Academy of Ideas

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe IN THE NEWS: SYRIA - THE ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT AND THE ROAD AHEAD http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/7544 The ongoing crisis in Syria shows no signs of abating after nearly 18 months of fighting. We appear to have reached an impasse, an...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe FROM RENAISSANCE TO SHRINKAGE: WHAT FUTURE FOR THE EUROPEAN CITY? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6824 In this, the ‘Urban Age’, a million migrants a week currently fuel the dynamic growth of urban centres in Asia and Africa. By cont...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe COMMONS PEOPLE: MUSIC IN A DIGITAL AGE http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6789 From the legend of Robert Johnson trading his soul with the Devil through to censor-baiting ‘gangsta’ rap, musicians have traditionally held the role of rebe...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe WHAT'S THE ACADEMY WORTH TODAY? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6826 University education in the 21st century, in a great number of countries, is subject to an increasingly large number of intense challenges. It is expensive for an e...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe WHO IS THE GREATEST ARTIST? BALLOON DEBATE http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6787 While the London Olympics has understandably dominated the capital’s cultural agenda, 2012 has also been another booming year for art lovers. Major exhib...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe IN THE NEWS: PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT - CAN BOXING SAVE KIDS? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/7467 Much of the discussion about boxing today seems to focus on the sport’s ability to change lives. More than any other sport, reports o...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe CAN TECHNOLOGY SET YOU FREE? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6843 Prometheus was severely punished for giving fire and the arts to mankind, but his loss of liberty was our gain. Just what though is the relationship between technology...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe TELLING OFF THE GROWN-UPS http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6779 Too often adults seem powerless in the face of young people behaving badly. During last summer’s riots, well-equipped police officers looked on impotently as teenagers lo...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe ABORTION: A MEDICAL OR MORAL CHOICE? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6803 Abortion is a procedure whose relationship to medicine is neither straightforward nor agreed upon. It does have to be carried out by a licensed clinician with...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe CAPITALISM: KILL OR CURE? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6751 The Western economic slump is conventionally attributed to a surfeit of capitalism, a market that is too free and insufficiently regulated. The financial crisis of 2008-9...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe YOUTH TODAY: UNEMPLOYED OR UNEMPLOYABLE? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6748 For many commentators, the riots in England during August 2011 were a consequence of youth unemployment and despair. With over one million youths aged 16-2...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe GENOCIDE DENIAL: SHOULD WE DEFEND THE RIGHT TO SPEAK EVIL? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6786 In January 2012, the French Senate voted for a bill with cross-party support to make it a criminal offence to deny the mass murder of Arm...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe ARE THE KIDS ALRIGHT? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6818 Today’s representation of childhood often seems overly negative: children are seen to be suffering from a litany of ills and problems. At the start of 2012, newspaper headlin...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe CAN THE LAW MAKE US EQUAL? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6752 It has become a maxim of Western society that citizens should be equal before the law. A legal system that discriminates against minorities is widely recognised as a sym...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe EURO AND THE ECNOMY: THE FINAL COUNTDOWN? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6775 The economic crisis in Europe has become the new normal, a continual background to daily life. Every attempt at stabilisation seems to fall apart, every a...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe WHAT'S WRONG WITH EQUALITY? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6767 In his State of the Union speech this year, President Obama declared that inequality is ‘the defining issue of our time’. He said everyone should get ‘a fair shot’, do...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe THE GIANTS OF ASIA http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6795 With their huge populations and buoyant growth rates, China and India are two of the economic and technological powerhouses of the twenty-first century. And though many seem to...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE ARAB SPRING? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6771 At the beginning of last year, it seemed the people of the Arab world were finally throwing off decades of despotism. Leaders fell, first in Tunisia, then in...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe ORGAN DONATION: DEAD OR ALIVE? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6760 The Greek philosopher Epicurus said ‘as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls’. No doubt it comes as certainly as we pay taxes, but are we s...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe POP-UP COMMUNITIES: HERE TO STAY? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6785 The UK riots of last summer had a certain unreality about them. They took the nation by horrible surprise as youths trashed their own neighbourhoods, reviving tal...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe FREE WILL: JUST AN ILLUSION? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6731 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...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe FORCED MARRIAGE TO FAITH SCHOOLS: THE POLITICS OF MULTICULTURALISM http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6755 When Tory MP Aidan Burley tweeted that Danny Boyle’s Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony was ‘leftie multicultural crap’, he was widel...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe STUDENTS: CONSUMERS AT THE HEART OF THE UNIVERSITY? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6804 With universities now charging tuition fees of up to £9000 a year, many now claim students should be regarded as consumers of higher education....

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe TRUST ME: I'M A SCIENTIST http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6810 Policymakers regularly accompany their policy proposals with scientific claims, while campaigners also cite ‘the science’ to further their causes. But this tendency has n...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe RESEARCH FOR THE SAKE OF IT? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2012/session_detail/6811 Higher education has been a bitterly contested subject in the past couple of years, from rows about the increase in student tuition fees and the Browne Report to open...