Helen Small’s lecture reappraises, 150 years on, the importance of John Stuart Mill’s Inaugural Lecture as Rector of St Andrews in 1867. Mill’s lecture, a classic text in the history of advocacy for the liberal university, is usually read as one of the fullest articulations of what liberal ‘breadth’ of study would ideally mean: a syllabus of study beginning with the classical languages and literatures and taking in almost the full range of subjects grouped today within the sciences and social sciences (Mill has his own rationale for ordering them). Prof Small will be arguing that the lecture is a less internal and less placid document than may be apparent to those approaching it now at a long historical distance. She will suggest that it has a particular antagonist of liberalism and liberal education within its sights: a charismatic conservatism, recently given expression by another university rector. This charismatic conservatism raises various challenges for Mill’s liberalism; also for the motives of education he assumes, and (not least) for the assumptions he makes about the proper form and temper of public debate. Those challenges, Helen Small will suggest, have returned in force to our own political sphere, and give Mill’s lecture renewed salience now.

Drinks will be served after the lecture.