A recording of a debate at the Battle of Ideas festival on Sunday 3 November 2019.
The angry exchanges in parliament after the Supreme Court ruled against prorogation were typical of the ill-tempered discourse around Brexit. This year it was also deemed acceptable to ‘milkshake’ those you disagree with. Looking at a world seemingly filled with slurs, angry social-media comments, inflammatory remarks about migrants and nasty jibes about ‘gammons’ and ‘TERFs’, many commentators have called this an age of ‘toxic politics’. Should we lament a lost civility, or is the emergence of more forthright and angry disagreements in fact a good thing? What is the line between passionate disagreement and toxic bile? How can we fi nd ways to disagree with other people constructively?
DOLAN CUMMINGS
associate fellow, Academy of Ideas; co- founder, Manifesto Club; author, That Existential Leap: a crime story
TIMANDRA HARKNESS
journalist, writer and broadcaster; presenter, Radio 4’s FutureProofi ng and How to Disagree: a beginner’s guide to having better arguments
DR DEBORAH E LIPSTADT
professor of Holocaust Studies, Emory University, Atlanta; author, Antisemitism: here and now
JACOB MCHANGAMA
executive director, Justitia, a Copenhagen based human-rights think tank; host and narrator, Clear and Present Danger: a history of free speech podcast
JAMES TOOLEY
professor of educational entrepreneurship and policy, University of Buckingham; author, The Beautiful Tree
CHAIR: ALASTAIR DONALD
co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; convenor, Living Freedom
#BattleFest2021: From GB News to Ben & Jerry’s - boycotts or censorship?
#BattleFest2021: How to fight cancel culture and win
#BattleFest2021: Girl, boy, other: how do we talk to kids about gender?
#BattleFest2021: Is it time to rethink the precautionary principle?
#BattleFest2021: Is levelling up really levelling down? The great inequality debate
#BattleFest2021: Racism and how to fight it
#BattleFest2021: The status of science after the pandemic
#BattleFest2021: The Irish border question
#BattleFest2021: Will green jobs save us?
#BattleFest2021: Can our data be used for good? The ethics of research
#BattleFest2021: Protection for me but not for thee? The equality conundrum
#BattleFest2021: Hate, heresy and the fight for free speech
#BattleFest2021: Feminism’s civil war
#BattleFest2021: From profits to prophets - why has big business gone woke?
#BattleFest2021: Is there a case for fossil fuels?
#BattleFest2021: A ’nudge’ too far? The rise of behavioural science and technocratic rule
#BattleFest2021: 20 years in Afghanistan - what happened?
#BattleFest2021: Who are we? Identity in crisis
#EducationForum: Teaching white privilege: making schools less racist or more divided?
#Arts&Society: Truth and politics in the theatre - in conversation with David Ireland
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free