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Speaker(s): Professor Aeron Davis, Polly Toynbee, Joe Earle

Polly Toynbee

Joe Earle | Join Aeron Davis, Polly Toynbee, Joe Earle and Bev Skeggs for a discussion on Britain’s dysfunctional leadership. Aeron Davis will cast the evening off by arguing that the Brexit vote and 2017 election result are more than temporary setbacks for the Establishment. Instead, there is a deeper crisis of leadership that has been developing over decades. The great transformations of the 1980s onwards have not only upended societies, they have reshaped elite rule itself. The UK is producing a new generation of leaders who, although richer, have lost coherence, vision, influence and power. Their failings are not only damaging the wider public, economy and society, they are undermining the very foundations of the Establishment itself. Joining Aeron to offer their take on Britain’s top tier will be Polly Toynbee, the Guardian’s award-winning political affairs columnist, and Joe Earle, author and campaigner for economic reform. The event will be chaired by the LSE’s Bev Skeggs. The event will also launch Aeron Davis’s new book Reckless Opportunists: Elites at the End of the Establishment. The book, based on 350 interviews with elite figures across business, politics and finance, asks: how did we end up producing the leaders that got us here and what can we do about it?

Speaker(s): Professor Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet | Arabs and Persians have historically been placed in a binary and oppositional relationship. This bifurcated past has influenced the contemporary politics and historiography of the region, with far-reaching consequences for the stability and economic viability of different Middle Eastern communities. This clash of ethnicities becomes especially prominent in the Persian Gulf, where migrants, sailors, indigenous communities, and laborers have intermingled and forged a unique and multi-ethnic culture that defies facile categorization. Yet with the imposition of nationalism these multi-cultural communities have had to accept or adapt to the dominant state identity. This lecture will analyse the process of identity formation in the communities of the Persian Gulf by studying textual sources, as well as imperial and national objectives, that have determined these outcomes. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet is Walter H Annenberg Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania. Roham Alvandi is is Associate Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. This event is the Department of International History Annual Gulf History Lecture with generous support from LSE Kuwait Programme.

Speaker(s): Lord Sainsbury | David Sainsbury will be talking about his lifetime of philanthropy. Lord Sainsbury is founder of the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. He donated £200 million of Sainsbury’s shares to the Foundation’s assets. Stephan Chambers is Marshall Institute Director. The Marshall Institute (@LSEMarshall) aims to increase the impact and effectiveness of private action for public benefit through research, teaching and convening.

Speaker(s): Dr Joseph Slaughter | Modern Euro-American law operates by fashioning legal persons as creatures endowed with rights and responsibilities. This figurative process of personification is a means of emancipation. Indeed, the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution laid the legal groundwork not only for recognition of the full legal personality of ex-slaves; it also “emancipated” the business corporation, which possesses legal rights and responsibilities by way of analogy to the human, figured as a metaphorical assemblage of human body parts. A perverse version of that analogical operation also sits at the bottom of international human rights law. Technically speaking, international law seems to protect the rights of the human, through the figure of the international legal person, by way of analogy to the human being itself. However, Joseph Slaughter argues that some of the qualities of international legal personhood that we now think of as properly belonging to human beings first appeared in the form of colonial charter companies. In this talk, Joseph Slaughter examines the rhetorical magic of modern law that populates the social world with personified legal fictions that may “resemble us too much” by reading international human rights law alongside and through early Nigerian novelist Amos Tutuola’s enchanting The Palm-wine Drinkard. Joseph Slaughter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University in the City of New York. Gerry Simpson is a Professor of Public International Law at LSE. This event is the Annual London Review of International Law Lecture supported by the SOAS Centre for the study of Colonialism, Empire and International Law. LSE Law (@lselaw) is an integral part of the School's mission, plays a major role in policy debates & in the education of lawyers and law teachers from around the world.

Speaker(s): Professor Catherine Barnard, Professor Simon Hix, Jill Rutter, Professor Tony Travers | One year on from the triggering of Article 50, how far have the Brexit negotiations progressed? What lessons are there for the UK and the European Union? What are the implications for the future? Catherine Barnard (@CSBarnard24) is Professor of European Union Law, University of Cambridge. Simon Hix (@simonjhix) is Harold Laski Professor of Political Science, Department of Government, LSE. Jill Rutter (@jillongovt) is a programme director for Brexit at the Institute for Government and has co-authored a number of the Institute reports on the implications of Brexit for Whitehall and Westminster. Tony Travers is Director, Institute of Public Affairs, LSE. Kevin Featherstone is Head of the European Institute, Eleftherios Venizelos Professor of Contemporary Greek Studies and Professor of European Politics. This lecture is part of the LSE Programme on Brexit. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) the Institute was ranked first for research in its sector. The Institute of Public Affairs (@LSEPubAffairs) is one of the world's leading centres of public policy. We aim to debate and address some of the major issues of our time, whether international or national, through our established teaching programmes, our research and our highly innovative public-engagement initiatives.

