Open Lecture - Professor Frank Furedi on tolerance

Author, broadcaster and sociology professor, Frank Furedi will give an Open Lecture at the University on Wednesday 2 November at 6pm.

The lecture, titled "Why are We Afraid of Tolerance?", will take place in the Woolf Lecture Theatre at the University’s Canterbury campus. Admission is free and open to all.

Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology in the University’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, has been widely cited on his views on why western societies find it so difficult to engage with risk and uncertainty. He has published widely about controversies on issues such as health, parenting, food and new technology.

His Invitation to Terror; Expanding the Empire of the Unknown (2007) explores the way in which the threat of terrorism has become amplified through the ascendancy of precautionary thinking. It develops the arguments contained in two previous books, The Culture of Fear (2003) and Paranoid Parenting (2001). The influence of the erosion of adult authority on schooling is examined in his 2009 publication, Wasted: Why Education is Not Educating.

Professor Furedi’s latest book, On Tolerance; A Defence of Moral Independence (Continuum Press) was published this month (October).

Contact: pressoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 2:06pm 2 November 2011