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Erik Tillman of De Pauw University, Chicago, on Psychological Authoritarianism and Populist Right Support in Western Europe. Introduced by Eric Kaufmann. Birkbeck College, University of London, 17 May 2017

Staff from the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College and special guest David Goodhart discuss the populist backlash in Western politics. This debate features Professor Eric Kaufmann, Dr Sam Ashenden, Dr Jason Edwards and special guest David Goodhart, founding editor of Prospect magazine and head of the Demography, Immigration and Integration Unit at Policy Exchange. Dr Alex Colas, Head of the Department of Politics at Birkbeck, chairs the event. Facebook: www.facebook.com/BirkbeckPolitics/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/birkbeck-dept-of-politics Twitter: www.twitter.com/bbkpolitics Centre website: www.csbppl.com Department website: www.bbk.ac.uk/politics/

Shortly after Trump’s victory, the Economist ran a cover story on ‘the New Nationalism.’ Professor Tony Travers of LSE chairs this event featuring an Economist editor and two experts on the populist right to ask, ‘Why the upsurge in nationalism?’ Richard Cockett (@CockettRichard) is an editor at The Economist who has written extensively on nationalism and immigration around the world for the newspaper Daphne Halikiopoulou is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Reading and co-author of Golden Dawn’s ‘Nationalist Solution’: explaining the rise of the far right in Greece and numerous articles on radical right and left populism in Europe. She is an editor of the journal Nations and Nationalism. Eric Kaufmann (@epkaufm) is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London, author of The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America , Changing Places: the white British response to ethnic change and several LSE data blogs on the Brexit and Trump votes. He is an editor of the LSE based journal Nations and Nationalism. Tony Travers is the Director of LSE London and LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs. He is also a professor in the LSE’s Government Department. The Institute of Public Affairs (@LSEPubAffairs) is one of the world's leading centres of public policy. We aim to debate and address some of the major issues of our time, whether international or national, through our established teaching programmes, our research and our highly innovative public-engagement initiatives. This event will be co-sponsored by the LSE based Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN).

The Challenge of Climate Change: What Can and Can’t Be Fixed? A Roundtable discussion and reception launching the MSc in Global Environmental Politics and Policy, organised by the Birkbeck Population, Environment and Resources Group. Free event open to all: Book your place As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit in 2017, climate change continues to pose a formidable global socio-economic, political and environmental challenge. The latest Conference of Participants in Paris culminated with a multilateral commitment to keep global temperature rise this century below 2 degrees Celsius, promising an agreement with a ‘long-term vision’ that was also to act as an ‘engine of safe growth’. In this panel, we consider whether these aspirations to reconcile economic growth with control over global warming are realistic, feasible or even desirable. What are the prospects of enforcing these objectives? What kind of policies and political mobilisations might help to secure them? Can and does technology help in addressing climate change? And what are the implications of all this for an increasingly ‘crowded, complex and coastal’ planet? Four specialists on these subjects will discuss these and other related questions in an accessible and conversational format. Panelists: Aideen Foley, Lecturer in Physical and Environmental Geography Birkbeck College. Diane Horn, Reader in Coastal Geomorphology Birkbeck College. Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College. Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the Future. Chair: Alex Colás, Reader in International Relations, Birkbeck College

“A World in Crisis: Climate Change, Violence, Demography and the Global Economy” Staff debate with Alex Colas, Aideen Foley, Ali Guven, Eric Kaufmann and David Styan. Chaired by Deborah Mabbett. The ongoing political turmoil in Brazil and Turkey is symptomatic of local and regional crises within and around many of the emerging powers in the Global South. With no clear end to the wars in the greater Middle East, and unequal and uneven development still prevalent across many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the world seems to be facing a period of continuous uncertainty. If we add to this the intractable crisis of climate change and the predicted population growth of our planet to 11 billion by the end of the century, a sense of impending doom appears hard to avoid. A panel of Politics faculty, joined by our Geography colleague Aideen Foley, will address these and related issues through the prisms of international security, political economy, environmental politics and political demography. Drawing one their teaching and research expertise in these areas, they will analyse the dynamics and extent of these various crises, and debate the prospects of a more optimistic future.

