Robin Hood in the 21st century—rallying the poor for the civil liberties of the rich

Robin Hood: a populist yarn and surefire crowd pleaser if ever there was one. He lives in the woods with his merry men, stealing from the rich, and redistributing to the poor; all the while engaging in a tit for tat with his arch nemesis, the feudal lacky the Sheriff of Nottingham. What could go [...]

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Cut philosophy, get theology (or, two arguments for philosophy in universities)

There have been numerous pieces on the Guardian’s Comment is Free (CiF) about the Middlesex philosophy closure, usually protesting it on the basis of the department’s research excellence. Below the line, though, some commenters have questioned the very purpose of philosophy: particularly of the continental variety. Surely as resources are squeezed by recession, their argument [...]

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Middlesex occupation ends, and Tariq Ali whimpers

Today was meant to be a talk by Tariq Ali at the ‘Transversal Space’ of occupied Mansion House, Middlesex University. Instead of a lecture, however, people arrived to discover that the whole building had been surrounded by security guards. An injunction had been served to the occupiers by university management, and individual students had been [...]

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Deep Freeze … Election comment

This winter was one of the coldest and deepest for a long time. Snow fell, and stayed. Even now we have only had a few weeks respite from an otherwise permafrosted year. For political pundits, however, there was one event anticipated which was going to introduce exciting change into our lives: the British general election, [...]

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Storming Mansion House: Report on the escalation of the Middlesex Occupation

Yesterday marked the second day of the Middlesex occupation at Trent Park. Some stayed at the occupation of the Dean’s boardroom, whilst others fanned out across the other campuses at Hendon and Cathill to canvass support. At Hendon there was a surprising amount of security. It was not clear whether this had anything to do [...]

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Middlesex occupation—decision to escalate further

Today, after Dean of Arts Ed Esche failed to attend a meeting arranged with protesters against the closure of the philosophy department, a spontaneous occupation of the boardroom was initiated. Around 45 people moved into the room. The police were called by the university, but found no grounds for eviction of the protesters or arrests.  Some entirely fatuous claims of assault [...]

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Red Tory’s liberal racism and the BNP bogeyman

As a short follow up to both my review of Phillip Blond’s Red Tory and my post asking ‘Is anti-fascism a waste of time?‘ I would like to combine the two to compound the argument I forwarded in the latter post. In this post I questioned the wisdom, given the limited resources of the left, of structuring [...]

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Fashionable Centrism—on ‘folk politics’, ‘object oriented ontology’ and ‘micro revolutions’ PART 1

I hope my friends will forgive me for this post—which is meant as a constructive rejoinder to some of the political ideas I have encountered around continental philosophy circles of late. In line with my dreadfully old fashioned dialectical thinking, my sympathies have always been with Socrates type figures and the restless interrogation of prevailing wisdom. This [...]

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