A Free Left Blog

This is the text of the speech I gave at the session about my book, ' The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity ' at the Barbican, London on Saturday 13th October 2018. It differed a little in delivery. Further details of the session and the participants are here . Hello Everyone. Thank you all for coming. Also a special thank you to Jon [Holbrook] and the Academy of Ideas for arranging this session. And another special thank you to Christine [Louis-Dit-Sully], James [Panton] and Helen [Dale] for agreeing to participate and for wading through this book of mine. I hope we can have an interesting and lively discussion about it and the issues it raises. “Questioning Diversity: discussing THE TRIBE” - at #BattleofIdeas - with @bencobley @cricri42 @_HelenDale @jimpanton - packed out!!! pic.twitter.com/NJTAQrEUEY — The Great Debate (@greatdebateuk) 13 October 2018 So, let’s get into it. What is this book all about? I’ve been reflecting on thi...

I just wanted to flag up this fascinating conversation between the public psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Jordan Peterson on 'the perilous state of the university' and draw out some parallels with my work on diversity and institutions in  The Tribe . Jordan Peterson interviewing Jonathan Haidt on 'the perilous state of the university' The video, which I was drawn to by an effusive tweet from David Goodhart, is more than an hour and a half long. However, unusually for such a thing, I found it didn't drag at all. In fact at the end of it I was left wanting more.  Goodhart picked up on the point the two discussed about how "any good society must be open AND closed", but there is a lot more to chew over. I was perhaps most interested in Haidt's idea of the 'social justice' university that is dedicated to the promotion of social justice and opposing the Right above other considerations - notably the pursuit of truth. This has a lot...

“The strong cannot help confronting; the less strong cannot help evading.”                                                               Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time One of the core themes of my forthcoming book The Tribe is the remarkable power that certain kinds of identity politics have attained in our public life. The knowledge base of this politics is the universal victimhood of its favoured identity groups. As the United Nations’ ‘ Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance ’ Tendayi Achiume put it in her report on how awful and racist Britain is, “The harsh reality is that race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability status and related categories all continue to determine the life chances and well-being of people in Britain in ways that are...