Dr Paul Morland (Birkbeck) Demographic Engineering: Population Strategies in Ethnic Conflict with a response from Dean Godson (Director, Policy Exchange) Morland“All history is the history of ethnic conflict and in ethnic conflict numbers count.” With this bold statement, Paul Morland opens his new book which argues that ethnic conflict is pervasive across time and space and those with the weight of numbers on their side, either of soldiers or voters, have at the very least an important advantage and often a decisive one. It is therefore surprising that little thought has been given to demography in the context of ethnic conflict. Whilst some consideration has been paid to whether demography causes conflict – when and how particular demographic circumstances may trigger and shape wars and strife – little thinking has been given to how, once conflicts get going, groups use demography as part of their strategy or indeed pursue demography as a strategic goal. Morland offers a framework for thinking about political demography then uses it to illuminate four cases, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine and the USA. The framework revolves around what he calls ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ demographic engineering. Hard demographic engineering involves creating, moving or destroying people, as with genocide, pronatalism and ethnically selective policies of immigration and emigration. By contrast, soft demographic engineering encompasses the movement of political or identity boundaries in order to incorporate or exclude. Examples of the hard form include the expatriation of ‘Indian’ Tamils in Sri Lanka, encouragement of Catholic emigration from Northern Ireland, the high birth rate of both Jews and Arabs in Israel / Palestine and the Back to Africa Movement in the United States. Examples of soft demographic engineering include the partition of Ireland, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the selective annexation of conquered Mexican territory by the United States. Teasing out sources and supplementing the secondary record with interviews and archival work, Morland has thrown new light on the workings of ethnic conflict and offers an intriguing and fresh perspective on an important part of the way the world works, relevant for historians, geographers, social scientists and policy-makers alike.

Dr Paul Morland (Birkbeck) Demographic Engineering: Population Strategies in Ethnic Conflict with a response from Dean Godson (Director, Policy Exchange) Morland“All history is the history of ethnic conflict and in ethnic conflict numbers count.” With this bold statement, Paul Morland opens his new book which argues that ethnic conflict is pervasive across time and space and those with the weight of numbers on their side, either of soldiers or voters, have at the very least an important advantage and often a decisive one. It is therefore surprising that little thought has been given to demography in the context of ethnic conflict. Whilst some consideration has been paid to whether demography causes conflict – when and how particular demographic circumstances may trigger and shape wars and strife – little thinking has been given to how, once conflicts get going, groups use demography as part of their strategy or indeed pursue demography as a strategic goal. Morland offers a framework for thinking about political demography then uses it to illuminate four cases, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine and the USA. The framework revolves around what he calls ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ demographic engineering. Hard demographic engineering involves creating, moving or destroying people, as with genocide, pronatalism and ethnically selective policies of immigration and emigration. By contrast, soft demographic engineering encompasses the movement of political or identity boundaries in order to incorporate or exclude. Examples of the hard form include the expatriation of ‘Indian’ Tamils in Sri Lanka, encouragement of Catholic emigration from Northern Ireland, the high birth rate of both Jews and Arabs in Israel / Palestine and the Back to Africa Movement in the United States. Examples of soft demographic engineering include the partition of Ireland, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the selective annexation of conquered Mexican territory by the United States. Teasing out sources and supplementing the secondary record with interviews and archival work, Morland has thrown new light on the workings of ethnic conflict and offers an intriguing and fresh perspective on an important part of the way the world works, relevant for historians, geographers, social scientists and policy-makers alike.

Dr Paul Morland (Birkbeck) Demographic Engineering: Population Strategies in Ethnic Conflict with a response from Dean Godson (Director, Policy Exchange) Morland“All history is the history of ethnic conflict and in ethnic conflict numbers count.” With this bold statement, Paul Morland opens his new book which argues that ethnic conflict is pervasive across time and space and those with the weight of numbers on their side, either of soldiers or voters, have at the very least an important advantage and often a decisive one. It is therefore surprising that little thought has been given to demography in the context of ethnic conflict. Whilst some consideration has been paid to whether demography causes conflict – when and how particular demographic circumstances may trigger and shape wars and strife – little thinking has been given to how, once conflicts get going, groups use demography as part of their strategy or indeed pursue demography as a strategic goal. Morland offers a framework for thinking about political demography then uses it to illuminate four cases, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine and the USA. The framework revolves around what he calls ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ demographic engineering. Hard demographic engineering involves creating, moving or destroying people, as with genocide, pronatalism and ethnically selective policies of immigration and emigration. By contrast, soft demographic engineering encompasses the movement of political or identity boundaries in order to incorporate or exclude. Examples of the hard form include the expatriation of ‘Indian’ Tamils in Sri Lanka, encouragement of Catholic emigration from Northern Ireland, the high birth rate of both Jews and Arabs in Israel / Palestine and the Back to Africa Movement in the United States. Examples of soft demographic engineering include the partition of Ireland, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the selective annexation of conquered Mexican territory by the United States. Teasing out sources and supplementing the secondary record with interviews and archival work, Morland has thrown new light on the workings of ethnic conflict and offers an intriguing and fresh perspective on an important part of the way the world works, relevant for historians, geographers, social scientists and policy-makers alike.

