2010-11 Ebor Lectures Series 5
Theme: Politics of Fear, Politics of Hope? Terrorism in the 21st Century
Acts of terrorism and the perceived threat of terrorism are changing our world. Some argue our freedoms are being eroded and our liberty curtailed through the deliberate building up of a climate of fear. Where is hope in all this? This series of Ebor Lectures will explore these issues of freedom and security, the politics of fear and the politics of hope.
Speakers
N.B. Biographical details and lecture descriptions were those written in advance of the lectures and have not been updated since.
Rt Hon Hilary Benn - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs/Former Secretary of State for International Development
'Fighting Terrorism: The case for humanitarian interventionism'
6 October 2010, York Minster
'Fighting Terrorism: The case for humanitarian interventionism'
6 October 2010, York Minster
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Hilary Benn attended Holland Park Comprehensive School and the University of Sussex.
A former President of Ealing Acton Constituency Labour Party, Hilary was elected to Ealing Borough Council in 1979, becoming the youngest ever Chair of the Education Committee. He also served as Deputy Leader of the Council. He contested Ealing North in the 1983 and 1987 General Elections. Hilary worked for MSF as Head of Policy and Communications and represented the union on the Labour Party's National Policy Forum. He was also Chair of the Management Committee of Unions 21 - the trade union think tank. Following Labour's 1997 General Election victory, Hilary was appointed as special adviser to the Rt Hon David Blunkett MP, Secretary of State for Education and Employment. He developed the Union Learning Fund and was closely involved in the drafting of the Learning Age green paper. In 1999 he was elected as Member of Parliament for Leeds Central. After serving as a minister at the Department for International Development and the Home Office, he was appointed to the Cabinet as the Secretary of State for International Development in 2003. He was the Prime Minister’s Africa Personal Representative and was responsible for the establishment of the UN Central Emergency Relief Fund. In 2007 he stood for the Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party. From 2007 until the 2010 General Election he was Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He played a leading role in putting the Climate Change Act and the Marine and Coastal Access Act on the statute book, and he established the South Downs National Park. He is currently the Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Hilary Benn was voted by his fellow MPs as Minister of the Year in the 2006 and 2007 House Magazine Awards. He also won the Channel 4 Politicians’ Politician Award in 2006. He was a contributor to Beyond 2000: Long-term policies for Labour (Profile Books, 1999), Forces of Conservatism (IPPR, 1999), and Men who made Labour (Routledge, 2006). |
Professor Christopher Hill - Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations, University of Cambridge
'Foreign Policy, Fear and Civil Society'
17 November 2010, York St John University
'Foreign Policy, Fear and Civil Society'
17 November 2010, York St John University
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Christopher Hill is Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations, within the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Cambridge. From 1974-2004 he taught in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was the Montague Burton Professor from 1991.
He has published widely in the areas of foreign policy analysis and general International Relations, his most recent books being The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy (Palgrave, 2003), and The European Union in International Relations (edited with Michael Smith, 2005; 2nd edition 2011). He is a past Chair of the British International Studies Association, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2007. He has been a Team Leader and/or major participant in the EU-funded research programmes FORNET, CONSENT and MERCURY. He is currently working on a book on the relationship between foreign policy and variants of multiculturalism. |
Professor the Baroness Haleh Afshar, OBE, AcSS - Department of Politics, University of York
'The Politics of Fear: What does it mean to those who are otherised and feared?'
9 February 2011, York St John University
'The Politics of Fear: What does it mean to those who are otherised and feared?'
