Tag: Ethics and Empire
-
National Post: Colonialism isn’t as bad as everyone thinks
1 May 2023. ‘Canada isn’t the only place where left-wing activists are blackening the names of colonial-era figures like John A. Macdonald and Henry Dundas for not living up to modern, ultra-progressive ideals. When British ethicist Nigel Biggar found himself defending 19th-century mining magnate Cecil Rhodes against exaggerated claims of racism from Oxford University students,…
-
Should We Be Ashamed of Our History?
Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) host the YouTube show and podcast TRIGGERnometry, which explores issues that are both important and controversial. In their 30 August 2020 episode, the hosts welcome Nigel Biggar to discuss the topic of history and whether one should be ashamed? The conversation begins, in part, with the…
-
On Human Rights and Empire: An Interview
Journalist and contributing editor at ConservativeHome, Andrew Gimson, interviewed Nigel Biggar for the Conservative blog site. The interview highlights, in part, Biggar’s reflections on the limits of human rights and the need for the virtues as well as his analysis of imperial history and British empire. You can read the interview in full on the ConservativeHome blog here: “Interview:…
-
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…
-
Correcting Inaccuracies: Ethics and Empire
On 26 September 2018 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an article by Paul Ostwald, “Wie günstig! Da kommen plötzlich drei Kriege mehr aus”, which was highly critical of the “Ethics and Empire” project, which Nigel Biggar runs in the McDonald Centre. You can find the article here. Mr Ostwald’s article contained a series of inaccuracies. Professor Biggar therefore wrote a…
-
Censorship and the Complexities of Empire
Last year (2017) several scholars denounced the McDonald Centre’s Ethics and Empire project and called for its termination. Recently, referring to such actions, David Sanderson of The Times newspaper quoted Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who observed a trend to reduce acceptable scholarship in the Academy to a narrow range of focal themes and…
-
‘Ethics and Empire’ and Freedom of Speech
In an article for the first issue in 2018 of the Oxford Magazine, Nigel Biggar takes stock of the controversy surrounding the McDonald Centre’s “Ethics and Empire” project and considers in particular its implications for the academic freedom of students as well as professors. The Oxford Magazine is not an official publication of the University of Oxford, but an independent…
-
Responding to Critics of ‘Ethics and Empire’
The 30 November publication of Prof Nigel Biggar’s essay on Britain’s colonial past in The Times, together with the announcement on this website of the McDonald Centre’s “Ethics and Empire” project, has provoked strong reactions from a number of students and academics in Oxford. Common Ground Oxford, a group of undergraduates protesting the ‘structures of racism, classism and colonialism’ that purportedly…
-
The Ethics of Colonial History
In a recent issue of the prestigious Third World Quarterly , the political scientist Bruce Gilley published an article exploring the positive case for colonialism. The article provoked an intense backlash from several quarters and forced Gilley to withdraw it. In a recent op-ed essay for The Times , Nigel Biggar defended Gilley’s approach by noting that dispassionate scrutiny of the historical record uncovers many positive aspects…