The Reith Lectures

This year's Reith lecturer is British military historian and journalist John Keegan. In his fifth and final Reith lecture, recorded at the Broadcasting House, London, John Keegan considers the future of war. He argues that it will not be law that will keep the world's peace. Rather it will be because the United Nations retains the will to confront unlawful force with lawful force together with the capacity to resolve the conflicts in which wars originate. He believes that we must not shrink from seeing the causes of war addressed, but equally we must not shrink from seeing violence used when the threat of violence has failed.

This year's Reith lecturer is British military historian and journalist John Keegan. In his fourth Reith lecture, recorded at the Bute Hall, University of Glasgow, John Keegan considers the impact of battle on those who fight them and how it's altered the nature of war throughout history. He also examines how modern warfare has changed the role and experiences of the soldier.

This year's Reith lecturer is British military historian and journalist John Keegan. In his third Reith lecture, recorded at King's College London, John Keegan explores the evolving relationship between war and the nation state, the changing nature of sovereignty, and examines whether states need to cause conflict.

This year's Reith lecturer is British military historian and journalist John KeeganIn his second lecture, recorded at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, John Keegan looks at the origins of warfare, when combat first became purposeful, and examines whether evidence of violence and the need for war is embedded in human nature, or if it is only present in the external factors which act upon human nature. He argues that the evolution of conflict is inextricably linked to the evolution of social groupings.

The Reith lecturer for the 50th anniversary series, is British military historian and journalist John Keegan. He has been a senior lecturer in Military History at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and also held a visiting professorship at Princeton University. Leaving the academy in 1986 John Keegan joined the Daily Telegraph as a Defence Correspondent and remains with the publication as Defence Editor, also writing for the American conservative website, National Review Online. His published work examines warfare throughout history, including human prehistory and the classical era; with the majority of his writing focussing on the 14th century onwards to modern conflict.In his first Reith Lecture, recorded at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London, John Keegan explores the great impact warfare has had on modern times. War has been the scourge of this century, but John Keegan argues that until very recently war was not among life's great enemies. War previously had occasionally had epidemic effects, but it always stood lower in peoples' fears than the arrival of famine and disease. The fear of war as a widespread killer, he says, only began in the 19th century, and only in the 20th century did the fear of war overtake the more primordial anxieties associated with sickness and deprivation.

This year's Reith lecturer is Professor Patricia Williams, one of the most provocative intellectuals in American law. In her fifth and final Reith lecture, Professor Patricia Williams explores ways of preventing racism. She attempts to point the way forward by drawing out solutions which include developing the ability to resist racism's inevitability and reconciling racial tensions across the divide.

This year's Reith lecturer is Professor Patricia Williams, one of the most well known intellectuals in American law. In her fourth of five Reith lectures Professor Patricia Williams examines the impact of racialised science on attitudes to race. She argues that scientific statements about black people in terms of genetic attributes of, for example, athleticism or intelligence, nurture racial stereotyping; and she explains why it is so difficult to argue against what are supposedly scientific facts.

This year's Reith lecturer is Professor Patricia Williams, one of the most well known intellectuals in American law. In her third Reith lecture, Professor Patricia Williams looks at the juxtaposition of race and class and their interaction in society and argues that there is a tendency of the dominant society to conflate race and class, especially when constructing black stereotypes. Discussions of race and class often combine the two categories, leaving both these aspects of a problem inadequately addressed.

This year's Reith lecturer is Professor Patricia Williams, one of the most well known intellectuals in American law. In her second Reith lecture, Professor Patricia Williams explores how race related problems in society seem to be rendered invisible by 'colour blindness'. Using examples from American legal cases she analyses society's systemic denial of racial experiences. Discussing her expression 'racial voyeurism', she argues that all of these problems stem from racial and cultural domination.

This year's Reith lecturer is Professor Patricia Williams, one of the most well known intellectuals in American law. She served as a deputy city attorney from 1976-1978 in the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office and as Staff Attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Los Angeles. She has been affiliated with Columbia University Law School since 1991, and has also taught at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and at the City University of New York in Queens. Professor Williams has published widely in the areas of race, gender, and law, and on other issues of legal theory and legal writing. Her highly regarded first book, "The Alchemy of Race and Rights: A Diary of a Law Professor" is an autobiographical work that illuminates some of America's most complex problems. In her first lecture, Professor Patricia Williams examines how the issue of colour remains so powerfully determinative of everything from life circumstance to manner of death, in a world that is, by and large, officially 'colour blind'. She considers the tensions between ideological and social measures to eliminate racism and the material conditions experienced by individuals, and argues that the very notion of blindness about colour constitutes an ideological confusion at best and denial at worst.