Academy Of Ideas

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.

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: What lessons should we draw from the pandemic response? Is China turning from a ‘status quo’ power to one that will become more disruptive and active in pursuit of global influence? To what extent will the international order and its institutions continue to fray? Are we seeing the return of the nation state, or will realpolitik in the face of the pandemic likely encourage renewal of cooperation and new institutions? What is the likely impact of the inevitable economic restructuring? In short, where next for geopolitics - and is the future one of international disorder? Dr Philip Cunliffe, Mary Dejevsky, Lord Maurice Glasman and Joan Hoey discuss.

ECONOMY FORUM: When members of the US Federal Reserve met in late January, they expressed confidence in the country’s ability to stretch a record run of economic growth and job gains well into 2020. Indeed, 2019 had seen strong performance in certain indicators, including rising real incomes among lower-earners. Two months later, the US was in a coronavirus lockdown, and the economy was in freefall. Some 34million jobs have been lost, and GDP is expected to decline by 35% or more in the second quarter. What are the prospects for the US economy to recover? Pre-Covid, was the economy as robust as commentators claimed? Does the crisis provide an opportunity for the US to address its weaknesses? Will government spending have a positive effect, or will a debt overhang be an obstacle to recovery? Will the Fed’s easy money policy work? And, what will the US’s economic problems mean for the world economy? James Matthews introduces.

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: What is behind this seeming media crisis and what are the implications? With the press already having taken a beating in some quarters for their failures over reporting Brexit, how worried should we be over the collapse of press standards, and the way the ‘media class’ seems to stand apart from the rest of society? Are we shooting the messenger for the failings of others, such as government mismanagement, even misinformation? What is the news and commentary we need during this period, and how do we go about ensuring the survival and prospering of a free, critical press? Claire Fox, Jodie Ginsberg, Daisy McAndrew and Freddie Sayers discuss.

ECONOMY FORUM: Earlier this year, as what would become known as Covid-19 struck Wuhan, there was some discussion about how China’s GDP might temporarily fall and what impact that fall might have on the world economy. There was little sense that the disease might become a pandemic and affect the whole world. Now, with most Western countries facing unprecedented falls in economic output, China appears to have ridden the storm remarkably well. Like it or not, the UK, EU and US are remarkably dependent upon on China – and not just for PPE. Beyond the tempers on all sides, what real cleavages – China vs the West, China vs its neighbours, and among Western allies over tactics toward Beijing – can we expect to develop in 2020-21? Austin Williams and James Woudhuysen discuss.

BOOK CLUB: Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda’s assistance, he co-designs Adam’s personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever - a love triangle soon forms. These three beings will confront a profound moral dilemma. Ian McEwan’s subversive and entertaining new novel poses fundamental questions: what makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns of the power to invent things beyond our control. Max Sanderson introduces.

ARTS & SOCIETY FORUM: Kate Abley’s first novel, Changing the Subject, is an entertaining narrative about ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. She says ‘You don’t have to have read any Salman Rushdie to engage with this talk: I will make it my job to inspire you to try him. Under the feeble cover of having written a novel myself, I would like to make the experimental assertion that it is possible to describe novels in English as Pre-Rushdie and Post-Rushdie. Of course, there were rumblings of change before 1981 and the publication of Midnight’s Children. But it was that book which delivered the fatal blow to literarty-farties grumbling since the 1930s that the “The novel is dead”.’ Kate Abley and Wendy Earle discuss.

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: In the past few years, the idea that we should do what the experts tell us has lost some of its power. Some experts admit that there was, perhaps, a belief that the science was more definitive than it actually is. Even on the core advisory group, SAGE, there are significant differences of view amongst scientists, from the core understanding of the biology of the new coronavirus to estimates of how far it has spread, and over the rules informing social distancing and the efficacy of facemasks. But to what extent is or should our response to this threat be regarded as a scientific question, or as moral or political choices? What is the place of expertise in politics? How will the relationship between politics, expertise and democracy change in the future? Dr Clare Gerada, Timandra Harkness, Jill Rutter and Karol Sikora discuss.