputes, with a broader assumption that away from public view and left to their own devices, people will use the privilege of privacy to perpetrate unspeakable horrors. Those who have secrets they would rather not share are often treated with suspicion, especially if they are in positions of authority. We demand to see people’s tax bills and wage slips, to read organisation’s memos, internal company emails and financial dealings. The institutionalisation of transparency, the ubiquity of leaking, the hero-worship of whistle blowers and suspicion of any institution that does not bare all, suggests an end to any validation of privacy

Nevertheless, in recasting privacy as the refuge of behind-the-scenes malevolence, some argue we denigrate one of the most important sites of human experience. The private sphere provides a space for self-exploration and reflection – for organisations as well as individuals – and intimate relationships certainly require privacy. The ideas, emotions and passions that are expressed to an intimate soul mate become something very different when disclosed to a public audience.

What constitutes the barrier between private and public has become ever more fuzzy. Are comments made to ‘friends’ on Facebook public pronouncements or private mutterings? Who owns the personal photos of our families, our baby bumps, ourselves behaving badly when we publish them online? And have these questions arisen only because of new technology, or has there been a deeper cultural shift? Was it better when the media turned a blind eye to the indiscretions, leaving the public to judge them as purely public figured? Is our preoccupation with the private lives of artists and celebrities a distraction from what really matters? Where does the public domain start and end? Is a culture of transparency and revelation creating a refreshingly open society or a tyranny with nowhere to hide?

Speakers
David Aaronovitch
columnist, The Times; author, Voodoo Histories; chair, Index on Censorship

Professor Frank Furedi
sociologist and social commentator; author, What's Happened to the University?, Power of Reading: from Socrates to Twitter, On Tolerance and Authority: a sociological history

Andrew Keen
entrepreneur; founder, Audiocafe.com; author, Digital Vertigo: how today's online social revolution is dividing, diminishing, and disorienting us

Ursula Martinez
cult cabaret diva; writer and performer, Me, Me, Me!, Hanky Panky and My Stories, Your Emails

Christine Rosen
fellow, New America Foundation; senior editor, New Atlantis

Chair:
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

Is nothing private anymore?

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe

WELCOME ADDRES WITH FANFARE
https://academyofideas.org.uk/2013/10/19/battle-of-ideas-festival-2013-welcome-address/

The ninth annual Battle of Ideas festival opened with a Welcome Address hosted by Claire Fox, Director of the Academy of Ideas.

SPEAKERS
Evan Fuery
Vice President Exploration Business Development Origination, Statoil

Leonora Thomson
director of audiences and development, Barbican Centre

Mike Wright
executive director, Jaguar Land Rover

CHAIR
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

Welcome Address with fanfare 2013

Listen to recordings of our discussions and debates. Our aim is to expand the boundaries of public debate, to break out of today's echo chambers and challenge orthodoxies.

Do as I say, not as I do: what is wrong with hypocrisy?

Academy of Ideas

Related tracks