Conway Hall: Where Ethics Matter

This is a unique and very timely event in which two distinguished speakers will address the fundamental challenge facing humanity today, not least those embroiled in the immigration crisis, Who’s looking after the world?

Charles Clarke – outspoken politician, former Education – and Home – Secretary and author of the highly regarded The ‘Too Difficult’ Box: The Big Issues Politicians Can’t Crack, will set the scene.

Simon Anholt – visionary, international policy advisor and recipient of the Nobels Colloquia Prize for Economics, whose Berlin 2014 TED talk went viral, presents a novel approach, which addresses this flaw in the way we live.

The discussion will be chaired by Helen Lewis, Deputy Editor of the New Statesman.

A discussion and celebration of our animal, bird and plant life with David Lindo, Helen Babbs, the London Wildlife Trust’s Mathew Frith and urban bat detective Kate Jones. Chaired by James Drury, Editor of Londonist.

William Pettigrew is Reader in History at the University of Kent. He currently runs a Leverhulme Trust project examining the history of England’s seventeenth-century international trading corporations.

This event is the first in the series of eight talks titled The British Business of Slavery, curated by Deborah Lavin.

London is Changing: Regeneration, Gentrification and Redevelopment

Iain Sinclair, John Rogers, Tom Bolton and Helen Parton for a discussion about London, how it is changing, how that affects us and what can be done about it.

A Discussion on Ethics & Politics held at Conway Hall on Mon 28th September 2015. With Stephen Bowden and chaired by Francis Sealey. Hosted by GlobalNet21 and Conway Hall Ethical Society.

Trigger Warning! This discussion may change your mind.

Should Universities be Intellectual ‘Safe Spaces’?

Beatrix Campbell OBE, Bahar Mustafa, Brendan O’Neill, Pam Lowe, Samira Ahmed.

Universities are the intellectual heart of modern society. Students attend university to study, research and explore new ideas. In the faculty, students have access to some of society’s greatest experts and thinkers. Higher education benefits not only those individuals able to access it, but society as a whole. Higher education correlates with lower levels of unemployment and poverty, better health and higher levels of social and civic participation- including volunteering, voting, and blood donation.

Should universities give in to their students and make sure that campuses are free from intellectual challenge both inside and outside the lecture hall or do the academic faculty have a duty to students to “enrich their minds with […] knowledge”?

As universities are more and more run as businesses and students are paying for their education, is it perhaps time to ask ‘is the customer always right?’

In this talk, Professor Steve Keen shares his views on the bigger picture of financial developments around the world. He will review options for the future of economics, highlight the little-understood importance of debt, and argue that significant debt write-downs are needed in order to limit future financial crashes.

Watch the whole presentation here: https://youtu.be/HpfLiKRqhQw

US journalist Tony Ortega, author of an acclaimed biography, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, John Sweeney, the BBC Panorama journalist and author of Church Of Fear: Inside the Weird World of Scientology and the publisher of both books, Humfrey Hunter, explain what it is like to question the word and the worth of The Church That Likes To Wear Dark Glasses.

Samira Ahmed grills authors Simon Guerrier and Dr Marek Kukula about the ethics of using science in war – both real and in Doctor Who.