Alarming news about the future of Heythrop College has emerged.  The loss of its undergraduate philosophy and theology courses always means that years of work creating a community of students and scholars exploring a subject together is sacrificed.

I first came into contact with Heythrop College as a sixth form student.  I attended a couple of events where Heythrop’s Peter Vardy was speaking in his engaging and enlivening way. He managed to inspire us with the power of philosophy to account ...

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Stefan Collini’s What are Universities For? (Penguin, 2012) is a book that it is difficult to ignore.  It has been prominently displayed in bookshops and has caught my eye as I wandered past in search of the philosophy section.  Writing a book on a current and pressing problem which has real depth and critical force is a difficult thing to do.  Problems like this are generally staged in over-determined spaces of public debate where the alternatives, the language and the very being of the pr...

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The recent activity on the internet in response to Middlesex University’s decision to close its philosophy courses reflects the importance of the work done in this department.  It is strange to have attended a conference a couple of weeks ago organised by the Middlesex philosophers, held at the Institut Français in South Kensington and featuring international speakers of great renown, and then to find that Middlesex University wants to close this department.  It has a towering record in ...

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Over at Infinite Thought the growing cuts to philosophy provision at new universities in the UK, those formed since 1992 when polytechnics were granted university status, is the subject of an important post.  The argument is made that this forms part not of a response to student demands or needs but of a new conception of what new univerities should be.  They should no longer bring the subjects studied for centuries at older universities to more and more people but are instead heading towards...
Continue reading ...

Alarming news about the future of Heythrop College has emerged.  The loss of its undergraduate philosophy and theology courses always means that years of work creating a community of students and scholars exploring a subject together is sacrificed.

I first came into contact with Heythrop College as a sixth form student.  I attended a couple of events where Heythrop’s Peter Vardy was speaking in his engaging and enlivening way. He managed to inspire us with the power of philosophy to account ...

Continue reading ...

Stefan Collini’s What are Universities For? (Penguin, 2012) is a book that it is difficult to ignore.  It has been prominently displayed in bookshops and has caught my eye as I wandered past in search of the philosophy section.  Writing a book on a current and pressing problem which has real depth and critical force is a difficult thing to do.  Problems like this are generally staged in over-determined spaces of public debate where the alternatives, the language and the very being of the pr...

Continue reading ...

The recent activity on the internet in response to Middlesex University’s decision to close its philosophy courses reflects the importance of the work done in this department.  It is strange to have attended a conference a couple of weeks ago organised by the Middlesex philosophers, held at the Institut Français in South Kensington and featuring international speakers of great renown, and then to find that Middlesex University wants to close this department.  It has a towering record in ...

Continue reading ...

Over at Infinite Thought the growing cuts to philosophy provision at new universities in the UK, those formed since 1992 when polytechnics were granted university status, is the subject of an important post.  The argument is made that this forms part not of a response to student demands or needs but of a new conception of what new univerities should be.  They should no longer bring the subjects studied for centuries at older universities to more and more people but are instead heading towards...
Continue reading ...