Academy Of Ideas

America’s problems at home and abroad have led many to wonder if the US is in decline. US foreign policy, from Syria to Ukraine, appears rudderless and impotent. The Iraq War is widely seen to have been a failure, while US forces are leaving Afghanistan with the Taliban still active and the country far from being a happy democracy. The US recovery from the recession has been weak, too, while China and India – and even parts of Africa - seem to offer more glittering possibilities for expansion and wealth creation than the US. China may overtake the US as the world’s largest economy in GDP terms by the end of the decade. At home, the American political class appears to be almost at an impasse, unable to address its challenges, as epitomised by last year’s shutdown of the federal government. Political commentator Timothy Garton Ash argues ‘the politicians in Washington behave like rutting stags with locked antlers’. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says that the fai

The public outrage that followed the discovery of several ‘forced labour’ labels sewn into clothes stocked by budget clothing shop Primark has brought the issue of the ethics of the supply chain back into the headlines. Just what is the real cost of cheap goods in the West? In April 2013, 1,100 people – including garment workers who had been producing clothes for UK retailers - died when the Rana Plaza commercial block in Bangladesh collapsed. Earlier this year, the Guardian claimed fishmeal used to produce farmed prawns for UK supermarkets was produced using fish caught with slave labour. These revelations fit into a history of claims made about ‘sweatshop’ conditions faced by workers producing everything from fashionable footwear to top-of-the-range consumer electronics. However the problem is not restricted to developing countries, as cases of exploitation and abuse of labourers continue to emerge across the UK, too. Some have called for UK retailers to boycott firms or even entire countrie

When Neil Armstrong made his first steps on the moon on 21 July 1969, he was watched by over 500million people. Many stayed up through the night to witness it, and those who were children at the time often recall being woken up to see the momentous occasion. Today, numerous scientists, engineers, writers and others cite witnessing the moon landings as an inspiring moment that influenced their choice of career. While achieved by Americans, the positive reaction was international – there was a sense that what had been achieved was on behalf of all mankind, and had opened up a sense of unlimited possibilities. But it is the moon landings’ backdrop of the Cold War space race that perhaps dominates how we view them today. Increasingly, we are given to viewing the Apollo missions as political, with dubious scientific merit – certainly, at least, some argue that the money could have been better spent on less glamorous but more worthy missions like probes or telescopes. Those who are even less charit

The charge of ‘moralism’ or ‘moralising’ is always complicated. Nobody endorses immorality, we all know the difference between moralism and morality. Or do we? The former implies an unattractive self-righteousness; the latter is ‘the real thing’. But without righteousness, does morality have any meaning? The obvious danger with rejecting moralism is that we abandon any attempt to talk about right and wrong. Indeed, contemporary culture seems uncomfortable with the language of morality. Terms like good, bad, right, wrong, should, should not, duty and obligation are often seen as moralistic ‘tut tutting’ that unfairly stigmatises people. To some extent, the kinds of moral judgements that are acceptable or not change with the times, such as attitudes to slavery or eugenics. But do changing moral norms always reflect more enlightened attitudes, or just changing prejudices? For example, is the routine denigration of those who embrace traditional ideas of morality any more than a new form of ‘morali

In the past, government may have intervened frequently in the economy, but our private lives were our own to live as we saw fit. In recent years, however, government has largely given up on being the ‘hand on the tiller’ of the economy and intervenes regularly in once-private aspects of life. Smoking is now banned in most public places, and smoking in cars in the presence of children is about to be banned. Environmental concerns have led to new efficiency standards for domestic appliances, and smart meters may regulate our electricity usage from afar, while we are constantly told to reduce our consumption of everything and there is serious discussion about how procreation should be limited to save the planet. Even now, parents are increasingly lectured to about how they should raise their children and, in Scotland, the Named Person rules mean a specific government employee will oversee each child’s upbringing. Even non-governmental organisations, charities, voluntary associations and academics

With the England cricket team experiencing a turbulent tour of Australia, culminating in a humiliating whitewash, and the problems of succession currently engulfing Manchester United, the issue of management and leadership in sport has been thrust into the spotlight. Is a great sporting leader born or made? What are the key factors for creating a football dynasty, whether it be Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United or Bill Shankly at Liverpool? And can a manager really make that much difference today at a time when money plays such a big role in sporting success? Have the requirements of a great sporting leader changed with time? For instance, could a celebrated leader from the past such as Brian Clough succeed today while having to deal with the money, the egos, the politics and the pressures of modern football? Or can a great leader succeed in any circumstances? Is a key component of a great leader the ability to accommodate and manage disruptive and difficult personalities, if they are

