Claire Fox

Claire Fox is the director of the Academy of Ideas, which she established to create a public space where ideas can be contested without constraint. She convenes the yearly Battle of Ideas festival and initiated The Academy of Ideas Debating Matters Competition) for sixth-formers. She also co-founded the IoI’s residential summer school The Academy, with the aim to demonstrate ‘university as it should be’. 

She is a panelist on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze and is regularly invited to comment on developments in culture, education, media and free speech issues on TV and radio programmes in the UK such as Newsnight and Any Questions? Claire is a columnist for TES (Times Education Supplement) and MJ (Municipal Journal). She is author of a new book on free speech, entitled I Find That Offensive (Biteback) and No Strings Attached! Why arts funding should say no to instrumentalism (Arts&Business).

Claire is a fellow of Wellington College, an executive board member of the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR), UCL and is involved at a board level in the international debate network, Time To Talk.

 Related Sessions

Saturday 28 June 2008, 6.00pm The Lift, Southbank Centre Square, London
The Battle for Progress


Saturday 12 July 2008, 10.00am Norton Rose LLP
The growth of China - threat or opportunity?


Saturday 12 July 2008, 4.45pm Norton Rose LLP
Should we all learn Mandarin? China’s role in the new world order


Tuesday 28 October 2008, 7.00pm Foyles Charing Cross Road
Contemporary attitudes to ageing and dying


Saturday 1 November 2008, 10.30am Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
The Battle for Truth


Saturday 1 November 2008, 1.30pm Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Your culture or mine? The arts and identity


Saturday 1 November 2008, 3.30pm Upper Gulbenkian
Capitalism – what is it good for?


Saturday 1 November 2008, 6.30pm Imperial College, Exhibition Road
Battle of Ideas 2008 festival drinks reception


Sunday 2 November 2008, 10.00am Lecture Theatre 2
'Sci Fi transport': a thing of the past?


Sunday 2 November 2008, 11.00am Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
The Battle for Progress


Sunday 2 November 2008, 2.00pm Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Radicalism then and now: the legacy of 1968


Sunday 2 November 2008, 4.00pm Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
The Battle for Leadership


 Publications

I Find That Offensive (Biteback 2016)


 Festival Buzz

Particle Physics is Sexy

View: Particle Physics is Sexy

"I was amazed by the high quality of the Battle of Ideas 2007 and the intellectual excitement that it provoked."
Prof Malcolm Grant CBE, president and provost, University College London