 | 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. |
I Find That Offensive (Biteback 2016)
Abortion: how late is "too late"?
"I was impressed by the intensity of the debate and the high level of intellectual engagement, not least by the audience. It was an invigorating, even exhilarating experience to be part of a festival based on the conviction that disagreement is good. The Battle of Ideas is a fantastic concept, may it spread epidemically to the rest of the world. I am already looking forward to next year's event."
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, professor of social anthropology, University of Oslo; novelist
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