LECTURES 2

Listening

How do conspiracies happen, how can historians use them to understand more about the past, and where do they begin and cease to be relevant to the study of history? 

Conspiracy and Democracy

Lectures etc

life

Panel Debate with Owen Hatherley, architectural historian & journalist, author of Militant Modernism (2009);

Prof Peter Mandler (Gonville & Caius), President of the Royal Historical Society & author of History and National Life (2001)

Prof Andrew Saint, architectural historian & general editor of the Survey of London

Architectural Heritage or Awful Houses?

Professor Simon Blackburn recently retired as professor of philosophy and is a Fellow of Trinity College. He is the author of many books, including most recently Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love.

Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love

Jonathan Haslam, Professor of the History of International Relations
The history of Russia’s Secret Services from the Revolution to the Fall of the Wall: the Military Intelligence, the codes and ciphers and the KGB. 

Near and Distant Neighbours 1917–1989

Dr Girard will describe how the “red scare” greatly varied depending on the period, the political affiliation or the country; and the main long-lasting conspiracy theory actually concerned the threat of the far-right and, to a certain extent, of the government itself. 

Conspiracy Theories in France and Italy during the Cold War and Decolonization

A Public Lecture by Conspiracy & Democracy Visiting Fellow Professor Cornel Zwierlein (Ruhr-Universität Bochum). 

It seems as if Conspiracy Theories are a particularly modern phenomenon. By relying on some examples and cases, this lecture gives a long-term overview of what they looked like and when they appeared. We possess full-fledged conspiracy theory texts only since the 16th century. While examples may have existed already in Antiquity, we do not possess any textual evidence for them. The lecture tries to develop an explanation for why conspiracy theories emerged only at this point in European history. In order to do so, it is necessary to distinguish between conjurations, any kind of revolts, conspiracies and conspiracy theories. We will show how their coming into being is linked to the emergence of the ‘Information Public Sphere’, as a by-product of the early inter-state diplomatic communication (which has, first, little to do with the later famous ‘Enlightenment Public Sphere’), and how those narratives filled in where knowledge gaps existed. In a hasty run through history, we will distinguish several phases or ‘epochs’ of Conspiracy (theory) communication. Finally, we will ask how Democracy comes in: ‘Real’ democracies were practiced rather nowhere after Ancient Europe, and were rare even during the 19th century. So, in pre-modern times, often it was ‘democracy’ or ‘democrats’ that were ‘conspiring’ against the good order of the commonwealth – not vice versa.

Cornel Zwierlein is Associate Professor at the University of Bochum, Germany. Currently, he is on leave as a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. His research focuses on the intersection of political, religious and scientific knowledge. Cornel is the author of ‘Discorso und Lex Dei die Entstehung neuer Denkrahmen im 16. Jahrhundert und die Wahrnehmung der französischen Religionskriege in Italien und Deutschland’ (Göttingen, 2006), and, more recently, ‘Der gezähmte Prometheus. Feuer und Sicherheit zwischen Früher Neuzeit und Moderne’ (Göttingen, 2011). 

The Early Modern Foundations of Conspiracy & Democracy

Mr Dwight Smith Jr will speak about ‘The Mafia & Conspiracy’. Mr Smith’s paper will explore how the idea of the mafia and conspiracy emerged in America, developed and became entangled in very different contexts.

Mr Smith will describe the ideas, experiences, and events through which his book, ‘The Mafia Mystique’ (1975), took shape; the consequences of those events that have led to contemporary public understanding and use of ‘Mafia’ in the United States; and the consequences in a democracy of strategies that were developed for organized crime control. 

The Mafia & Conspiracy

A public talk by Professor Joseph Parent (University of Miami) & Professor Joseph Uscinski (University of Miami).

Are conspiracy theories overtaking deliberative societies, inflaming discourse and degrading democracy? How much more prone to violence are conspiracy theorists? Which political party is more likely to traffic in conspiratorial talk? Has the Internet ushered in a new era of conspiracy-fueled paranoia? Using original data sources spanning more than a century, Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent provide surprising answers. In taking stock of American conspiracy theories, Uscinski and Parent argue that much of what we thought we knew about conspiracy theories needs amending.

