Former Home Secretary to Deliver Eighth Annual Worcester Lecture
Wednesday, 15 November 2017
Former Home Secretary and Labour Party politician, the Rt Hon Charles Clarke, will deliver the eighth annual Worcester Lecture at Worcester Cathedral next week.
In his lecture, entitled "How Can We Get Truth Back to the Centre of Public Debate?", Charles Clarke will suggest the ways in which politics, the media and academic life should change in order to contest "post-truth" politics and to put facts and proper analysis at the centre of public discourse.
The annual Worcester Lecture series is the result of a fruitful partnership between the University of Worcester and Worcester Cathedral, working together to celebrate and build upon the City's rich cultural heritage. Each lecture in the series is linked thematically to a consideration of the importance of morality in public life.
This year's lecture will take place at Worcester Cathedral on Tuesday, November 21st, at 6pm.
Charles Clarke became Member of Parliament for Norwich South in 1997, and was appointed Junior Education Minister in 1998. In the same year, he became a member of the Treasury Select Committee and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for School Standards.
In 1999 he was appointed Minister of State at the Home Office, with particular responsibility for the police. After the 2001 General Election, he joined the cabinet as Labour Party Chair and Minister without portfolio. He was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Skills in October 2002, and then in December 2004 became Home Secretary. He left the Home Office in May 2006 and returned to the backbenches.
Since leaving Parliament in 2010, Clarke has held visiting professorships at three institutions, with the aim of improving the relationship between academic politics and practical political activity. He is a Council Member of the European Council for Foreign Relations and a Non-Executive member of the board of Open University Worldwide.
The lecture will be introduced by the Reverend Dr. Peter Atkinson, Dean of Worcester Cathedral.
The Dean said: ""We greatly look forward to Charles Clarke's lecture, which could not be more timely."
The response to the lecture will be given by Professor David Green, Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive of the University of Worcester. Professor's Green's robust defence of academic freedom and the role of universities in speaking "truth to power" was reported and strongly supported across the UK and the world last month during the controversy surrounding a letter sent by Chris Heaton-Harris MP.