When University College London’s students’ union banned a Nietzsche reading group in March, on the grounds that discussions about right-wing philosophers could encourage fascism and endanger the student body, many saw it as the reductio ad absurdum of student-union bans in recent years. These have included bans on Robin Thicke’s pop hit ‘Blurred Lines’, on the grounds that it might be distressing for victims of sexual assault, as well as everything from the Sun (thanks to Page 3) to ‘offensive’ T-shirts depicting Jesus and the prophet Mohammed in cartoon form. So have British universities become bastions of politically correct censorship? Or are such restrictions - enacted by elected unions rather than the state - a welcome attempt to ensure universities are safe spaces for all students? Student politics has long involved political boycotts, going back to campus bans on Barclays Bank in the 1980s (for operating in apartheid South Africa), Nestlé products in the 1990s (for promoting baby milk in

Immigration is a fraught political issue. Those opposing immigration – and especially the EU policy of granting freedom of movement to all EU citizens – argue that low-skilled workers from the relatively impoverished East are now driving down wages in the West. Then there is the spectre of the overseas benefits claimant, taking out without ever giving anything in return. The pro-immigration side counters that immigration is actually good for the economy. Migrants in the UK pay more in tax than they consume in public services, not least because inward migrants are more likely to be working age than the population in general. So does immigration help or hinder the UK economy? Or does that question miss the point? While the much prophesised rush of immigrants taking advantage of the exhaustion of the seven-year ban on immigration from Romania and Bulgaria at the start of the year may not have come to pass, there are still plenty who claim that immigration is a big problem. To respond to public d

After surging forward through the latter part of the twentieth century after the defeat of fascism, decolonisation and the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy appears to be in something of a retreat. According to the Economist, even though 45 per cent of the world’s population live in countries that ‘hold free and fair elections’, there is now widespread recognition that ‘democracy’s global advance has come to a halt, and may even have gone into reverse’. After many years of trying to spread democracy abroad, the US and other Western powers seem to have lowered their sights following the tragic, contemporary debacle in Iraq. Elsewhere, the ‘Arab Spring’ has fared little better. Even in the established democracies of the West, democracy appears to have lost its enduring appeal, with declining voter turnout and a hollowing-out of once mass-membership political parties. It was once claimed that only democracies could develop economically; now, democracy is blamed for gridlock. The contrast between

Cultural policy is seen as essential in helping to regenerate previously unfashionable areas of east London and right across the capital. Every neighbourhood seems keen to emphasise its credentials as a creative, artist-friendly hub and no urban space is complete without short-let ‘pop-up’ shops and restaurants, temporary cinemas or urban beaches. Supporters argue that such playful, small-scale interventions can help ‘citizens take ownership of their city’ and engender a community spirit seen as sorely diminished after the 2011 riots. Yet others are more sceptical about the merits of such schemes, seeing them as invariably corporate-sponsored examples of ‘hipster gentrification’, which undermines rather than bolsters civic engagement, with even the creatives of east London’s Tech City complaining development of the area will change its ‘unique character’. While many artists claim to be committed to being friendly with residents and helping to improve neighbourhoods, the sceptics argue that

Next year marks 800 years since the signing of Magna Carta. While the build-up to its anniversary has been dominated by arguments about whether it should be taught in schools as part of lessons on ‘British values’ aimed at tackling ‘Trojan Horse’ extremism, others have strongly suggested Britain needs a contemporary equivalent. Whilst the coalition’s Commission on a Bill of Rights produced ambivalent conclusions, leading Conservative politicians have pledged that it will be a key part of their general election manifesto. Yet while the original brief for the Bill of Rights was for a document ‘which incorporates and builds on Britain’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights’ such a move is widely seen as a potential replacement for the Human Rights Act with Britain leaving the ECHR altogether. Supporters see a British Bill of Rights as an important move in regaining control over key areas of national sovereignty, threatened by increasingly activist judges based in Strasbourg.

