Battle of Ideas 2008 1 & 2 November, Royal College of Art, London

The Battle of Ideas 2008 was a two-day festival of high-level, thought-provoking debate organised by the Academy of Ideas and hosted by the Royal College of Art.

 Battle News

Battles in Print 2006 republished

Battle of Ideas 2008 on video

SCETT Professionalism Survey Results

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 Reading for Battle

The Chinese Dream: A Society Under Construction, Neville Mars & Adrian Hornsby

Religion remains fundamental to US politics, Susan Jacoby

Time to no platform 'no platform', Dennis Hayes & Richard Reynolds

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 Battles in Print

Should schools be engines of social mobility?, Sally Millard

Remaking citizens for the ‘Big Society’, Kathryn Ecclestone

In drug policy, pragmatism is the only moral approach, Roger Howard & Leo Barasi

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 Speakers include
Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at the universities of Oxford and Warwick; chair, Neuroscience Research Partnership, Singapore; chair, general advisory committee on science, Food Standards Agency
John Cooper, leading criminal and human rights barrister; regular columnist, The Times and Observer; editor, Criminal Bar Quarterly
Frank Field, MP, Labour MP for Birkenhead; co-chair, Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration; author, Neighbours from Hell: The Politics of Behaviour
Frank Furedi, sociologist and social commentator; author, What's Happened to the University?, Power of Reading: from Socrates to Twitter, On Tolerance and Authority: a sociological history
Leela Gandhi, professor of English, University of Chicago; author Affective Communities: anticolonial thought, fin-de-siècle radicalism, and the politics of friendship; founding co-editor, Postcolonial Studies journal.
Clare Gerada, GP; past chair, Royal College of General Practitioners
Susan Jacoby, author, The Age of American Unreason; programme director, Centre for Inquiry - NYC; fellow, Centre for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library.
Bronwen Maddox, chief foreign commentator, The Times; author In Defence of America
Kenan Malik, writer and broadcaster; author, The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics and From Fatwa to Jihad
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 Festival Buzz

See more from the Battle of Ideas youtube channel

"The audience were the stars of the Battle of Ideas - engaged, informed and enthusiastic. As a panellist, I felt both ashamed and educated. Exactly as it should be."
John Street, professor of politics, University of East Anglia

 Partners
The Battle of Ideas is produced by
Academy of Ideas

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