2011-12 Ebor Lectures Series 6
Theme: The Good Society? Re-invigorating Public Life
There has been recent political debate about the importance of re-invigorating society, and increasing the engagement of citizens in public life. As part of this debate, the Government has proposed the development of the Big Society, encouraging people to engage in neighbourhoods and communities. They propose a shift of power from the state to communities, through support of social enterprise, charities and co-operatives. Some argue that the Big Society represents a retreat from state provision. Within this context the 2011-12 Ebor Lectures, in partnership with The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ask fundamental questions about the nature of the ‘good society’, and the role of citizens, government, faith communities and voluntary organisations in the re-invigoration of civic life.
Speakers
N.B. Biographical details and lecture descriptions were those written in advance of the lectures and have not been updated since.
Julia Unwin - Chief Executive, Joseph Rowntree Foundation & Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust
‘The Common Good: what does it mean for people and places in poverty?’
5 October 2011, York Minster
‘The Common Good: what does it mean for people and places in poverty?’
5 October 2011, York Minster
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Julia is Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust. She has extensive experience of roles within government and the voluntary and corporate sectors.
Julia was a member of the Housing Corporation Board for 10 years and a Charity Commissioner from 1998-2003. She was also Deputy Chair of the Food Standards Agency and worked as an independent consultant operating within government and the voluntary and corporate sectors. In that role, she focused on the development of services and in particular the governance and funding of voluntary organisations. Julia has researched and written extensively on the role, governance and funding of the voluntary sector. She previously held a position as Chair of the Refugee Council from 1995 until 1998, and is now a Trustee of York Museums and Gallery Trust and a member of the University of York’s Council. |
Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
'Biblical insights into the Good Society'
30 November 2011, York St John University
'Biblical insights into the Good Society'
30 November 2011, York St John University
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Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has been Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth since September 1991, the sixth incumbent since the role was formalized in 1845. Prior to taking up his current post, Rabbi Sacks was Principal of Jews' College, as well as rabbi of the Golders Green and Marble Arch synagogues.
Educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he obtained first class honours in Philosophy, Jonathan Sacks pursued postgraduate studies at New College, Oxford, and King's College London, gaining his PhD in 1981, and rabbinic ordination from Jews' College and Yeshiva Etz Chaim. The Chief Rabbi has been a visiting professor at several universities in Britain, the United States, and Israel, and is currently Visiting Professor of Theology at Kings' College London. He holds 14 honorary degrees, including a Doctor of Divinity conferred to mark his first ten years in office by the Archbishop of Canterbury. At the time of his installation the Chief Rabbi launched a ‘Decade of Jewish Renewal’. This led to a series of innovative communal projects including Jewish Continuity, a national foundation for Jewish educational programmes and outreach; the Association of Jewish Business Ethics; the Chief Rabbinate Awards for Excellence; the Chief Rabbinate Bursaries, and Community Development, a national scheme to enhance Jewish community life. The Chief Rabbi began his second decade of office with a call to ‘Jewish Responsibility’ and a renewed commitment to the ethical dimension of Judaism. The Chief Rabbi has received a number of prizes, including the Jerusalem Prize 1995 for his contribution to diaspora Jewish life and The Ladislaus Laszt Ecumenical and Social Concern Award from Ben Gurion University in Israel in 2011. He was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen in 2005, and made a Life Peer taking his seat in the House of Lords on 27th October 2009, where he sits on the cross benches as Baron Sacks of Aldgate in the City of London. The Chief Rabbi is a frequent contributor to radio, television and the national press. He regularly delivers BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, writes a monthly Credo column for The Times, as well as other comment pieces, and broadcasts an annual Rosh Hashanah message on the BBC. In 1990 he was invited by the BBC Board of Governors to deliver the annual Reith Lectures which were then published as The Persistence of Faith. He has written 24 books, his most recent being The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning which was published in July 2011. A number of his books have won literary awards, including the Grawemeyer Prize for Religion in 2004 for The Dignity of Difference, and a National Jewish Book Award in 2000 for A Letter in the Scroll. Covenant & Conversation: Genesis also won the National Jewish Book Award in 2009. Many of his books have been translated into French, Italian, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean and Hebrew. Born in 1948 in London, he has been married to Elaine since 1970. They have three children, Joshua, Dina and Gila, and five grandchildren. Titles currently in print in English, include:
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Baroness Warsi - Co-chairman of the Conservative Party/Minister without Portfolio
'The role of faith in society'
14 March 2012, York Minster
'The role of faith in society'
14 March 2012, York Minster
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Sayeeda Warsi is one of the Conservative Party’s leading campaigners and as Co-Chairman is at the forefront of the party’s political and election campaigns.
