😷 Eamonn Ives, Research Director
This coming Sunday will mark half a decade since then Prime Minister Boris Johnson took to our television screens to announce the first nationwide lockdown in response to the escalating Covid-19 pandemic. To slow the spread of the disease, we were instructed to remain indoors and strictly minimise contact with other people. A number of other rules cropped up shortly thereafter – you might remember having to keep two meters apart, abiding by one-way systems and queuing for an eternity outside supermarkets.
Ask an economist and they might tell you that all of these interventions were essentially attempts to correct harmful externalities via ‘social coordination’. We were trying to control Covid-19 by deliberately altering our behaviour, and thus making it harder for it to pass from person to person. And while that might have at least partially worked to lower the rate of new infections, it could only ever be a temporary solution. What we required to truly defeat the virus was not social coordination but rather a technological breakthrough – in the form of a vaccine.
All of this is a long-winded introduction to say that I agree with Max Tabbarok when he asserts in his latest Substack that: “Economics should emphasize the importance of technology as a solution to externality problems and focus less on social coordination.”
He invokes many other areas where humanity has solved pressing and sometimes seemingly intractable social issues, not through individuals coming together and working out how to best manage the situation, but by inventing our way out of the situation in the first place. While social coordination can certainly be a stop-gap to urgent challenges, we should be reminded that genuine long-run progress typically comes from innovators devising technologies that allow us to break free from our current confines and live in a world controlled by us, not the other way around.
👨🏫 Anastasia Bektimirova, Head of Science and Technology
Times Higher Education (THE) published an article by Ilana Horwitz on her new book The Entrepreneurial Scholar, arguing that:
“Institutions are changing, and the definition of scholarly success is evolving. It is no longer enough to make minor contributions to arcane fields of knowledge. Scholars must make meaningful contributions to real challenges. They must make connections across disciplines and sectors. They must adapt and contribute to the uncertain world beyond the ivory tower. In short, they need to think entrepreneurially.”
I wholeheartedly endorse this spirit. Yet, looking at the comments under THE’s Chief Global Affairs Officer’s LinkedIn post about the article, I was struck by how quickly the concept of the entrepreneurial scholar can be misconstrued – conflated with commercialisation or abandonment of academic rigour.
It doesn’t mean to “forget about basic research,” as one commentator puts it. Nor does “seeing knowledge as a business,” as another one argues, imply “serving finance or business” at the expense of pursuing knowledge that drives advances. If anything, being an entrepreneurial scholar is about proactively building bridges between disciplines, seeking out more avenues to pursue research and make it actionable – whether for further scientific progress, to inform policy, or drive societal benefit through innovative products and services. The goal is to amplify the potential reach and impact of scholarly work, not make it less scientifically rigorous.
My gentle disagreement with the article, however, is with the point that “institutions are changing.” In reality, institutional conservatism within universities and research funders persists. For example, as I wrote earlier, even though the funding landscape is becoming more diverse, academic institutions continue to train scientists almost exclusively to succeed within the same conventional funding paths. This narrow approach reinforces the very system that alternative funders are trying to complement, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of institutional resistance to progress. The rhetoric of change often outpaces actual structural transformation.
🗽 Philip Salter, Founder
Richard Hanania draws a useful distinction between populism and elites in an article explaining why Donald Trump and Joe Rogan aren’t elites.
According to Hanania, elites are those who derive status from established cultural, political, or social institutions – cultivating esteem primarily among their peers rather than broad audiences. In contrast, populists place blame for societal problems on these elites, championing values that resonate with the masses but are disfavoured by institutional insiders (such as anti-wokeness, mysticism, and traditionalism), and gain status by appealing directly to large audiences rather than seeking elite validation.
Over time, the philosophy of classical liberalism has curbed many of the worst excesses of both, by emphasising pluralism, procedural fairness, meritocracy and individual rights. But as our current era demonstrates, this effort is never conclusively won.
This is why it’s great to see Eamonn (of this house) join forces with fellow liberal Callum Price, standing athwart recent history, yelling ‘Stop’. Their new venture, the Liberal Digest will bring together liberal voices who refuse to accept mediocrity, and to push back against the rising tide of populism.
Back in 2016, Matthew Parris’s defence of Britain’s Liberal Metropolitan Elite was more humorous than urgent. Nearly a decade on, his defence of the liberal elite was more sincere: “Liberals should stop beating ourselves up, stop whimpering about how we failed to address populist concerns, and face millions of good but deluded men and women with honest argument. They are wrong. We are right. We shall be proved right. Chins up.”
Ultimately, liberals – broadly defined – can be validated either by demonstrating that elite institutions effectively serve the public or by allowing populists to govern, thereby showing that they are the lesser of two evils. I know which path I would prefer.