This podcast was recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival at the Barbican in London on Sunday 21 October, 2012 From Boris Island to the Dale Farm gypsies, no building project seems too big or small to fall foul of the UK’s notoriously stringent planning laws, which sometimes seem to exist to prevent development rather than manage it. In contrast to China, which delivers new development equivalent to a country the size of Greece every six months, the UK planning system seems to be in a permanent state of denial. The Thames Gateway, High Speed Rail 2, Heathrow’s third runway, Battersea Power Station redux, Green Belt housing and even Eco-Towns have all run up against a wall. Perhaps the biggest issue is in housing, where building languishes at the lowest levels since the First World War. By some estimates, five million people are waiting on housing registers. According to Shelter, the younger generation bears the brunt with a fifth of 18- to 34-year-olds living with their paren

Despite the economic crisis, art in Greece is booming. By 2015, new museums and cultural organisations are scheduled to open their doors to the public, many of them privately funded rather than state-run as in the past. As Greek classical orchestras and opera companies find themselves in a bleak financial situation due to government spending cuts, private funding seems to have offered a way out. At the same time, non-traditional venues such as Syntagma Square’s metro station and airplane flights have been used as opera stages, in an effort to promote it to new audiences. Yet the question of how opera, along with other elite art forms such as classical music and theatre, can and should be made more accessible to all is a fraught one. Some argue, for example, that the key lies in demystifying some of opera’s difficulty by incorporating elements from popular culture and emphasising its contemporary socio-political relevance. Yet others warn that such an approach risks alienating current and poten

Recorded on Saturday 19 October, 2013. as part of the School Fights strand at the Battle of Ideas festival  The place of independent schools in Britain’s education landscape has never been so intensely debated. According to Martin Stephen, former high master of St Paul’s School, two of the three main political parties hate independent schools ‘to the core of their being’, while the Conservatives are run by so many public schoolboys that they cannot afford to extend ‘the merest hand of friendship’ to such schools without being caricatured by the media. But do private schools protest too much about ‘posh prejudice’? The 7% of pupils who attend fee-paying schools go on to dominate Oxbridge places and elite professions such as law, the media and science. Are those who defend private schools prepared to defend the perpetuation of such inequality on the grounds of individual freedom? Or is it not true that independent schools are full of ‘toffs’ when a third of pupils in schools

Recorded on Sunday 21 October, 2012 For many years, the only hybrid human/animal embryos that could be legally created in the UK were those resulting from fertilising a hamster’s egg with a man’s sperm, as a means of testing male fertility. In 2008, it became legal to create all manner of hybrid human/animal embryos for research purposes, provided that such embryos were destroyed within two weeks of their creation. 2012 saw the establishment of a new £5.8million Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University, to develop techniques for preventing the transmission of debilitating mitochondrial disease. But these techniques cannot be tested in clinical trials without a change in the law, and the government has commissioned a ‘public dialogue’ on the issue. Some object that mitochondrial-exchange techniques involve the creation of children with ‘three parents’, while others claim that this objection misunderstands the relevant science. Those involved in such debates

Recorded on Sunday 21 October 2013 at the Battle of Ideas festival at the Barbican in London ‘Ideas are the cogs that drive history, and understanding them is half way to being aboard that powerful juggernaut rather than under its wheels’. AC Grayling Society seems woefully lacking in Big Ideas, and we seem to crave new thinking. In Britain, great hopes rest on the legacy of the Olympics, but however inspiring the sporting excellence we all witnessed, is it realistic that a summer of feel-good spectacle can resolve deep-rooted cultural problems, from widespread disdain for competitition to community fragmentation? In America, Mitt Romney has pledged to pit substantial ideas against the empty ‘yes, we can’ sloganeering of Barack Obama, with his running mate Paul Ryan dubbed the ‘intellectual’ saviour of the Republican Party, but can they really deliver? Europe, once the home of Enlightenment salons, is now associated more with EU technocrats than philosophes. Looking to the intellectual legacy of the past

Free will is at the root of our notions of moral responsibility, choice and judgment. It is at the heart of our conception of the human individual as an autonomous end in himself. Nevertheless, free will is notoriously hard to pin down. Philosophers have denied its existence on the basis that we are determined by the laws of nature, society or history, insisting there is no evidence of free will in the iron chain of cause and effect. Theologians have argued everything happens according to the will of God, not man. And yet, when we decide we want something and act on that, it certainly seems as if we are choosing freely. Are we just kidding ourselves? Some of the most profound contemporary challenges to the idea of free will come from neuroscientists, evolutionary psychologists and biologists. They argue we are effectively programmed to act in certain ways, and only feel as if we make choices. Some argue, for example, that we can easily be nudged into certain types of behaviour if only the right