a platform for the world’s greatest intellectuals, entrepreneurs, artists, and statesmen to address the greatest issues of our time.
The Constitution of Academic Liberty: After the Treason of the Intellectuals
Niall Ferguson
30 May 2024
‘In La Trahison des Clercs, Julien Benda accused the intellectuals of his time of dabbling in “the racial passions, class passions, and national passions… owing to which men rise up against other men.” Today’s academic leaders would never recognize themselves as the heirs of those Benda condemned, insisting that they are on the left, whereas Benda’s targets were on the right. And yet, as Victor Klemperer came to understand after 1945, totalitarianism comes in two flavors, though the ingredients are the same.’
In this Pharos Summer Lecture, Prof Niall Ferguson delves into the changes he has observed during his thirty-year career as an academic, especially during the past decade. He will reflect on the state of academia in the throes of ‘culture wars’, the crisis of leadership in US universities after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, and why the situation in the UK – and in Oxford especially – is different.
Niall Ferguson is a distinguished historian, whose career has taken him to Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, NYU, LSE, and the Hoover Institution. He is now a Founding Fellow of the Pharos Foundation. The author of sixteen books, his most recent work is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, which wasa published by Allen Lane in 2021. He is also the authorised biographer of Henry Kissinger, the first volume of which was published in 2015.
The End of ‘Race’: Agency & Self-Affirmation
Lord Tony Sewell
21 February 2024
In the Pharos Spring 2024 Lecture, Tony Sewell explores the drivers of black success in Britain today, rejecting victimhood and low expectations while embracing a visionary view of black life, in which achievement has little to do with ‘race’ and everything to do with agency and self-affirmation. Disrupting the very idea of ‘Blackness’ itself, Lord Sewell presses for the collective humanity that is now so unpopular in the age of ‘identity politics’ and provides an antidote to the idea that the lives of black people should be a decolonising project. Freedom from mental slavery is knowing how to be free, not struggling to be. After his lecture, Lord Sewell was joined for a discussion on stage by Deroy Murdock
Born in Brixton, Lord Tony Sewell CBE is an internationally-respected author, educator, and statesman. His path-breaking charity ‘Generating Genius’ has helped hundreds of young black Britons to forge careers in STEM. In July 2020, he was appointed Chair of the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities: the Sewell Report made him the target of a cancellation effort by his critics, but his recommendations now form the basis for the government's policy on tackling racial inequalities. Sewell was elevated to the House of Lords in 2022. He was honoured by the government of Jamaica in 2023. His new book, Black Success: The Surprising Truth will be published by Forum in March.
Deroy Murdock is a prominent political commentator, currently contributing editor at the National Review and formerly Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
What is Living and What is Dead in Liberalism?
John Gray
8 November 2023
John Gray is a world-renowned philosopher, political theorist and intellectual historian. He has an asteroid named after him and until 2008 he was School Professor of European Thought at the LSE. He now writes principally for the New Statesman and has authored over twenty books including the bestselling Seven Types of Atheism, Straw Dogs, Black Mass, The Soul of the Marionette, The Silence of Animals and Feline Philosophy. His latest book, published by Penguin in September 2023, is The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism.
After his lecture, John Gray was joined on stage for a discussion by the world-leading ethicist Prof Nigel Biggar CBE.
Science, the Poetry of Reality, Jewel in Humanity’s Crown
Richard Dawkins
12 June 2023
Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL is a world-renowned evolutionary biologist, author and atheist. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. He has written many acclaimed books including The Selfish Gene (OUP, 1976), The God Delusion (Bantam, 2006), and Flights of Fancy (Head of Zeus, 2021).
After his lecture, Richard Dawkins was joined on stage by Dame Angela McLean, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government, for a discussion moderated by legendary journalist John Simpson.
The New Roundheads: Politics and the Misuse of History
Jonathan Sumption
27 February 2023
Jonathan Sumption is a renowned historian and former Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Four instalments of his critically acclaimed history of the Hundred Years’ War have been published between 1990 and 2015, all by Faber & Faber. The fifth and final volume, Triumph and Illusion, was published in late 2023.
After his lecture, Lord Sumption was interviewed on stage by the eminent journalist and broadcaster John Simpson.