Speaker(s): Dharshini David | The dollar is the lifeblood of globalisation: China holds billions in reserve for good reason. Greenbacks, singles, bucks or dead presidents, call them what you will, $1.2 trillion worth are floating around right now – and half the dollars in circulation are actually outside of the USA. But what is really happening as these billions of dollars go around the world every day? By following $1 from a shopping trip in suburban Texas, via China’s Central Bank, Nigerian railroads, the oil fields of Iraq and beyond, The Almighty Dollar answers questions such as: why is China the world’s biggest manufacturer – and the US its biggest customer? Is free trade really a good thing? Why would a nation build a bridge on the other side of the globe? Dharshini David (@DharshiniDavid) is an economist and broadcaster. From 2009 she fronted Sky News’ daily financial coverage and copresented Sky News Tonight. Keyu Jin (@KeyuJin) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and a member of the Centre for Macroeconomics and Centre for Economic Performance. The Department of Economics at LSE (@LSEEcon) is one of the largest economics departments in the world. Its size ensures that all areas of economics are strongly represented in both research and teaching. The Centre For Macroeconomics (@CFMUK) brings together world-class experts to carry out pioneering research on the global economic crisis and to help design policies that alleviate it.

Speaker(s): Peter Frase | Robots and artificial intelligence promise to reshape the economy. But the political struggle between workers and owners will determine who really benefits from these changes. Peter Frase (@pefrase) is an editor at Jacobin Magazine and author of Four Futures. Robin Archer is Director of the Ralph Miliband Programme at LSE. The Ralph Miliband Programme (@RMilibandLSE) is one of LSE's most prestigious lecture series and seeks to advance Ralph Miliband's spirit of free social inquiry.

Speaker(s): Professor Ash Amin, Dr Victoria Redclift | Migration is integral to the cultural and economic life of cities. Yet we live in a migration milieu in which migrants are rendered as illegal subjects, and where migration processes are reduced to crises at national border points. This event explores the relation between cities, migrants and migration systems. The event also launches The Sage Handbook of the 21st Century City edited by Suzanne Hall and Ricky Burdett. This edited collection engages with the volatile processes of urbanisation that reveal the turbulent nature of our early twenty-first century. Ash Amin is 1931 Professor of Geography, Head of Department of Geography and Fellow of Christ’s College, University of Cambridge. Victoria Redclift (@VRedclift) is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Surrey. Ricky Burdett is Professor of Urban Studies at LSE and Director of the Urban Age and LSE Cities. LSE Cities (@LSECities) is an international centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science that carries out research, graduate and executive education and outreach activities in London and abroad. Its mission is to study how people and cities interact in a rapidly urbanising world, focussing on how the design of cities impacts on society, culture and the environment. The Department of Sociology at LSE (@LSEsociology) was established in 1904 and remains committed to top quality teaching and leading research and scholarship today.

Speaker(s): Stefaan de Rynck | Stefaan de Rynck, Senior Advisor to Michel Barnier, Chief EU Negotiator for Brexit, will provide a state of play on the Brexit negotiations. He will focus on the Withdrawal Treaty and the nature of the transition and will address the current progress and possible ways forward. Stefaan De Rynck (@StefaanDeRynck) is senior advisor of Michel Barnier, Chief EU Negotiator for Brexit, in charge of public engagement strategy and relations with think tanks. He is professor at the College of Europe since 2003, and also teaches on EU governance at the Collegio Carlo Alberto (University of Turin). Kevin Featherstone is Head of the European Institute, Eleftherios Venizelos Professor of Contemporary Greek Studies and Professor of European Politics. This lecture is part of the LSE Programme on Brexit. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) the Institute was ranked first for research in its sector. The Institute of Public Affairs (@LSEPubAffairs) is one of the world's leading centres of public policy. We aim to debate and address some of the major issues of our time, whether international or national, through our established teaching programmes, our research and our highly innovative public-engagement initiatives.

Speaker(s): Hilary Benn | Hilary Benn will speak about the Brexit negotiations and the future of the UK-EU relations. Hilary Benn (@hilarybennmp) is Labour MP for Leeds Central and Chair of the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union. Tony Travers is Director of the Institute of Public Affairs, LSE. This lecture is part of the LSE Programme on Brexit. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) the Institute was ranked first for research in its sector. The Institute of Public Affairs (@LSEPubAffairs) is one of the world's leading centres of public policy. We aim to debate and address some of the major issues of our time, whether international or national, through our established teaching programmes, our research and our highly innovative public-engagement initiatives.