Academy of Ideas

Trigger warning: 'If you're easily offended you really shouldn't come.' - Claire Fox

With just a few days to go before the Institute’s annual Battle of Ideas at the Barbican in London, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden get together to talk about what makes the festival unique and why it’s an unapologetically unsafe space where ideas are fought over and contested, as well as discussing some of the sessions they’re looking forward to most.

To find out more about this weekend’s festival and buy tickets visit the Battle of Ideas website.

Listen to the introductory remarks from last week's Battle of Ideas satellite in Amsterdam

We are living longer, healthier and richer lifes than ever before. These trends have already spread to billions of people in poorer countries. But are the costs of all this progress beginning to outweigh the benefits? Greens worry that the Earth cannot sustain our desire for more, more, more. Do their worries halt progress?

Some believe that environmental concerns have gone too far, putting a brake on growth, especially in poor countries. Are the world’s poor only allowed to experience ‘sustainable’ development? Lately, a new brand of greens is emerging. These so-called ‘eco-modernists’ believe the planet can be ecologically vibrant even with many billions more people living a good life - if only we would use our scientific knowledge to steward the world’s resources. But can science also tell us what kind of balance is desirable between allowing humanity to flourish while preserving the natural world? Maybe in the end, most people simply do not care that much about nature. And what is a good life anyway?

Has the modern idea of progress outlived its usefulness? Do we need new ways of understanding progress, or is it environmentalism that needs an overhaul? And what role do greens play in this debate? Do they want to halt progress, or simply to redefine it? Or might their redefinition be another way of halting development? Is progress ultimately a myth?

SPEAKERS

Brendan O’Neill editor, spiked; columnist, Big Issue; contributor, Spectator

Frank Mulder researcher, writer and journalist; ; columnist, De Groene Amsterdammer; author, De geluksmachine (The Happiness Machine)

Ted Nordhaus chairman, Breakthrough Institute

Joris Thijssen campaigns director, Greenpeace Netherlands

To find out more about this year’s festival and buy tickets visit the Battle of Ideas website.

Listen to the introductory remarks from this week's Battle of Ideas satellite at the House of St. Barnabas in London

The announcement that the UK population grew last year by half a million – roughly the population of Edinburgh – has provoked much discussion about whether the country will cope with an increasing demand on resources. With half that rise coming from migration rather than births, there have been inevitable calls to impose tougher limitations on who can move to this country, heightening debate around free movement in the context of Britain’s European Union membership and amid a migrant crisis at Calais. For London, the situation is even more pressing, with the population this year breaking its historical peak of 8.6million and expected to rise to 10 million by 2030. With UK national house-building at record low levels – less than 150,000 new homes per year and with soaring rents in the capital and beyond – many are questioning whether the UK can afford an ever-expanding population.

Pro-immigration commentators counter that the UK’s growth is testament to its economic health and that highly skilled migrants are essential to maintaining that strength and support an increasingly ageing population. Yet attempts to introduce Australian-style points system of economic migration have proven to be politically fractious and difficult to enforce. Others suggest that a radical overhaul of Britain’s ailing infrastructure would ensure that a country which has built on less than three per cent of its landscape has ample space. Nonetheless, with a range of major projects ranging from fracking and wind power through to HS2 to Heathrow’s third runway facing considerable local and political opposition, there is plenty of pessimism surrounding future UK capacity. Government plans to build a range of garden cities to ease the burden on the housing sector generate sceptical eye-rolling on all sides.

Should the UK’s continued population growth be a cause for celebration, or seen as a worrying burden on stretched resources? Will governmental plans to decentralise authority on planning and policy lead to a range of national powerhouses to ease the strain on the capital, or will it only encourage greater Nimbyism? Would tearing up Britain’s notoriously restrictive planning regulations liberate the private sector or lead to chaotic, unmanaged development? Does the UK face normal pressures for a nation of its size and development, or are we suffering from a lack of ambition?

SPEAKERS

Tom Chance housing spokesperson, Green Party

Jonn Elledge editor, CityMetric; writer, New Statesman

David Goodhart director, Demos Integration Hub; author, The British Dream: successes and failures of post-war immigration

Phoebe Griffith associate director, migration, integration and communities, IPPR

Alp Mehmet retired diplomat; vice-chairman, Migrationwatch UK

Karl Sharro architect; writer; Middle East commentator; co-author, Manifesto: Towards a New Humanism in Architecture

CHAIR

David Bowden associate director, Institute of Ideas

To find out more about this year’s festival and buy tickets visit the Battle of Ideas website.

Podcast: Rob Lyons speaks to Dr Shirley Lawes about the state of French politics and society

The world’s spotlight fell on France early this year with the attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo. The subsequent wave of solidarity, which rallied France around the slogan ‘Je suis Charlie’, was heralded by many as a bold reassertion of the nation’s commitment to the liberal values of the French Revolution. Indeed, Voltaire’s ‘Treatise on Tolerance’ climbed to the top of France’s bestseller list in the wake of the attacks. These sentiments seemed to be confirmed by President François Hollande’s address to the nation, where he defended France’s ‘attachment to freedom of speech’ and said that ‘in France all beliefs are respected’. Nevertheless, this apparent liberal zeal was undermined by a government crackdown the same week, which resulted in the arrest of dozens of people, including the controversial comedian Dieudonné, for inflammatory remarks about the attacks on social media.

