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 SEX IN THE BRAIN: DO MEN AND WOMEN THINK DIFFERENTLY? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5726 Contemporary thinking about gender differences is confused, with often contradictory attitudes emerging from tradition, science, feminism and...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe YOUR MIND, YOUR HIGH: IS RECREATIONAL DRUG USE MORALLY WRONG? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5694 Politicians making the case for prohibiting certain drugs usually argue they are harmful, while those against insist it should be a pe...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe IS THERE A GHOST IN THE MACHINE? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5602 The spirit, spark or personality - the concept of a soul, self or mind distinct from our physical shell - has long been a cornerstone of our understanding of what...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe ONLINE COMMUNITIES: CYBER-VILLAGE OR ANTISOCIAL NETWORK? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5701 Technology has changed the way we communicate and how we participate in communities. While politicians and policy pundits worry about fragm...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe RISE OF EUROPEAN POPULISM: THE REVENGE OF POLITICS? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5735 Debates about contemporary European politics increasingly focus on the putative threat of a resurgent populism. Worried observers sometimes poin...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe BATTLE FOR THE WORLD STRAND INTRO http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe IS THIS AFRICA'S DECADE? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5690 Following the successful 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the new decade is looking bright for Africa. In recent years, Africa’s share of global trade has reversed a six-de...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe CAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY SURVIVE THE 21ST CENTURY? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5732 Last year’s catastrophic election results for Sweden’s Social Democrats raised the question: whatever happened to social democracy? British progressi...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe QUEER TIMES: HAS THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT TRIUMPHED? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5733 ‘Gay people risk becoming the new McCarthyites,’ said Melanie Phillips in an article that sparked outrage among gay rights groups, and across Tw...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe WHAT IS HISTORY EDUCATION FOR? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5749 School history appears to be in crisis. In 2010, more than a hundred state secondary schools entered no students for GCSE history. Internationally renowned historian...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe ISLAMOPHOBIA: THE NEW RACISM OR LIBERAL ANGST? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5740 Racism of any kind is socially unacceptable. Or so we thought. Senior Conservative Baroness Warsi declared in January that ‘Islamophobia’ is alive an...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe WHAT IS FEMINISM FOR? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5734 When higher education minister David Willetts claimed earlier this year that the ‘feminist revolution’ was probably the single biggest factor for the lack of social mobility...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe HAND-OUT BRITAIN? HAS A DEPENDENCY CULTURE MADE US SICK? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5712 The current drive to cut public spending has focused attention on a ‘dependency culture’. The summer’s riots were seen by some as the conse...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe SILENCING SECTARIANISM: FOOTBALL'S FREE SPEECH WARS http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5736 What’s the bigger problem in Scotland right now? Is it Celtic and Rangers fans verbally abusing each other at football grounds, or the proposed...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe SEDUCED BY STATS? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5698 From Hans Rosling’s surprise hit TV show The Joy of Stats to visual snapshots of the numbers in the news, there seems to be a new love affair with statistics, especially when the...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe MAYBE I DO? MARRIAGE IN THE MODERN ERA http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5696 Marriage has been in the air this year. Even if you fled the country for the big day, there was no hiding from the build-up to Wills’ ’n’ Kate’s do. Labour l...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe CENSORING SCIENCE: HAVE SCIENTISTS BECOME THE NEW INQUISITORS? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5684 In January this year, Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, used BBC’s Horizon programme to declare war on bad science. He...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe COARSE SEX AND CHEAP LIVES http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5695 Has sexual permissiveness backfired? For many who once championed the ‘sexual revolution’, serious doubts have begun to surface that the permissiveness of the 1960s is r...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe THE SIMPSONS VERSUS SHAKESPEARE http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5748 In a move to make our children’s education more ‘relevant’, the great literary tradition has been losing ground for some time. But now ‘multimodal texts’ - such as...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe DRUGS AND BIONICS: ENHANCING SPORT? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5745 Hardly a day in the sporting calendar seems to go by without a fresh drugs scandal hitting the headlines, and it is no longer just confined to the usual suspect...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe ROADS OR RUINS? THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL PRESERVATION http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5757 The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) was formed in 1946, in the aftermath of the Second World War, on...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe MIDDLE EAST 'REVOLUTIONS': HOPES AND FEARS http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5688 The uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa came out of the blue, with even President Obama admonishing the CIA for its failure to foresee events....

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe HATERS GONNA HATE: SHOULD WE HATE HATE? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5754 ‘Gamal, tell your father Egyptians hate you!’, the Cairo crowds shouted to the politician son of soon-to-be-deposed president Hosni Mubarak in January. The...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe WHAT IS THE POINT OF BEING AN ARTIST? http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5715 Announcing that you’re embarking on a career as an artist may well alarm your parents – will you really be warm enough in a garret darling? – and perhaps with...

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe DEBATING MATTERS INTERNATIONAL FINAL: GM CROPS - UK VERSUS INDIA http://archive.battleofideas.org.uk/2011/session_detail/5706 The Battle of Ideas will host the third UK versus India Debating Matters Championship, a showdown between the winners of Debating M...