Open Society Dialogues

Demos has teamed up with the Open Society Institute to run an events series that asks what makes an open society in the 21st Century. Led by Dan Leighton, head of the Public Interest Programme, the Open Society Dialogues look at the issues of human rights, transparency, the internet and markets, and ask how these support or challenge open societies.

The Challenges Facing open Societies

The notion of the Open Society is a pragmatic ideal for confident liberal democracies.  Accepting that all knowledge is incomplete and fallible means such societies are always open to improvement and comfortable with cultural and religious pluralism.

Yet it is all too easy to conflate 'the open society' in its positive content with the institutions, economies and cultures of advanced liberal democracies. The animating ideals of critical and scientific reasoning have most value when questioning which aspects of such societies are becoming ossified or maladaptive in the face of social, economic and technological change. By failing to subject assumptions in these areas to critical scrutiny, advocates can at once alienate those that might have reasonable disagreements, and prevent the reform and sustainability of cherished ideals and institutions in conventionally open, but increasingly insecure societies.

The Open Society Dialogues explore the tensions, hidden assumptions and challenges to the ideals and institutions that are constitutive of openness: human rights, transparency, cultural tolerance and free markets. We bring together leading thinkers and critics to tease out and challenge the practices and values necessary for sustaining an open society that is secure enough to constantly challenge assumptions in the face of new evidence, knowledge and social change.

 

The Events

Rights:  Have human rights gone too far or not far enough? 

With Professor John Gray, philosopher

Professor Francesca Klug OBE, London School of Economics

Aryeh Neier, President of the Open Society Foundations 

January 26 2011

 

Transparency: Through a Web Darkly, Does the internet spread democracy or ignorance? 

With Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion,

Dan Hind, author of the Return of the Public

Ben Hammersley, Editor-at-Large of Wired UK

Tom Chatfield, author of Fun Inc.

May 27 2011

 

Tolerance:  Is there a limit to how tolerant liberal societies can be? 

Douglas Murray, writer and commentator

Trevor Philips, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission

Professor Shamit Saggar, University of Sussex

Other speakers to be confirmed

23 June 2011

 

Capitalism and Freedom:  Does free-market ideology underpin or undermine open societies?

Lord Glasman

John Kay, The Financial Times

Diane Coyle, Enlightenment Economics (chair)

17 August 2011

 

For more information, get in touch with Dan Leighton.