Merry Christmas from the Academy of Ideas
Just as we all wind down, the team at the Academy of Ideas wanted to wish you a wonderful Christmas and New Year break - and offer some food for thought on video to enjoy over the holiday.
Although the horrific, murderous attack at the Magdeburg Christmas market casts a shadow over festivities, as we all wind down, the team at the Academy of Ideas wanted to wish you a wonderful Christmas break.
It’s been quite a year, from a dramatic change at the election to summer riots, from relentless assaults on free speech (despite some notable wins) to intensifying geopolitical shifts and tensions. I will be glad to escape the confines of the Westminster bubble and take a break from trying to remove the worst excesses from a barrage of illiberal legislation on the horizon. We all need some time to recharge!
For the Academy of Ideas, 2025 is a milestone: our 25th anniversary and 20 years of the Battle of Ideas festival. Watch out for special events and make sure the weekend of Saturday 18 & Sunday 19 October is in your diary. Better still, get your ticket now.
We couldn’t do any of this without the generosity of our supporters. A special shout out to the Ben Delo Foundation, a new partner for the Battle of Ideas festival. Cheers, Ben. But also to Rising Tide, FIRE, The Snider Foundation and the myriad of organisations that have kept us going.
But we also need YOUR support. We’re a small team, always just about scraping through, and running our projects on a nerve-wracking shoestring. (Every January, I wonder if we will have enough £ to get us through to the end of the year.) So if you can make any contribution to our funds, it really will help. Donate here.
You should make a new year’s resolution to join us! Becoming part of the AoI community of free thinkers will not only be appreciated by us, but will be an act of genuine solidarity. It will ensure that we can carry on having the sort of public conversations that others wish to cancel – difficult discussions on sex and gender, the rise of radical Islamism, the normalisation of anti-Semitism, and more. In short, to make free speech a living reality, beyond a crucial abstract principle.
One way we are making our work more widely known is a revamped Academy of Ideas YouTube channel (with a shoutout to Ella Dorn and Leo Villa for their work). We’ve got brilliant, insightful and thought-provoking speeches from the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 – perfect antidotes to this year’s mostly dull line up of holiday TV. To start you off, here are some must-see clips from the past few weeks. Make sure you subscribe to the channel because there are more to come.
Joanna Williams on how DEI has become institutionalised
It can be tempting to dismiss DEI directives as ridiculous or confined to lame gestures like putting pronouns in your email signature. But, as Joanna explains, corporations and public bodies have built up vast bureaucracies that extensively control working life. The only way back is a revolution against the woke bureaucracy.
Natasha Hausdorff on the abuse of the term ‘genocide’
One of the most influential claims of the past year or two is that Israel is committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza. But lawyer Natasha Hausdorff picks apart this claim in a closely argued speech from our festival. In fact, the claim is more political propaganda than reality.
Nico Perrino on the dangers of online censorship
2024 marked the first partnership between the Battle of Ideas festival and FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), one of America’s largest non-partisan free-speech organisations. In this clip, FIRE’s executive vice-president gives Battle audiences a rousing speech about the ongoing moral panic over online misinformation - and argues that government censorship is never the answer.
Gabriella Swallow defends music education
At our session ‘Are the arts being expelled from education?’, professional cellist Gabriella Swallow shares her own experience to make a case for music education - as a way to continue the UK’s musical culture, to develop capabilities for teamwork and self-regulation, and to preserve ‘our language that exists when words fail’.
Jenny Lindsay on being hounded out from her literary scene
Only days before this year’s Battle of Ideas, Scottish performance poet Jenny Lindsay released her book, Hounded – a paean to the gender-critical feminists who have faced a catastrophic loss of livelihood for sharing their views in the public arena. JK Rowling has called the book ‘one of the definitive chronicles of these times’. In this clip, taken from our Battle session on literary freedom, Lindsay tells the story of her own hounding.
Max Sanderson on overcoming polarisation
Journalist and managing editor Max Sanderson says that the Battle of Ideas ‘changed his life’. He first attended on a drunken whim, but eventually overcame his scepticism about Brexit politics to become a regular speaker and chair at the event. In this clip, he tells us about the merits of ‘seeing how the other half think’.
Merry Christmas and thank you
So, have a lovely Christmas. See you on the other side. And most of all, THANK YOU for all your support and friendship this year. Honestly, that is the main gain of 2024: more and more grassroots campaigners and individuals have worked together to challenge the stifling orthodoxies and limits on free expression that threaten our ability to live freely.
In the meantime, eat, drink and merrily ignore the public-health misanthropes. And despite the awful events in Germany, designed to destroy that special happiness of Christmas, we all deserve a joyous break.