Welcome to our new monthly newsletter. At the start of each month, we’ll reflect of big freedom stories in the news, alert you to Living Freedom related articles and news and bring you up to date with any events that we have coming up – as well as others that have caught our eye.
We have some new initiatives planned. Read on for details of Generation Freedom – our new regular meetings for alumni. And keep an eye out next month for exciting news about the launch of Living Freedom Night School. But there are old favourites, too. Do follow the latest debates programmed at Battle of Ideas festival, where Living Freedom will be running several sessions across the course of the weekend of 17 /18 October. You can volunteer to help run the festival, which will give you access to many of the sessions, or you can buy your ticket here.
As well as this monthly newsletter, keep an eye out for our Substack articles. We’ll be kicking off next week with one of our alumni, Jack Kelsall, defending free speech for football fans.
In short: there’ll be plenty more to read, watch, attend and argue about.
Get in touch if there is something that you think we should advertise or publish. Please do share this Substack as widely as possible – and encourage friends and colleagues to subscribe. And if you can turn your free subscription into a paid one, then please do – you’ll be supporting the emergence of a new generation of freedom fighters.
Jake Weston
Living Freedom Substack editor
jake@ideasmatter.org.uk
FREEDOM WATCH
Jake Weston
The tragic death of Professor Jason Arday has sent shockwaves through academia. We will no doubt learn more about the circumstances surrounding his death in the months ahead. But the wider questions raised by the controversy – from allegations of plagiarism to concerns about how such a young academic rose so rapidly through the university system – go far beyond one individual.
For those beyond academia, some of the revelations of recent weeks may have come as a surprise. But to more observant – or perhaps more cynical – readers, especially those who have spent time in universities recently, they may have seemed rather inevitable.
Questions about standards, merit, priorities, institutional incentives and the way universities make appointments have been bubbling beneath the surface of academia for years. I’d wager that questions about the conduct of senior university figures – particularly in relation to DEI – are unlikely to disappear from debates about academia anytime soon.
For those of us lucky enough to attend Lord Biggar’s lecture at Living Freedom Summer School 2026, we’d be forgiven for wondering whether professors at Cambridge could have stopped this whole tragic episode if they’d had slightly more courage.
The response to Jason Arday’s death raises concerns over freedom in two particular respects.
First, lazy accusations of institutional racism in the media should worry readers about the extent to which the news media will pursue the truth in the future. Spiked’s Tom Slater was good on this issue on the BBC. Lord Woolley’s pronouncement that Jason Arday was ‘lynched’ is obviously ludicrous and reckless in its disregard for both the tragic context and the real-world consequences of reimagining this case as a purely racist witch hunt.
Second, some in academia are threatening to double down on DEI. One academic stated: ‘I can’t say anything on the record, or I’ll be the right’s next target. The [right] have set their sights on pushing Black people out from all these institutions.’ One can assume that some academics will push for greater ‘protections’ for black professors and more discriminatory hiring practices, moving us further away from the aim of treating people as individuals according to the content of their character and their achievements.
In short, we are at risk of learning the wrong lessons from this tragic episode.
Elsewhere in academia, Nathan Cofnas, who made the initial accusations of plagiarism against Arday, has been suspended (then unsuspended after intervention from the US government) from Ghent University for his ‘race realist’ views. Although I totally reject Cofnas’s views on race, I implore all readers to watch his interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari, who seems to forget all principles of free speech due to his obvious dislike of Cofnas, asking him with incredulity: ‘Your position is you can knowingly cause offence and distress!?’
Yes, Mr Ferrari: free speech means you’re allowed to cause ‘offence and distress’. A good lesson in how not to debate those you disagree with.
new initiative
GENERATION FREEDOM – Tuesday 8 September
Our first GENERATION FREEDOM discussion is taking place on 8 September.
Generation Freedom welcomes Living Freedom alumni to discuss the most pressing challenges to freedom today. We take the ethos of our summer school into regular seminars and forums, encouraging young people to think for themselves and confront each other in the most complex and pressing political issues of the day.
In regular meetups, we explore freedom in different forms, including alumni-led discussion groups, lectures, debates and seminars. We aim to equip young people with the ability to deal with the challenges of the day by thinking freely and innovatively, stepping back from the media headlines and the political noise to interrogate the ideas. Alumni will not just listen to interesting speakers but will be pressed to defend freedom through their own ideas – inspiring our alumni to not just think about freedom in the abstract, but to defend it in practice, and pushing them to be able to defend freedom and start their own discussions in the public sphere.
Message Emma Gilland (emma@ideasmatter.org.uk) for details if you don’t already have them.
ALUMNI IN THE NEWS / MEDIA
Plagiarism is not the only academic vice
Felice Basbøll, Substack
Suicide is a tragedy, not an argument
Samuel Rubinstein, UnHerd
The culture war on uni sports societies
Jake Weston, spiked
The Young Women Quietly Converting to Catholicism
Georgina Mumford, Compact
‘This is absolute arrogance in the face of the highest court in this land’
Maeve Halligan, now at the IEA, on GB News
Congratulations to Kirstin Brady, who will be starting work at the Centre for Government Reform in early November.
EVENT WATCH
BATTLE OF IDEAS FESTIVAL: SIX WEEKS TO GO
We’re now only six weeks away from the Battle of Ideas!
If you’d like to volunteer, we’d love to hear from you. We need a few people to help out on the Ideas Matter stall over the weekend, and on the Living Freedom sessions – so please let us know if you’re interested.
Alternatively, ‘early bird’ student tickets for the whole weekend are just £30 until 18 September.
OPTIMISTIC PICNIC AT HYDE PARK – FUTURE: UK
Saturday 5 September, 12pm · Hyde Park, London
Bring a blanket, food, drinks & a friend
Find out more and register here
THE GREENING OF ARCHITECTURE - EAST MIDLANDS SALON
Thursday 17 September, 7pm · The Brunswick Inn, Derby
Speaker: Austin Williams
Book tickets here
THE FUTURE OF CONSERVATISM - BATTLE OF IDEAS SATELLITE
Wednesday 23 September, 6pm · Vinson Centre, University of Buckingham
speakers: Daniel Silveira & Alistair Miller
Find out more and register here
WILL A SOCIAL-MEDIA BAN GIVE CHILDREN THE FREEDOM TO GROW UP? ACADEMY OF IDEAS EDUCATION FORUM
Monday 28 September, 7pm · Online via Zoom
Speakers include Emma Gilland & Matilda Gosling
Register here
RATIONAL ENDEAVOUR - CURIOSITY, OPTIMISM, REASON
Bi-weekly online meetings · Writing opportunities · UK 2027 conference
Find out more here
GET IN TOUCH
Write to our newsletter editor Jake Weston about anything Living Freedom related: jake@ideasmatter.org.uk.