Monday 3rd October 17:00 – 17:45 

Are we Losing the War on Woke?

In recent years concepts that had been largely confirmed to campuses have exploded out into wider society. From ‘white privilege’ to ‘micro-aggressions’, ‘cultural appropriation’ to ‘decolonisation, new boundaries are being placed upon what is deemed acceptable to say and do, how we view our history and how our society should be organised. Debates over whether a person’s self-perceived gender should take precedence over their sex, and controversial new interpretations of long-understood concepts such as racism – into a matter of structural power, rather than individual discrimination– are transforming the public and private sector.

Government Ministers have repeatedly railed against ‘woke’ – but have they done anything meaningful about it? Supporters might point to the new Ministerial veto that has prevented monuments being taken down, the publication of the landmark Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities or the introduction of impartiality guidance in schools. Naysayers might cite the unwillingness to tackle the root cause of underlying legislation, such as the increasingly broadly-interpreted Public Sector Equality Duty, and argue that with hundreds of public bodies members of Stonewall’s controversial Diversity Champions scheme, over 100,000 ‘non-crime hate incidents’ being recorded by the police and ‘decolonisation’ initiatives present in most universities and museums, Government action has been a fig-leaf at best. This panel event, featuring evidence from a new poll by Professor Eric Kaufmann, will debate whether or not the Government really is winning the ‘war on woke’ – and, if not, what more is needed.