Academy of Ideas

In this week's podcast of Ideas David Bowden talks to Dolan Cummings about whether racial equality laws are now, or ever have been, needed in the UK, Rob Lyons addresses an event held by Policy Exchange on childhood obesity, and spiked's assistant editor Tom Slater comes in to talk about the Down With Campus Censorship! campaign.

The recent crisis in Ukraine has been widely portrayed in the West as a rerun of the Cold War, with a peaceful pro-EU Ukraine being pulled apart as the result of an aggressive and newly expansionist Russia seeking to re-establish hegemony over its neighbourhood. Russia’s annexing of the Ukrainian region of Crimea has been roundly condemned as violating international law, state sovereignty, democracy and causing the most serious crisis in European security since the end of the Cold War. The situation is complicated, however, by the close historic ties between Russia and Ukraine and the fact that many Russian-speaking Ukrainians want to maintain them, as well as the fact that Crimea was actually part of Russia within living memory. Significantly, however, in recent decades Russia has tended to cite the importance of national sovereignty in opposition to Western-led foreign interventions; this is the first time it has accepted the idea that sovereignty can be overridden by other concerns. So is this the beginning of a newly aggressive Russian foreign policy, or is Ukraine a special case? Some commentators have presented a different narrative from the Western one of Russian expansionism, pointing to European and American actions in the run-up to the crisis, such as US senator John McCain’s visit to anti-government protesters in Kiev’s Maidan before the fall of the government. It is argued that the EU and the American directly intervened with the effect of destabilising Ukraine by delegitimising an elected government and effectively hand-picking a new government, alarming many Ukrainians, in particular those in the Crimea and other Russian-speaking areas. Appeals to Ukrainian national sovereignty are further complicated by the fact that anti-Russian Ukrainians’ desire to join the EU arguably means swapping client status with one bigger power for another. So who is right? How should we understand the current crisis over Ukraine? Is it a new Cold War provoked by Russian aggression or do we need to look closer to home to understand the causes?   SPEAKERS   Professor Ivan Krastev  Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia; permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna   Dr Tara McCormack  lecturer in international politics, University of Leicester; author, Critique, Security and Power: the political limits to emancipatory approaches   Will Vernon  producer, BBC News (speaking in a personal capacity)   Dr Kataryna Wolczuk  reader in politics and international studies, University of Birmingham   CHAIR   Bruno Waterfield  Brussels correspondent, Daily Telegraph; co-author, No Means No

In this episode of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons talks to economics journalist and author Daniel Ben-Ami about what tax has become one of the biggest issues in British politics and Rob Killick about whether Uber and AirBnB represent the first shoots of a new economy. Plus, Claire Fox explains why state-regulation of what appears on a cigarette pack is a free-speech issue and Institute of Ideas staff select their stories of the past two weeks.

In this episode of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons speaks to Professor Bill Durodié about last week’s terror attacks in Copenhagen and the implications they have for free speech in Europe. Claire Fox talks about how societal change and the emergence of the public has been reflected through theatre down the ages. And Bríd Hehir tells Rob about how the panic stirred up over female genital mutilation has prompted a witch hunt against physicians and parents.

In late 2014 the Labour party indicated their support for legal ‘buffer zones’ around abortion clinics to prevent protests from interfering with the provision of services. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), Britain's largest abortion provider, supported the move saying that the pro-life protests outside their clinics cause unwarranted levels of distress to those seeking to access lawful healthcare. Is this an acceptable limitation on the freedom to protest, or an unnecessary expansion of the law into the regulation of free speech? Speakers: Frank Furedi (University of Kent), Tim Stanley (Daily Telegraph).Chair: Luke Gittos This Podcast was recorded at the London Legal Salon event at the October Gallery in London on February 10 2015. To find out more about the London Legal Salon's upcoming series of debates on abortion click here.

Sexually explicit material has always challenged censors and traditional moralists. From the 1960s, liberal values on sex and sexual relationships became one of the markers of a civilised, modern society. Over the past decade, however, there’s a gnawing unease that sexually explicit material has gradually stepped down from the top shelf and into the mainstream. Whether it was Rihanna’s raunchy display on The X Factor, Jonathan Ross’ lewd chat shows or Katie Perry simulating oral sex in pop videos, pornographic imagery has become the wallpaper of twenty-first-century society. With the rise of the increasingly ubiquitous ‘celebrity sex tape’, fans of chart-friendly pop stars such as Tulisa Contostavlos are exposed to increasingly graphic and intimate depictions of their icons. And then there’s Fifty Shades of Grey. Traditional moralists have always found much to censor in modern society, but when former champions of sexual liberalism, such as Joan Bakewell, start bemoaning the onslaught of naked flesh into the living room, something appears to have changed. Indeed, it is fortysomething ex-punk journalists turned parents who have started to wonder aloud why thong-thrusting pop videos are being shown at lunchtime. But could it be argued that we’ve been here many times before? From Elvis Presley and David Bowie to Madonna and Prince, pop stars have sought to challenge and question society’s taboos around sex. Surely Rihanna and Perry are simply the latest practitioners of taboo busting exhibitionism? Or is it the case that sex and relationships have become devalued, with porn aesthetics the new low-grade currency? A civilised society should be open about sex, but are we in danger of forgetting that civilised values also means the separation of the public and private, the decent and the debased? Is the rush to smash sexual taboos a sign of healthy libertarianism or of self-loathing by a cultural elite unwilling and unable to promote higher culture? Are the sexual-taboo smashers really hammering elite traditionalists and conservatives or is it a radical way of sneering at ordinary people’s ‘small minded’ values? Neil Davenport writer; head of sociology, JFS Sixth Form Centre; contributor, spiked Dr Jan Macvarish research fellow, Centre for Health Services Studies; founding associate, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury Anna Percy feminist performance poet; member, Stirred Feminist Poetry collective; organiser and facilitator, live poetry events and writing workshops Chair: Suzy Dean freelance writer; blogger, Free Society

In the first podcast in a new series, Rob Lyons speaks to Dave Bowden about the state of press freedom in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Justine Brian fills us in on the latest news from Debating Matters, and Geoff Kidder gives us the lowdown on the upcoming Greek elections.

