Dolan Cummings is an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Ideas, having been its research and editorial director from 2001 to 2010. He continues to edit the IoI’s online review Culture Wars, where he writes about books, films and theatre. He is also one of the co-founders of the Manifesto Club, a campaign group for freedom in everyday life. He recently wrote a report, 28¾: How Constant Age Checks Are Infantilising Adults (September 2010). He has edited two collections of essays, The Changing Role of the Public Intellectual (Routledge, 2005) - the introduction is available here - and Debating Humanism (Imprint Academic, 2006).

Dolan has produced several strands and individual debates at the Battle of Ideas over the years, on themes as various as religion and secularism, liberty, culture, community, music, law and America, and he both speaks and chairs at similar events across the UK and beyond. He appears regularly on radio and television as a commentator on the above issues.

Dolan Cummings was on the panel of Equality versus Difference at The Great Debate: Whatever Happened to Equality? in November 2012.

Debating Humanism edited by Dolan Cummings

Contributors include Josie Appleton, assistant editor, Spiked, author Museums for the People?; Simon Blackburn, Philosophy, Cambridge, author Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed; Robert Brecher, Philosophy, Brighton; Andrew Copson, British Humanist Association; Dylan Evans, Intelligent Autonomous Systems, University of the West of England; Anthony Freeman, editor, Journal of Consciousness Studies, author, God In Us: A Case for Christian Humanism; Frank Furedi, Sociology, Kent; author Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right; AC Grayling, Philosophy, Birkbeck, author, What Is Good? The Search for the Best Way to Live; Dennis Hayes, Canterbury Christ Church, vice president NATFHE; Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, author, Race Experts; Kenan Malik, author, The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society; and Man, Beast and Zombie; Daphne Patai, Brazilian Literature, Massachusetts; co-editor, Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent.

The Changing Role of the Public Intellectual Edited by Dolan Cummings

Ideas can define and transform society, but how healthy is intellectual life today? In a period when Big Brother refers not to George Orwell but to a reality TV show, and when bright young things are developing gameshow formats rather than scribbling essays; when thinkers join think tanks to design short-term government policy rather than reflecting on and challenging the status quo, and when the ever growing number of graduates seem more interested in job prospects than academic endeavour, is intellectual life in terminal decline?

This book looks at the idea of the public intellectual, considering whether such thinkers are becoming an endangered species. It also looks at the legacy of relativism and ethical doubts about the pursuit of knowledge, and the effect of such developments on intellectual life. The final section considers the expansion of higher education and the changing role of the academic. Taken together, the essays in this collection form a comprehensive overview of the intellectual climate today, and the possibilities for the future.

This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (CRISPP).

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In Search of Sesame Street: Policing Civility for the Twenty-First Century (Culture Matters)

Who's Antisocial?: v. 2: New Labour and the Politics of Antisocial Behaviour (Institute of Ideas Occasional Papers) by Craig O'Malley, Stuart Waiton and Dolan Cummings (Editor)

Dolan Cummings: archive of Culture Wars essays

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Amazon.co.uk: books by Dolan Cummings

Battle of Ideas
Institute of Ideas
Culture Wars
Manifesto Club

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