Does France really know what it stands for any more? A 2013 Ipsos study found that half of French people believe their country is suffering cultural and economic decline, and just a third believe their democracy works well. France’s assimilationist policies have failed to integrate large swathes of migrants, with the banlieues of major cities becoming deprived immigrant ghettos existing very much outside mainstream French society. And despite France having some of the toughest hate-crime laws in Europe, it now records the highest number of anti-Semitic attacks in the world, with a seven-fold increase in such violence since the 1990s. Meanwhile, laïcité, or civic secularism, originally intended to separate church and state, has come to be seen as a veil for discrimination against Muslims, especially with bans on certain kinds of dress.

A different kind of attempt to assert what are said to be French values can be seen in the rise of the far-right Front National under Marine Le Pen, which was the largest party in the 2014 European Parliament elections and won over 2000 seats in this year’s local government elections. Some commentators on the old left point to the weakening of the state as the problem, others mourn what they see as the end of working class solidarity and the rise of individualism. President Hollande’s election slogan was ‘le changement, c’est maintenant’ - change is now. So what really has changed in France, and how will it face the future?

In this podcast Rob Lyons speaks to Dr Shirley Lawes about the state of French politics and society ahead of the session she is chairing at the Battle of Ideas: France: liberté, égalité, fraternité today.

To find out more about this year’s festival and buy tickets visit the Battle of Ideas website.

Rob Lyons speaks to Sandy Starr about the history of eugenics and whether the term is useful today

Using techniques like mitochondrial donation - ‘three-person IVF’ - we can alter genes to resolve congenital medical conditions. Other techniques that change our heritable characteristics will follow. But such developments often inspire resistance: the ability to manipulate our germlines is sometimes described as ‘eugenics’, invoking the horrors of Nazi racial policies, although the term was coined by Francis Galton in 1883. Are we going too far in altering our genes or should we embrace the ability to conquer illness? Should we worry about attempts to ‘improve’ human beings?

In this week’s podcast Rob speaks to Sandy Starr from the Progress Educational Trust and convener of the Battle over Life and Death strand at this year’s Battle of Ideas about the dark history of eugenics and the use and abuse of the term today ahead of a session he’s chairing called Eugenics: myth and reality.

To find out more about this year’s festival and buy tickets visit the Battle of Ideas website.

Listen to the opening remarks from the Battle of Ideas launch event at the Barbican in London

London has, by most accounts, emerged as one of the premier cities of the twenty-first century: firmly established as a global hub for finance, technology and culture. Yet there have been growing anxieties about the effect rising inequality levels are having on the city and its inhabitants. Soaring private rental prices and strain on social housing have fuelled fears about gentrification driving out long-term residents as unfashionable neighbourhoods become regenerated. Such fears have also begun to spread among the relatively affluent, with even the New York Times‘s departing London correspondent bemoaning the distorting effects of foreign investment into the capital’s ‘crazyexpensive’ property market. Stories abound of young creatives being priced out to the extent that they find commuting from Spain or Berlin a more affordable option. More generally, there is a growing conviction that London’s development is coming at the expense of a sanitised city, with public space becoming increasingly privatised and stage-managed.

While much ire has been expressed at the stark disparity between London’s increasing range of luxury tower blocks and ‘poor doors’ provided to inhabitants of socially affordable accommodation, some have suggested that inequality is not as big a problem as lack of adequate infrastructure. A range of measures from rent controls to strict penalties for under-occupancy have been suggested, although many are sceptical of their long-term impact. Almost everyone seems to agree that a chronic lack of housing in the city is driving prices through the roof, yet calls to build on the green belt and relax planning regulations are met with strong opposition.

Does inequality pose a serious threat to the vibrancy of London? Would measures such as rent control provide relief to the housing bubble, or continue to distract from tackling the problems of supply? Is London in danger of becoming a sanitised millionaire’s playground without urgent action? Are concerns over ‘hipster gentrification’ a resistance to the changing nature of the city, or is there a real threat posed by divided communities in an increasingly expensive city? Should the capital’s rapid development be a cause for celebration or concern?

Rob Lyons speaks to philosopher Piers Benn about the nature of happiness and why it has become a Government policy objective in recent years.

In this week's Podcast of Ideas Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden discuss the week's news, including the migrant crisis and the drone assassinations of two British Jihadis in the Islamic State.

In this week’s Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden discuss the murder of two journalists on live television by a disgruntled former colleague in the United States, and the latest tragic events in the ongoing European migration crisis. Rob talks to Martyn Perks about the growing fears about the role of artificial intelligence and robots in society in everything from manufacturing to warfare, and why a machine could never become truly human, ahead of his session at the upcoming Battle of Ideas session titled Man vs machine: who controls the robots?. And after the release of this year’s GCSE results, Philip Walters comes in to discuss the state of education in the UK and whether exams for 16-year-olds are necessary any more.

Discussion of the news, race and policing in America and Immanuel Kant

In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and Dave Bowden discuss the big stories of the past few weeks, including the scandal at Kid’s Company, doping in sport and the row over falling milk prices. Rob speaks to Jean Smith from the New York Salon about race and policing in America ahead of her session on the subject at the Battle of Ideas, and we have Steve Murphy’s mini lecture from the Institute’s recent event University in One Day on Immanuel Kant and the nature of enlightenment.