America’s problems at home and abroad have led many to wonder if the US is in decline. US foreign policy, from Syria to Ukraine, appears rudderless and impotent. The Iraq War is widely seen to have been a failure, while US forces are leaving Afghanistan with the Taliban still active and the country far from being a happy democracy. The US recovery from the recession has been weak, too, while China and India – and even parts of Africa - seem to offer more glittering possibilities for expansion and wealth creation than the US. China may overtake the US as the world’s largest economy in GDP terms by the end of the decade. At home, the American political class appears to be almost at an impasse, unable to address its challenges, as epitomised by last year’s shutdown of the federal government. Political commentator Timothy Garton Ash argues ‘the politicians in Washington behave like rutting stags with locked antlers’. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says that the failure of politics in Washington has been ‘hastening the emergence of a post-American world’. Yet such declinist talk is hardly new, as exemplified by Paul Kennedy in his 1987 bestseller, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. America is still the largest economy in the world, despite having a quarter of the population of either China or India. America is still by far the greatest military power, has the world’s top universities and produces the most cutting-edge research and technological innovation. Even in ‘soft power’ terms, America is the pre-eminent source of the world’s culture. In contrast, the much-vaunted ‘BRIC’ countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China are all faltering in one way or another. Is the US truly facing the prospect of being replaced as the world’s greatest power? Is the sluggish America today in similar circumstances to Britain at the time of First World War - the faded Greece to Asia’s Rome? Or, is the declinist view overly pessimistic? After all, periods of introspection and worry about US decline over the past 30 years have given way to later resurgence. Is this time different? Speakers Dr Yaron Brook Executive director, Ayn Rand Institute Dr Jenny Clegg senior lecturer, Asia Pacific Studies, University of Central Lancashire, Preston Dr Sue Currell chair, British Association for American Studies; reader, American Literature, Sussex University James Matthews management consultant; founding member, NY Salon; writer on economics and business Sir Christopher Meyer chairman, PagefieldAdvisory Board; former British Ambassador to the United States Chair Jean Smith co-founder and director, NY Salon

The public outrage that followed the discovery of several ‘forced labour’ labels sewn into clothes stocked by budget clothing shop Primark has brought the issue of the ethics of the supply chain back into the headlines. Just what is the real cost of cheap goods in the West? In April 2013, 1,100 people – including garment workers who had been producing clothes for UK retailers - died when the Rana Plaza commercial block in Bangladesh collapsed. Earlier this year, the Guardian claimed fishmeal used to produce farmed prawns for UK supermarkets was produced using fish caught with slave labour. These revelations fit into a history of claims made about ‘sweatshop’ conditions faced by workers producing everything from fashionable footwear to top-of-the-range consumer electronics. However the problem is not restricted to developing countries, as cases of exploitation and abuse of labourers continue to emerge across the UK, too. Some have called for UK retailers to boycott firms or even entire countries that allow unacceptable working practices. After the Rana Plaza disaster, Labour MP Michael Connarty demanded legislation to force UK firms to audit their supply chains. But others believe boycotts do more harm than good and that a better solution is to maintain commercial links while demanding suppliers improve and work towards higher standards. As a recent report by the British Retail Consortium notes: ‘Retailers drive positive change by embedding certain values and standards in their supply chain that are central to its brand and which address specific issues or concerns that are important to their customer base.’ Withdrawing entirely from a country, some argue, would actually make things worse by causing thousands of relatively poor people to lose their jobs. What is more, given the long and complicated international supply chains that big retailers deal with today, is it really possible to ensure goods are produced in an ethical fashion? Or do we need ever more scrutiny of big businesses to ensure they don’t turn a blind eye for the sake of profit? While retailers debate how best to restore trust and demonstrate that their products are ethically sourced – for example, by making details of supply chains more transparent - shoppers are under pressure to ‘buy responsibly’. Maybe it makes business sense, too, as ethical fashion labels have become trendy and no doubt attract higher profit-margins than low-cost clothing. However, some commentators warn against demonising those who seek out cheap bargains or undermining the harmless joys of shopping by turning retail therapy into an anxious moral maze of label-checking. Is virtuous shopping really a case of guilt-ridden consumers in the West showing off their consciences rather than helping exploited producers? Or is it at least better than nothing, a morally worthwhile alternative that reminds us of our responsibility to others? Could clumsy interventions by retailers, responding to pressure from campaigners, make things worse rather than better for developing-world workers? Should concerns about working conditions be dealt with by governments and workers in the producing countries rather than by shoppers and stores in the UK? Speakers Sandy Black professor of fashion & textile design & technology, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London; editor and co-author, The Sustainable Fashion Handbook; author, Eco Chic the Fashion Paradox Barbara Crowther director of policy and public affairs, Fairtrade Foundation Andrew Opie director for food and sustainability, British Retail Consortium Nathalie Rothschild freelance journalist; producer and reporter for Sweden's public service radio Chair Jason Smith partnerships coordinator, Debating Matters Competition; freelance journalist; co-founder, Birmingham Salon