Culture and Ideas
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Is British democracy really under threat?
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What’s been going on? In late September 2019, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the government acted unlawfully in proroguing, i.e. suspending, parliament for 5 weeks. The supposed reason for this prorogation – to prepare for a Queen’s speech – was deemed by the courts to be insufficient to justify such a long period of…
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The Sinking Ship of Capitalism: Towards the New Path of Ecosophy
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‘I am too young to watch pornography. Why am I seeing the planet getting fucked?’. This sentence blazed on a banner held by a 15-year-old during a march for climate change I attended in my home town of Brussels. ‘Climate Change’: not only does this term capture the rise of global average temperatures, predominantly caused…
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The Case for Hope in Resisting Climate Change: A Conversation with Michael Mann
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Brian Wong, Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Political Review, sits down with Michael Mann, leading climate change scientist and theorist, recipient of Tyler Prize, and perhaps most famously known for his exposition of the existential threat confronting humanity through his “Hockey Stick Graph” in his 1999 article. A Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the…
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International Relations: Backstage. The Viennese Volksoper and Its International Activities
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The following article provides a vivid example of international interconnectedness, ‘backstage’. I examine how one of Vienna’s largest opera houses, the ‘Vienna People’s Opera’ (Volksoper) works together with operas and theatres in other countries and parts of the world through international performances, maintaining international links both in and outside of Europe. I suggest that such ‘behind the…
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Is AI Safety ‘Rather Speculative Long-Termism’?
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When asked if the Effective Altruism (EA) movement has deviated from what he originally intended for it to look like, Peter Singer told Oxford Political Review: ‘I do think that the EA movement has moved too far and, arguably, there is now too much resources going into rather speculative long-termism.’ [1] ‘I think if we…
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50 States of Mind – What Americans could learn from a visit to all 50 states
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After the stunning victory of Donald Trump in 2016, the world is watching to see how Americans will vote in 2020. America is made up of 50 culturally unique states, each so nuanced and multilayered that no magic bullet could explain the vicissitudes of that election cycle. As pundits conjectured on the mood of America…
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On Truth-telling in Age of Truthlessness: An Interview with Alan Rusbridger
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Our Editor-in-Chief, Brian Wong, speaks to Alan Rusbridger, former Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian (1995-2015) and Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
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Capital as Fiction
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“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which…
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The Great Moral Panic: A Response to Tom Nichols’s Article on The Atlantic
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Tom Nichols’ recent piece understandably reflects many variants of ongoing concerns and criticisms towards universities and the perceived overreaching of students. Whilst his argument undoubtedly has grounding in certain facts and events that have transpired over the past decade, his overarching conclusion emerges from a great leap – some would say, one deeply uncharitable to…
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What is in a name? A response to Jordan Peterson’s critiques of pronoun regulations and free speech laws
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In 2016, academic Jordan Peterson rose to prominence by opposing Canada’s C-16 Bill:a Bill he erroneously claimed would compel speech from citizens by forcing them to address transgender students by their preferred pronouns. Of great angst to Peterson was a piece of advice from Toronto University that, should he fail to address transgender students by their preferred…