Born in Dewsbury in 1971, Sayeeda has been politically involved since her early college days. She believes in aspiration and opportunity, inspired by her father, who arrived in this country with almost nothing and founded a local manufacturing firm which still runs as a family business today. Sayeeda has always had a keen interest in faith and racial justice issues. She was instrumental in the launch of Operation Black Vote in West Yorkshire in 1996 and was for many years both an executive member of the Kirklees Racial Equality Council and a member of the Joseph Rowntree Trust Racial Justice Committee. In October 2009, Sayeeda took on the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, on BBC’s Question Time. In 2004, Michael Howard appointed Sayeeda as an adviser and Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party. She was appointed a Conservative Peer by David Cameron in 2007 and served as Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion and Social Action. After the 2010 General Election, Sayeeda became the first Muslim to serve as a full member of the British Cabinet. In September 2010, Sayeeda made the first of a series of keynote addresses on the importance of faith as a force for good in society, signalling a new direction in government policy and making clear that the coalition government does “do God”. Sayeeda has volunteered all her life, in mentoring, community groups, and as a trustee of the Savayra Foundation, a woman’s empowerment charity. Beginning with the Waves Network Social Action Project in 2005, she has worked with other Conservatives to place social action at the heart of the Party and has led a number of Conservative Social Action projects, including Project Maja in Bosnia. Sayeeda was educated at Birkdale High School and Dewsbury College, and then the University of Leeds where she read Law (LLB). She attended the York College of Law to complete her Legal Practice Course and trained with both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Home Office Immigration Department. After qualifying as a Solicitor, she worked for John Whitfield, the last Conservative Member of Parliament for Dewsbury, at Whitfield Hallam Goodall Solicitors and then went on to set up her own specialist practice, George Warsi Solicitors in Dewsbury. She has also worked overseas on a research project for the Ministry of Law in Pakistan. Sayeeda lives in Wakefield with her husband Iftikhar and their five children. Positions held:
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Dr David Halpern - Director of Behavioural Insight Team, No.10 and the Cabinet Office/Senior Fellow of the Institute for Government
‘The hidden wealth of nations?’
18 April 2012, York St John University
‘The hidden wealth of nations?’
18 April 2012, York St John University
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Dr David Halpern is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government, currently on secondment to both No.10 and the Cabinet Office full time as Director, Behavioral Insights Team, Chief Strategy Advisor, Cabinet Office and support on the Big Society and well-being agendas.
David previously worked as Chief Analyst in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit (2001-2007). He led numerous reviews, including the UK Government's Strategic Audits and recent Policy Reviews; set up the Social Exclusion Task Force and drafted its Action Plan; and authored many of the Strategy Unit's most influential papers. Before entering government, he held tenure at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Cambridge University, where he still remains an Affiliated Lecturer. He has also held posts at Nuffield College, Oxford; the Policy Studies Institute, London; and as a Visiting Professor at the Centre for European Studies, Harvard. |
Will Hutton - Former editor-in-chief for The Observer/Former Vice-chair of the Work Foundation
'It was bad capitalism that got us into this mess – good capitalism that will get us out`
2 May 2012, York Minster
'It was bad capitalism that got us into this mess – good capitalism that will get us out`
2 May 2012, York Minster
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Will Hutton has just begun as Principal of Hertford College Oxford. Regularly called on to advise senior political and business figures and comment in the national and international media, Will is today one of the country’s leading economic commentators.
He began his career in the city, as a stockbroker and investment analyst before moving to the BBC, where he worked both on radio, as a producer and reporter, and on TV as economics correspondent for Newsnight. After a six-year spell as The Guardian’s economic editor. Will spent four years as editor and editor-in-chief of The Observer, for which he continues to write a weekly column. He then ran The Work Foundation until 2008, stepping down to become its Executive Vice Chair – a role he has just relinquished. He will chair The Big Innovation Centre, a think tank he created whilst at The Work Foundation, in tandem with his Oxford commitments. Will’s best-known book is probably The State We’re In, which was seen at the time as setting the scene for the Blair revolution. Since then he has published The State to Come, The Stakeholding Society, On The Edge (with Anthony Giddens), a groundbreaking analysis of globalisation and The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century. His latest book, Them and Us: Changing Britain – Why we need a fair society, was published last year and is already said to have influenced Labour leader Ed Miliband. Will is a governor of the London School of Economics. He is also a member of the Scott Trust board, and a fellow of the Sunningdale Institute. In 2004, Will was invited by the European Commission to join a High Level Group on the mid-term review of the Lisbon Strategy and act as its ‘rapporteur’ for the final report. He also regularly contributes to The Guardian and The Financial Times. He is currently the chair of the Commission on Ownership which is examining how Britain can promote good ownership (which it also defines) due to deliver its findings in January 2012. He also chaired the Public Sector Fair Pay Review which published its final report in March 2011, and whose recommendations the government has agreed to implement. |
Rev Dr Malcolm Brown - Director of Mission & Public Affairs, The Archbishops’ Council
'Moral Communities in a Society of Strangers: turning social theories into practical politics'
13 June 2012, York St John University
'Moral Communities in a Society of Strangers: turning social theories into practical politics'
13 June 2012, York St John University
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The Revd Dr Malcolm Brown is Director of Mission and Public Affairs for the Archbishops' Council of the Church of England, leading a team which addresses the church's interest in policy, ethics and political developments and which supports the work of the church in its relationship with local communities across the country.
He has been a parish priest in rural and inner city areas and has taught Christian ethics at several universities, most recently in the Cambridge Theological Federation. He has a particular interest in ethics and political economy and is leading the Church of England's national engagement with ministers and others on The Big Society. His most recent book is Tensions in Christian Ethics (London: SPCK, 2010). |
