It is difficult to capture just how transformative an impact lockdown has had on us as individuals and as a society. For 15 months, we have been unable to gather in large groups, walk into a shop without a mask or even go to your local pub without having to scan a code from your phone. On a societal level, it is the first time in living memory that a western nations have locked down their populations and managed to do so with very little resistance. So as we go forth into our brave new world, what does this all mean? With less than a month to go until all restrictions are lifted (in theory), how has lockdown changed us — if at all? At UnHerd’s inaugural in-person event of the year, Freddie Sayers spoke to a panel of UnHerd contributors, who shared their thoughts.For more, read The Post from UnHerd hereMake sure to join UnHerd to be invited to our next event! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It all started with an Instagram post. Over the weekend, the Royal Academy thanked those “for bringing an item in the RA shop by an artist [Jess de Wahls] expressing transphobic views to our attention.” The item in question? A collection of floral embroidered patches that can be attached to clothing. Her crime? Writing a blog in 2019 in which she stated that “humans cannot change sex”.Shortly thereafter came the now-familiar cycle of organisations bowing to social media pressure and seeking forgiveness. On the basis of eight complaints, RA decided to remove all of Jess’s work from its shop without prior warning to the artist. But then came something less predictable: just a few hours ago, the RA took an unprecedented step and apologised to de Wahls for “the way we have treated her”. The institution said that it had betrayed “our most important core value”, namely freedom of speech, and would re-open discussions about re-stocking her work. Shortly before this apology, we spoke to Jess about what it was like to be in the eye of the social media storm.For more read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were really delighted that Richard Dawkins agreed to come on LockdownTV to discuss “Scientism” and his new anthology of writing about science literature, Books do furnish a Life.It turns out that Mr Dawkins’ view of “Scientism” is that it is a “dirty word used by people who are critical of scientists” — so that was a relatively brief part of the conversation.On Covid, he is not especially worried about the boundaries of politics and science becoming blurred, but feels that “science is the way to discover the right answer to anything about the real world — and that, of course, includes how to deal with a serious epidemic.” Vaccination and mask-wearing is “not a matter of a set of self interest” it is a “moral responsibility.”Our thanks to Richard Dawkins for sharing his thoughts.For more read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Professor Susan Michie, a behavioural psychologist who sits on the all-important Sage committee, made headlines last week by appearing to suggest that social distancing and wearing facemasks should remain in place “forever”.The Professor of Health Psychology has been an outspoken advocate of strict lockdown measures, both serving on Sage’s Scientific Pandemic Insights group on Behaviour (SPI-B) and advising the World Health Organisation on Covid-19.She spoke to UnHerd about whether lockdown will ever be lifted, why people are no longer obeying the restrictions, and she addresses criticism of her Communist politics.Read the full article from UnHerd here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The pandemic has thrown traditional ideas about politics upside down. In a sense, it has been the ultimate triumph of the technocrats, with phrases like “following the science” and “trusting the experts” becoming commonplace; but notions like shutting national borders and moving governments onto a 'war footing' are more typically associated with the populist Right — it was Donald Trump who first shut the US borders, Modi in India implemented a swingeing lockdown early, and Boris Johnson's government is, at least in theory, a populist one. Chris Bickerton, reader in Modern European Politics at Queen's College Cambridge and sometime star of the Talking Politics podcast, has a book out which sees a pattern in this fusion of technocracy and populism: it's called technopopulism. In this fascinating discussion tells Freddie Sayers all about it.For more read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Maya Forstater first started expressing “gender critical” views in late 2018 (ie that biological sex is real and important), she was a researcher at a progressive think tank called the Centre for Global Development. Her views caught the attention of the bosses in Washington DC — and one dismissal, one tribunal verdict and an appeal judgement later, she now finds herself part of the history of gender laws in this country.Today’s successful appeal establishes Ms Forstater’s views in law as a “philosophical belief” that must be protected from discrimination. This means that corporations, schools, government agencies or any other organisation cannot discriminate against people holding the mainstream view that men and women are different but equal, and that your sex doesn’t change even if you identify differently. She joined Freddie Sayers on the latest episode of LockdownTV to tell us about her experience and what it means.For more read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When 49.1 million viewers tuned in to watch the Harry and Meghan interview on Oprah, the drama that unfolded left many victims — not all famous