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Category: Beyond the Ivory Tower

Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / General / Governance / Public Philosophy

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From the Vault: Beyond the Ivory Tower Series

While Justice Everywhere takes a break over the summer, we recall some of the most memorable posts from our 2019-2020 season. This post focuses on the successful launch of our Beyond the Ivory Tower interview series.

 

The Beyond the Ivory Tower series seeks to explore the relationship between academic political theory and ‘real politics’, by talking with figures who have – in the course of their careers – managed to bridge that divide. As stated in our introductory post, “their stories are interesting in their own right [but additionally they] help us to understand the position of political theory today, and how other political theorists might achieve wider impact.”

The series is comprised of four interviews so far:

Stay tuned for more interviews in this ongoing series in our 2020/21 season!

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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 7th September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to contribute a guest post on a topical subject in political philosophy (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Beyond the Ivory Tower / Democracy / Governance / Liberty / Public Philosophy

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An interview with Rebecca Lowe (Beyond the Ivory Tower Series)

This is the fourth interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series (following Onora O’Neill, Marc Stears and Jonathan Wolff). In February, Aveek Bhattacharya spoke to Rebecca Lowe about her efforts to increase the level of philosophical discussion on the political right.

Rebecca Lowe was founding director of FREER, a think tank dedicated to promoting social and economic liberalism. She was the Conservative party candidate for the City of Durham in the 2015 general election, and for several years wrote a regular column for the ConservativeHome website, where she was an assistant editor. She is currently working as research director at an investment company, while studying for a PhD at King’s College London, researching Lockean justifications of private property.

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Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / Governance / Health / Moral values / Public Philosophy

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An Interview with Jonathan Wolff (Beyond the Ivory Tower Series)

This is the third interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series (previous interviewees: Onora O’Neill and Marc Stears). Back in December, Diana Popescu spoke to Jonathan Wolff about his experience working on public policy committees and what philosophers have to learn from engaging with real-life problems and social movements. 

Jonathan Wolff is the Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. Before coming to Oxford, he was Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Arts and Humanities at UCL. He is currently developing a new research programme on revitalising democracy and civil society. His work largely concerns equality, disadvantage, social justice and poverty, as well as applied topics such as public safety, disability, gambling, and the regulation of recreational drugs. He has been a member of the Nuffield Council of Bioethics, the Academy of Medical Science working party on Drug Futures, the Gambling Review Body, the Homicide Review Group, an external member of the Board of Science of the British Medical Association, and a Trustee of GambleAware. He writes a regular column on higher education for The Guardian.  (more…)

Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / Democracy / Public Philosophy

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An Interview with Marc Stears (Beyond the Ivory Tower series)

This is the second interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series, following Onora O’Neill. Back in November, Aveek Bhattacharya spoke to Marc Stears about his experiences in politics, focusing on his time as a close adviser to then leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband.

Prof Marc Stears is Director of the Sydney Policy Lab. Stears was Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford in 2010 when his university friend Ed Miliband was elected leader of the opposition Labour party. After a secondment to the think tank Institute for Public Policy Research, Stears left academia in 2012 to become Chief Speechwriter for Miliband. He was a co-author of the 2015 Labour election manifesto and a member of the party’s general election steering committee. In 2013, the Telegraph ranked him the UK’s eighth most influential left-winger. After Labour’s election defeat in 2015, Stears joined another British think tank, the New Economics Foundation, as Chief Executive, before his move to Australia in 2018.

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Academia / Beyond the Ivory Tower / Governance / Public Philosophy / Technology / Work

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An Interview with Baroness Onora O’Neill (Beyond the Ivory Tower series)

Aveek Bhattacharya and Fay Niker recently interviewed Baroness Onora O’Neill, asking her about her wide-ranging experiences combining being a professor of philosophy and a member of the House of Lords (among many other things). 

Baroness Onora O’Neill of Bengarve is Emeritus Honorary Professor at the University of Cambridge and has been a cross-bench (i.e. not aligned with any political party) member of the British House of Lords since 2000. She has written widely in ethics and political philosophy, and is particularly known for her work on bioethics, trust and the philosophy of Kant. She was Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge from 1992-2006, President of the British Academy from 2005-9, chaired the Nuffield Foundation from 1998-2010 and chaired the Equality and Human Rights Commission from 2012-2016. (more…)

Beyond the Ivory Tower / General

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Introducing: Beyond the ivory tower

Most of us believe that the questions of political theory are not merely academic, in either sense of the word. We may be partly motivated by philosophical curiosity, seeking knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but that is not the only reason we want to understand what justice requires, what equality means or how to meet our obligations to one another. Most of us think the answers to these questions have practical implications as well. If we discover what a better society looks like, we don’t just want to keep that to ourselves – we want to help make that society come about.

That implies that the ideas of political theorists ought not be limited to universities and scholarly journals, but that they should seek to influence the outside world of ‘real politics’. Indeed, many of the most venerated thinkers in the history of political thought have sought, with varying degrees of success, to put their ideas into practice – from Marx trying to direct international revolutionary socialism, to Rousseau’s constitution writing, to Burke and JS Mill sitting in parliament. Yet as political theory has professionalised, there is a concern that it has withdrawn into abstraction and esoterica and become detached from practical political concerns.

The purpose of Beyond the Ivory Tower is to speak to prominent philosophers that have, in different ways, managed to bridge the divide between academic political theory and ‘real politics’. In part, this is because their stories are interesting in their own right. It is also to help us understand the position of political theory today, and how other political theorists might achieve wider impact.

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Beyond the Ivory Tower / General

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Happy Holidays!

Justice Everywhere is taking a short winter nap at the moment.

We wish you happy holidays and a fresh and bright New Year!

 

But we will already be back next week – And how!

Next week, we will introduce our Beyond the Ivory Tower series. In this series of posts, we will speak with political philosophers who have achieved positions of political impact, to better understand the relationships between political philosophy and real-world politics. Kicking it off will be an interview with Baroness Onora O’Neill. So stay tuned!