Category: Free Speech and Political Diversity
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Anatomy of a book cancellation
By Nigel Biggar for Compact. 2 February 2023. It was the second week of December 2017, and my wife and I were at Heathrow airport, waiting to board a flight to Germany. Just before setting off for the departure gate, I couldn’t resist checking my email just one last time. My attention concentrated when I…
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Conference, ‘Faithful to the Call: Renewing Theological Ethics from the Ground Up’
The 2022 McDonald Centre Annual Conference was hosted in May. The presentations featured at the conference are now available on YouTube. See the playlist for the ‘Faithful to the Call: Renewing Theological Ethics from the Ground Up’ conference event here. Alternatively, see links to the following sessions below: McDonald Distinguished Lecture SeriesProfessor Oliver O’Donovan: “Statues”Professor Nigel Biggar: ‘”Honour…
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Political Discrimination Should be Unacceptable
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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Academic Freedom Under Threat
McDonald Centre Annual Conference, 2020 On 9-10 May 2019 the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life held a conference at Pembroke College, Oxford, to discuss the threats posed to freedom of speech and research in universities, to analyze their causes, and to begin to articulate the remedies. The fourteen speakers were drawn from…
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Resisting the Thought Police
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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The Need for Moral and Political Viewpoint Diversity in the University
In The Times 10 February 2020 Letter to the Editor, Nigel Biggar challenged his readers, and Education Secretary Sir Gavin Williamson, ‘to dispel the climate of self-censorship and inner exile’ and to champion moral and political viewpoint diversity in Universities. Editor of The Article Daniel Johnson offered a response to Biggar (read his ‘Universities need more intellectual and political diversity, as…
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Not Just Democracy
Reflecting on a recent trip to Hong Kong, and the protests that spilled into its streets, Nigel Biggar raises questions about the limits of democratic elections to bring political well-being–‘votes,’ after all, ‘can’t be any wiser than the voters’. Yet rule of law and a free press are institutions thought essential for fostering political trust between…
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Academic Outrage Mobs
15 May 2019. Quillette Magazine associate editor and Quillette Podcast host Toby Young recently spoke with Nigel Biggar about his experience of being mobbed by colleagues, criticized and denounced for his Ethics and Empire research project. Young and Biggar discussed the motivations for academic outrage mobs and considered responses that might defend against threats to free speech at universities. Please click on the following…
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Exclusions and Double Standards
Nigel Biggar has offered comment on the decision by Cambridge University to withdraw the invitation for Jordan Peterson to join the Divinity Faculty as a term-limited visiting fellow: Please read Biggar’s 02 April 2019 “Cambridge and the exclusion of Jordan Peterson” contribution to The Article here. Biggar’s “Cambridge has double standards on free speech”, a contribution to the Thunderer at The…
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Lost in the Cloud of Leftist Virtue Signalling
Nigel Biggar has offered comment on the Cambridge University decision to investigate its historical links to slavery in the 04 May 2019 weekend essay of The Times. Biggar argued, in part, ‘Whatever wrongs happened in the distant past, the fog of history makes it impossible to determine who deserves compensation for the slave trade’. He concluded by encouraging Cambridge to…