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Updated 15 June 2021 In What’s wrong with rights? (OUP, 2020) Nigel Biggar addresses questions about the legitimacy of ‘rights’-talk in its various forms—natural, moral, legal, universal, and absolute. He concludes that such talk obscures the importance of fostering civic virtue, corrodes military effectiveness, subverts the democratic legitimacy of law, proliferates publicly onerous rights, and undermines its own authority and…
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Nigel Biggar has published two essays that bring to a reader’s attention a history of slavery and the British response that calls into question the narratives of racial discord and need for reparations that decolonisation movements (i.e., Rhodes Must Fall and Black Lives Matter) proffer. Biggar outlines a vast history of slavery while highlighting anti-slavery movements, which too…
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In the 12 October 2020 Comment for The Times, Nigel Biggar reasons with concern for the way the Strasbourg court has viewed military operations overseas. Challenging the ruling that “what applies in peacetime Birmingham also applies in anarchical Basra,” Biggar argues that rights must be applied prudentially with reference both to the context and by measure rather…
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The threat to academic freedom is no myth. Nigel Biggar makes this clear in his recent comment for The Telegraph (8 August 2020). Biggar’s “Political discrimination should be as unacceptable as racism at universities” highlights the problems at UK universities, where discrimination in political matters not only remains unfair but also disproportionately marginalises, and silences, conservative views. His…
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UnHerd Opinion: Nigel Biggar challenges those lobbying for the ‘decolonising’ of university curricula. While many in educational and cultural institutions are yielding, Biggar, drawing upon both statistical data and critical acumen, argues that the case in favour makes neither empirical nor historical sense. Read Biggar’s opinion here.
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Nigel Biggar recently reviewed John Lloyd’s Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot: The Great Mistake of Scottish Independence (Polity Press, 2020) for The Critic Magazine. Biggar’s review, ‘Criminal insanity’, argues that calls for Scottish independence ought to be resisted. In fact, and in step with Lloyd, Biggar concludes that Scottish secession would be more than wrong-headed. It would be criminal. You…
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The creation of the non-partisan Free Speech Union, which was launched by Toby Young at the end of February, was inspired by the May 2019 McDonald Centre annual conference, ‘Academic Freedom under Threat: What’s to be Done?‘. Chairman of the FSU’s board of directors (here), Nigel Biggar, has argued in a recent Times article (24 February 2020) that the FSU is…
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On 10 February 2020, The Telegraph published Nigel Biggar’s reflections on the ‘decolonising’ proposal, which would have ‘Western museums surrender objects taken by European imperialists centuries ago.’ For Biggar, such a proposal raises a number of questions that require satisfactory response. The article, “Let’s stop this descent into self-pitying Empire shame over our universities’ ancient artefacts”, can be found…
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Paul Cornish, Nigel Biggar, Robert Johnson and Gareth Stansfield prepared a report commissioned by the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) of the UK Ministry of Defence. The authors considered intervention policy and practice for those circumstances in which the UK national interest might demand action. The authors argue that UK intervention operations are permissible to maintain the rules-based…