Joseph E. Uscinski is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami. He earned his Ph.D. in American Politics at the University of Arizona. Professor Uscinski teaches and studies mass media, public opinion, and campaigns.

Joseph M. Parent is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami. He received his bachelors from the University of Chicago and doctorate from Columbia University. Professor Parent teaches international relations theory, foreign policy, and security studies. 

American Conspiracy Theories

This paper examines British and American anticommunist conspiracy theories in the 1920s and 1930s. In both countries, former wartime intelligence agency chiefs set up private intelligence networks in the post-World War I era to spy upon and blacklist radicals -- and, not incidentally, to monitor and control labour union leaders. Also in both countries, businessmen created and lavishly funded anticommunist propaganda organizations. The propagandists in each country exploited quite different anxieties, yet they shared the same goal: to use the fear of communism as a weapon in the struggle against organized labour.


Kathy Olmsted is professor and chair of history at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI; Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley; and Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. 

Anglo-American Conservatism and the Transatlantic Threat between the World Wars

"Is Democracy Conspiratorial?: Koselleck, Furet, and the Debate on the French Revolution"

Since the time of the abbé Barruel, the French Revolution - the source of democratic claims eventually the world over - has been unmasked as the outcome of a dark conspiracy. This talk will examine some of the contemporary legacies of this claim about the secret agenda of democratic self-rule, with a focus on some famous main twentieth-century commentators like Reinhart Koselleck and François Furet who were insufficiently critical of the old allegation even in renovating our sense of where the Revolution fits in modern politics. Dwelling on some of the intellectual origins of Furet's "Interpreting the French Revolution," in which the conspiracy claim figured, the talk will distinguish that strand of the book from other and more valuable impulses, which had other sources, notably the view that democracy is the rule of no one, so that it is very hard to justify or even securely locate its legitimate authorities at any given time.

Samuel Moyn is James Bryce Professor of European Legal History at Columbia University, where he has been teaching since 2001. He is author of "The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History" (2010) and a new collection of essays entitled "Human Rights and the Uses of History" (2014). From July 1, 2014, he will take up a new position as professor of law and history at Harvard University. 

Is Democracy Conspiratorial?

Welcome to the Science and Policy Seminars Podcast, brought to you by the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge. 
The Seminar series brings together different perspectives and new thinking on the relationship between scientific expertise, policy and politics.
To learn more about the Centre for Science and Policy and our work in promoting engagement between researchers and policy professionals please visit www.csap.cam.ac.uk.  


Nick Pearce - Political leadership and public administration in a post-democratic and populist age

The news tends to focus on the antagonism between India and Pakistan. A distinguished panel of academics – Dr Kamal Munir, Dr Ornit Shani, Dr  Bhaskar Vira and Professor Joya Chatterji –
look at the common ground between the two countries. 


India-Pakistan: the common ground at Hay Festival

Ideas about states of emergency go back to Ancient Rome in which it was said that necessity knows no law. This idea took on different meanings during the early modern period and was employed again in 1848 to justify emergency rule in Paris. The idea was inverted by Marx. It was no longer emergency that justified dictatorship—dictatorship was posited as a desirable outcome in a transition to new forms of society.

The genesis of 20th C political authoritarianism by Prof Gareth Stedman Jones

In 1815, two large armies faced each other at Waterloo. Unknown either to Napoleon or Wellington, the battle would be decided by a small, ordinary group of British and German troops.

Did the Germans win the battle of Waterloo? by Professor Brendan Simms

In the age of Charlemagne, Rome was not just associated with the glory of classical and late antique empire, but above all with an authentic Christianity. North of the Alps, rulers and aristocrats created a virtual Rome by importing relics as well as liturgical practices that were thought of as typically Roman.

Charlemagne, Rome and the management of sacred space by Professor Rosamond McKitterick

Despite recent assertions to the contrary, Prof Matthew Kramer argues that there can never be any moral justification for torture.

Torture, morality and law by Professor Matthew Kramer

How do conspiracies happen, how can historians use them to understand more about the past, and where do they begin and cease to be relevant to the study of history? Such questions were the starting point for this panel debate, in which Professor Christopher Andrew and Dr Stephen Dorril examine cases from Stalinist Russia, Harold Wilson’s government in the 1960s, and Northern Ireland in the 1970s, to name but a few.