9 February 2011, York St John University
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Haleh Afshar teaches Politics and Women's Studies at the University of York and serves as a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords. She is also the Visiting Professor of Islamic Law at the Faculté Internationale de Droit Comparée at Strasbourg. She was born and raised in Iran where she worked as a journalist and a civil servant. Her undergraduate studies were at the University of York, and she completed her doctorate at the University of Cambridge. She has served as the Chair for the British Association of Middle Eastern Studies and Chair of the United Nations Association's International Services. For seven years she served as Deputy Chair of the British Council's Gender and Development Task Force. She has also served with the Advisory Group of the Cabinet Office's Women's Unit to work on raising gender awareness amongst civil servants who adjudicate on applications for asylum from women. She served as a member of Nuffield Council on bioethics’ working group on ethics and Pharmacogenetics. In 2005 she was awarded an OBE for services to equal opportunities. In 2008 she was appointed to serve as a Commissioner on Women’s National Commission. She has written two and edited/co-edited thirteen books on questions relating to women and development; as well as producing books on Islam and feminisms, Iranian politics, and women in later years. Afshar serves on the editorial boards of ten academic journals and has been a member of the advisory group to aid the development of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). She is a member of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation research project on ‘Muslims and Community Cohesion in Britain’. She is a member of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Working Group on religion and ethnicity 2006. She has served as a member of the advisory group the AHRC and ESRC set up to take forward the development of a joint research programme tackling the issues of religion, belief and society 2006. Afshar was a member of the Advisory Group for the ‘Integration of female immigrants in labour and society’ research programme, part of the 6th framework programme of the European Commission 2006-08. She was invited to act as an ESRC representative on the British Academy and ESRC’s Visiting Fellowships Scheme Panel for the Middle-East 2007 and 2008.
Selected recent publications
Professional activities
Research supervision Afshar has supervised and continues to supervise research students on the following topics:
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Professor Rt Revd & Rt Hon Richard Harries - Former Bishop of Oxford/ Professor Lord Harries of Pentregarth
'Just War against Terror?'
23 March 2011, York Minster
'Just War against Terror?'
23 March 2011, York Minster
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Richard Harries was Bishop of Oxford from 1987-2006. On his retirement he was made a Life Peer, (Lord Harries of Pentregarth), and he continues to be active in the House of Lords. He is currently Gresham Professor of Divinity, and an Honorary Professor of Theology at King’s College, London. He is the author of a number of books, especially in the area of war and peace.
His most recent books are Faith in Politics? Rediscovering the Christian roots of our political values, and Issues of Life and Death: Christian faith and medical intervention. He has been a regular contributor to The Today programme on BBC Radio 4 since 1972. |
Mr Peter Taylor - BBC Presenter/Presenter of the BBC series Age of Terror
'What is a Terrorist?'
6 April 2011, York Minster
'What is a Terrorist?'
6 April 2011, York Minster
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Peter was educated at Scarborough High School and Pembroke College, Cambridge where he read Classics and then Modern History and Political Science. He joined ITV’s This Week programme in 1967 and BBC’s Panorama in 1980.
He has spent 35 years reporting terrorism and political violence from the IRA to Al Qaeda for This Week through the 70s and for Panorama through the 80s and 90s. He has made many authored series for BBC 1 and BBC2 on security and the intelligence services, and four documentary series since 9/11 on Al Qaeda and Islamist extremism. His most recent series, Generation Jihad, on the radicalisation of young Muslims, was transmitted last year. He’s currently making two programmes to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Ten Years of Terror. His latest book, Talking to Terrorists: A Personal Journey from the IRA to Al Qaeda, will be published in the spring of 2011. Awards
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Professor John Milbank - Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics, University of Nottingham
'Geopolitical Theology: Christianity, Territory and the Global Future' / 'Christianity, Government and Empire'
25 May 2011, York St John University
'Geopolitical Theology: Christianity, Territory and the Global Future' / 'Christianity, Government and Empire'
25 May 2011, York St John University
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John joined the Department of Theology at Nottingham University in September 2004. He has previously taught at the Universities of Lancaster, Cambridge and Virginia. He is the author of several books of which the most well-known is Theology and Social Theory and the most recent Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon. He is one of the editors of the Radical Orthodoxy collection of essays which occasioned much debate. In general he has endeavoured in his work to resist the idea that secular norms of understanding should set the agenda for theology and has tried to promote the sense that Christianity offers a rich and viable account of the whole of reality. At the same time he tends to insist that Christianity is itself eclectic and fuses many traditions - particularly that of biblical narrative with that of Greek philosophy. In style his theology is eclectic, interdisciplinary and essayistic - though it aims to be systematic in a somewhat ad hoc fashion. So far he has produced two books in the areas of Christian doctrine and ethics - though both have a strong philosophical component. In addition he has sustained interests in developing a political and social theology - critical of the liberationist current as insufficiently theological, while retaining a left-leaning perspective. Currently he is pursuing a long-term project concerning the topic of 'gift' which involves all the above-mentioned concerns. In the long-term he hopes to develop a fully-fledged 'Trinitarian ontology'.
Recent Publications
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