or royal — in their wake. One such casualty was Ian Murray, the head of the Society of Editors, who came out to defend the British press against the claim made by the Duke of Sussex that the industry was racist. According to a statement put out by Murray, such an “attack” was “not acceptable” without any evidence. Following the statement came a now-infamous interview with Victoria Derbyshire, in which Murray got into a heated row with the interviewer over whether certain headlines could be construed as racist.In spite of a second statement issued by the Society of Editors, the damage was already done: over 160 journalists of colour and the editors of the Guardian, Financial Times and HuffPost wrote an open letter describing the SoE’s initial statement as “laughable” proof of “an institution and an industry in denial”. This left Murray in the strange predicament of being attacked by the people he was trying to defend. Meanwhile, an ITV presenter and editor of the Yorkshire Post both pulled out of the Society of Editors awards. Effectively, the executive director was left with no choice but to resign from the organisation he helped to found some 22 years prior. In an exclusive interview with UnHerd, Murray finally speaks out and give his version of events: does he regret the statement? Is the British press racist? And what does it feel like when the mob comes for you? He discusses all this and more in today’s LockdownTV:On why needed to leave:When the mob turns, they need a target and it’s vicious — the phone calls, the hate, the threats of violence and worse, actually reaching me and my family in my home with phone calls and all kinds of things. I calculated that if I was going to save the Society of Editors, I needed to walk away. - IAN MURRAY, UNHERDWhy did his statement cause such a furore:One, it’s the Meghan and Harry ‘sparkledust’ coming down from Hollywood. Secondly, I was following in the wake of Piers Morgan, who had resigned a little earlier before I did… Thirdly, it was a classic witch trial, whereby someone stands up to defend someone who’s been accused of being a witch, must therefore be a witch.  - IAN MURRAY, UNHERDOn the show trial that followed:What happens at the end of a show trial is when you’ve got your admission and your culprits, you must shame them publicly. You must make sure that everyone gets the message that “if you don’t agree with what we say, if you push back against anything that we say — then this is what we will do to you: we’ll come for your family, we’ll come for your career, your friends, anyone that associates with you. So don’t question. Don’t question”.  - IAN MURRAY, UNHERDDoes he stand by his statement?Absolutely…It was a strong statement, but that was to counterbalance the fact there is no proof or no evidence that there is a general theme of racism or bigotry in the British media or that large sections of the media have got a racist agenda. - IAN MURRAY, UNHERDWhy did the press turn on Meghan?We [the British people] don’t like being preached to, by members of royalty in particular, especially when they appear hypocritical and do something completely different…They also made it plain that they didn’t particularly like the press. And, if you’re going to say, “look, we don’t like you”, parts of the media, we’re going to say, “well, we don’t like you either”. - IAN MURRAY, UNHERDOn the health of the free press:I think it is in a very worrying place. I can be annoyed with the Left of the media, who traduced and damaged me… But I’m not going to say that they should be silenced. I’m not going to say that they shouldn’t have a voice. Now that would be hugely hypocritical of me after all these years. I want them to continue to have a voice. - IAN MURRAY, UNHERDHow does he feel?Am I bitter and twisted about it? Yeah, I can be. I can be pretty annoyed about it. In the first stage, you’re obviously in shock from doing it. But you take an awful lot of comfort from the outpouring of support from people I know and people I’ve never met at all….But there is also disappointment with some others that I thought were friends or associates who ran for the hills. And it quickly dawns on you, that your reputation has been shredded in some ways, that it’s been tarnished. - IAN MURRAY, UNHERD Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Any decent list of the most influential living philosophers will include Peter Singer. For nearly 50 years, the Australian ethicist has been at the forefront of progressive politics — his ideas about animal rights and effective altruism have shaped those debates ever since the 80s and his brand of utilitarian progressive thought continues to dominate.More controversially, his writing against the sanctity of life and in favour of the morality of ending the lives of highly disabled infants have angered the Conservative Right as much as the disability lobby on the Left. He has been “cancelled” before the term even existed, with invitations to speak retracted multiple times over the years.Now he is co-Editor of a new “Journal of Controversial Ideas” which seeks to provide anonymity and safe publication for philosophical essays that touch on topics that might otherwise get the authors “cancelled.”I wanted to know whether the brand of ultra-utilitarian, universalist, progressive thought of which he is such a famous proponent has somehow got out of hand and come back to haunt him? Does he feel that defining virtue by our ability to overrule the natural order of things and care as much for faraway people as we do our loved ones in any way led to the populist backlash of 2016? Now that he is founding publications to protect against cancel culture, is he running from a monster that he helped create?I put these questions to him, and and more (including a discussion about his new book ‘The Golden Ass‘), in a highly enjoyable conversation. Many thanks to Peter for sparing the time.On the contemporary Left:They see themselves as defending people who are underprivileged, marginalised, disadvantaged. They want to extend that defence, not just to improving their social and economic position and preventing discrimination against them, but also making sure that they’re not offended by remarks that are made. And that brings it into conflict with ideas of freedom of speech because if merely the fact that you might offend somebody is a grounds for preventing you speaking, there’s not a lot of freedom of speech left.