The Academy was founded by the Academy of Ideas in 2011 and came under the auspices of the Battle of Ideas charity in 2019.
The theme of The Academy 2012 – which ran from Saturday 21 July to Monday 23 July, with an additional Youth Academy day on Friday 20 July aimed at young scholars – was Free will and determinism.
Schedule: lectures and lecturers
Youth Academy day
Being in History (Dolan Cummings)
Liberty: matters of life and truth (Dr James Panton)
Public intellectuals and the intellectual public (Claire Fox)
Day one
Plenary: The Reformation: Martin Luther; the death of God; and the election of Man (Professor Frank Furedi)
Classics: Heroic fate and Homer’s Iliad (Professor Ahuvia Kahane)
History: America’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ (Dolan Cummings)
Literature: Shakespeare and the curse of free will (Dr Michael Caines)
Plenary: Immanuel Kant and the purity of subjective experience
(Professor Roger Scruton)
Day two
History: Communism in our lifetime? Marxism and economic determinism (Professor Frank Furedi)
Classics: Destined for tragedy? Sophocles’ Theban Plays (Angus Kennedy)
Literature: Jane Austen, the Brontës and Thomas Hardy: the reality of social life (Claire Fox)
Sunday Short: Medieval Literature (Richard Swan)
Sunday Short: Philosophy of Freedom (Professor Dennis Hayes)
Plenary: Kierkegaard: alienated man and the ethics of subjectivity (Dr Joel Rasmussen)
Day three
Classics: Fighting for freedom in Herodotus’ Histories (Angus Kennedy)
History: Social Darwinism: the organic society? (Dr Ellie Lee)
Literature: Nihilism and hope (Jennie Bristow)
Classics: Petrarch and the Renaissance: how to cope with fortune (Alan Hudson)
History: Overthrowing authority: authenticity, rebellion and the new subjection (Bruno Waterfield)
Literature: The absurdity of freedom (Dr Tim Black)
Plenary: From Existentialism to neuroscience: condemned to be free? (Professor Frank Furedi)