Warrender Lecture, Professor Duncan Ivison (University of Manchester)

We are very pleased to announce that this year's Warrender Lecture will be given by Professor Duncan Ivison, and will be held on Thursday, March 12th, 4.30pm-6pm, in the David Rice Lecture Theatre, Firth Court.

Professor Ivison is a political philosopher, and President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester. Alongside many other publications, he is the author of Can Liberal States Accommodate Indigenous Peoples? (Polity, 2020), Rights (Routledge, 2008), and Postcolonial Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Professor Ivison's Warrender Lecture is titled 'How not to Defend Liberal Institutions', and an abstract follows below:

"Liberalism, and especially liberal institutions, have come under sustained intellectual and political attack over the past few years - from both the left and the right. Political scientists have pointed to the effects of democratic backsliding and a decline in both social and political trust in many liberal democracies. And we’ve seen parties with authoritarian and deeply anti-liberal tendencies elected in ostensibly liberal democratic states around the world, or at least profoundly shaping contemporary politics. How best to defend liberal values and institutions in these contexts? Does contemporary liberal political theory have the resources to do so? Or are we entering a post-liberal era?"

The Warrender Lecture is named in honour of Howard Warrender, who was Professor in Political Theory and Institutions in Sheffield from 1972 until his death in 1985. The inaugural Warrender Lecture was given by D. D. Raphael in 1986. Since then, guest lecturers have included Allen Buchanan, David Held, Cecile Fabre, David Miller, Anne Phillips, Quentin Skinner, and Lea Ypi.