- PETER SINGER, UNHERDDoes he feel hoisted on his own petard?No, I don’t think that because I’ve always been an advocate of freedom of speech. And in fact I think freedom of speech has been something that the Left traditionally has championed.  - PETER SINGER, UNHERDOn identity politics:The idea that if you’re a white male, that somehow this discredits you… doesn’t seem to me at all a defensible view. I think we should look at what people say in terms of how well argued is this? Do the ideas hold up to critical scrutiny? Not in terms of what’s the race or ethnicity or sex of the person who was saying it? - PETER SINGER, UNHERDOn critical race theory:People who describe themselves as proponents of critical race theory make racism just so all-encompassing as an explanation and don’t really recognise the genuine and helpful efforts that have been made to make society less racist and to provide more opportunities for people, irrespective of their race. - PETER SINGER, UNHERDOn open borders:I’ve never been an advocate of open borders. Although in theory, I think a world with open borders would be great. But as a matter of political pragmatism, I’ve never thought we were ready for that.  - PETER SINGER, UNHERDIs the failure to accept open borders a moral shortcoming or a fact of human nature?It is both the fact of human nature and a moral shortcoming. I think it’s a fact of human nature that we should not celebrate, because it shows that we have an element of xenophobia: fear or hatred of strangers in our nature. And I accept that it’s part of our biological nature, I don’t deny that. And reason and ethical argument is not always powerful enough to overcome some of these facts of our nature.  - PETER SINGER, UNHERDOn pragmatic idealism:In a democracy, you can’t get too far ahead of where people are, you have to bring people along with you. Sometimes people and political leaders should do more than they are doing to bring people along with them. - PETER SINGER, UNHERDOn why he started the Journal of Controversial ideas:We were worried about the fact that people, particularly more junior untenured, academics, would be intimidated against publishing something controversial, for fear that this could do harm to their career, or personally that they would get such abuse that they would not be able to handle it. - PETER SINGER, UNHERDOn his new book, ‘The Golden Ass’:It’s a Roman novel…which was written in the second century of the Common Era. Apuleius was born in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian and died probably in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. So it’s about a man who gets turned into a donkey because he dabbles in magic rather foolishly and has a bit of bad luck, and becomes a donkey and can’t get out of it for some time.Apuleius had enough empathy with a donkey to describe various forms of cruel treatment that donkeys were enduring in the Roman Empire…There’s a lot of empathy with animals. And that was certainly what first attracted me to it.- PETER SINGER, UNHERD Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few books have had as great an impact on western society in the 21st century as Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘How to be an Antiracist‘. Published in 2019, the book argued that it was not enough to be neutral on racism: you had to be actively fighting it, otherwise you were on the side of the racists. Moderation meant complicity and silence equalled violence. Anyone who dared to challenge this mantra would be immediately cast as a racist.Fast forward a year and now children as young as four-years-old are being conscripted into the fight. As part of the antiracist curriculum spreading through America’s schools, kindergarteners are being taught to draw their own skin tone correctly so that they are not labelled racist while others are taught to not hold the door open for disabled people because it could constitute a microaggression. These examples may sound so ridiculous as to borderline on fantasy, but the reality is all too real for parents like Andrew Gutmann, who recently pulled his daughter out of a prestigious $54,000 a year New York private school over its obsession with “woke” antiracist teaching.Writing an open letter to the school, Mr Gutmann attacked the school for “insisting on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution”. In an interview with Freddie Sayers on LockdownTV, he explains why he was left with no choice but to take the “extreme” option and take his daughter out of school. For more, read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sohrab Ahmari's new book makes a strong case for tradition — but ignores material reality, read the full review by Niall Gooch here on UnHerd: https://unherd.com/2021/05/what-conservatives-can-learn-from-marx/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.