UPDATE 18

1 June 2025

Dear Supporter

Welcome to the June update. Here's what we are covering in this month's edition:

·       Smoke and Mirrors Lucy Beney on the importance of truth and facing reality for mental wellbeing

·       White Men Can't Work! a new five-part documentary podcast series

·       Heterodox Social Science Conference at the University of Buckingham 5-7th June 2025

Smoke and Mirrors by Lucy Beney

In her latest article for Save Mental Health, Lucy explores the importance of telling the truth.  She explains how hard it becomes to function if we don't know who or what to trust and "can't distinguish fantasy from at least some degree of fact".  Lucy quotes T.S Eliot's famous words: "human kind cannot bear very much reality".  Nonetheless, facing and accepting the truth is vital for mental wellbeing.  Please share Lucy's article widely. 

White Men Can't Work!

In a new five-part podcast series, award-winning documentary maker Tim Samuels, investigates the effects of DEI on white men in the workplace.  Men from both the US and UK speak out about the effects DEI has had on their careers.  In the first episode, which you can watch here, Tim talks to Chas Bayfield, an advertising creative who previously had a successful career until his agency decided it was too white and male.  The series features Carole Sherwood talking about the effects of DEI on mental health.

According to a poll by JL Partners, commissioned for 'White Men Can't Work', nearly half of white men in the UK are self-censoring at work "because they fear that saying the wrong thing could cost them their jobs".  You can find out more about 'White Men Can't Work' and the poll results in reports by The Times, the Daily Telegraph, The Mail, Talk TV and GB News.  The remaining four episodes of the series can be found on YouTube and Spotify.

Heterodox Social Science Conference, University of Buckingham

There are still a few tickets left for an important inaugural conference at the University of Buckingham this week, on 5th, 6th and 7th of June.  With the title Post-Progressivism?: Toward a New Social Science, this conference is the initiative of Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and Director of the Centre for Heterodox Social Science.  He is calling for a New Social Science "for an emerging post-progressive era".  In a series of plenary and parallel sessions, the conference "will bring heterodox scholars together to debate and collaborate, with the aim of institutionalizing alternative social science".

The event will be recorded and disseminated online.  A special issue of an academic journal and an edited book will also be produced.  Speakers include Eric Kaufmann, Gad Saad, Matt Goodwin, Frank Furedi, Andrew Doyle, Yascha Mounk and Steven Pinker. On Friday 6th there will be sessions on Critical Woke Studies and Countercultural Social Science, including Sally Satel talking about the 'Corruption of Psychotherapies' and Richard McNally asking, 'Is Clinical Psychological Science Racist?'  This is an important and ground-breaking conference. Book your ticket here if you would like to attend.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Five years on from the death of George Floyd and the subsequent BLM protests, Freddy Gray of the Spectator discusses with journalist Andy Ngo and writer Sam Ashworth-Hayes whether BLM was a failure. You can watch the discussion on Spectator TV here.   The second episode, in which Freddy and Heather MacDonald discuss America's White Guilt Hangover can be viewed here.  

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