‘Changes Alarm, Time Disarms: Ethnic Context and the Political Demography of Anti-Immigration,’ part of panel at ‘Europe’s migration crisis and the Populist Response’ event, 23 November, Wolfson Suite, London, University of London Slides: http://www.sneps.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/EK-1.pptx

British Government @ LSE public discussion Date: Thursday 5 November 2015 Time: 6.30-8pm Venue: Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building Speakers: Professor Eric Kaufman, Professor Alan Manning, Polly Toynbee, Professor Christine Whitehead Chair: Professor Tony Travers This event will discuss immigration and asylum policies in Britain. The event will specifically discuss economics, public opinion, communities and poverty. Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. Alan Manning is Professor of Labour Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Polly Toynbee is a Columnist for the Guardian. Christine Whitehead is Professor of Housing Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Tony Travers is Director of LSE London, a research centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also a Visiting Professor in the LSE’s Government Department and Director of British Government @ LSE. British Government@LSE (@LSEGovernment) is an initiative currently based in the Government Department to promote and develop research on British Government being conducted at the LSE. So far world class speakers have attended our events, talking on a range of topics. Suggested hashtag for this event for Twitter users: #LSEImmigration1

Professor Eric Kaufman from Birkbeck College, University of London, discusses his research making use of the BHPS and Understanding Society to look at White Flight and discusses what his findings tell us about the apparent rise of UKIP.

Talk at University of Oxford, Department of Sociology, April 22, 2013 Asks why white British people in more diverse wards in England are somewhat less opposed to immigration than those in more homogeneous wards.

Much of the course has focused on separatist or diaspora minorities, or on the states in which they reside. This lecture considers ethnic majorities within states, such as the ethnic white British majority of Britain or whites in the United States. The nationalism of the state differs from that of the ethnic majority. Ethnic majority nationalism is more exclusive of ethnic minorities and the rise of large-scale non-European migration to Europe since the 1950s is a major factor in the rise of far right parties in Western Europe. These have gone from strength to strength since the late 1980s.

This lecture asks whether nationalism and European integration are on a collision course. It covers the origin and design of the main institutions of the European Union. Next, I consider the rising opposition to European integration since the early 1990s, evident in survey data and popular votes on new Treaties, up to the British 'in/out' referendum, scheduled for 2016-17. What explains Euroskepticism, and what is the future of the European unification project?

In diverse societies such as Britain, should the state grant rights to groups, or only to individuals? Should loyalty to the nation trump those of ethnicity or religion? Using the British case, this lecture asks whether there has been a shift from multiculturalism to British civic nationalism; from celebrating difference to emphasizing what Britons have in common.

Is nationalism a secular religion, a replacement for nationalism, as Durkheim surmised? Or is it a meaning system that draws on religious resources for power? Do religious officials endorse or oppose nationalism and ethnicity? This lecture examines this question, probing the links between religion and nationalism, from ancient Israel to modern Islamism.

Is religion in decline? What is its relationship to secularization? One argument is that modernisation differentiates society, leading to the shrinking and relativization of religion. Another view is that a diversity of religious worldviews strengthens religion: religion only declines when suppliers become complacent and monopolistic. Finally, others draw attention to the importance of demography and nationalism in spurring religious revival. I also consider how modernity may be boosting fundamentalist variants of religion.

What is the relationship between local-level conflicts based around local rivalries such as family or warlord, and wider ethnic conflicts? Are ethnic affiliations really just convenient labels for local protagonists to cling to - when their actual agenda has nothing to do with ethnic sentiment? I explore this 'microfoundations' argument for civil war in this lecture.

When do secessionists use violence and when not? How does secessionist violence differ from state-directed genocide? Here we ask under what conditions nationalism turns violent.

This lecture asks why some nations seek to break away from their parent states while others are content with autonomy or even the status quo. What factors best explain secession? We also examine irredentism, where secessionists seek to join another state.

This lecture asks whether some nations are based on exclusive, 'ethnic' membership criteria while others are more 'civic' and inclusive. Is the 'ethnic-civic' schema, which goes back to the early 20th century, a useful typology - or is it too simplistic?