Speaking as a Woke Philosopher..... (continually updated)

Woke is good. It means being aware and alert to discrimination and injustices in society and the world in general. The opposite of it is just being rude, totally insensitive to others and plain anti-social in that you lack understanding and awareness of injustice, prejudice and discrimination and dismiss it, and any suffering arising from it, as unimportant, exaggerated and see 'woke' as amounting to a left-wing crazy notion. 

Universities are not left wing, as people seem to assume, not sure they ever were in any meaningful way! It's an ideological myth to think so! For instance, Kings College, (KCL) which used to be a London Uni college, was founded by a king (King George IV) for the purpose of running after liberals and secularists at London University. London Uni (founded 1826, now UCL) was supported by Utilitarians e.g. JS Mill; Jews and non-conformists with the aim of being a secular institution (which was why I went there!!). 3 years later, in 1829, up pops Kings College with their Christian Tory contra! UCL still have a rivalry with KCL! Not surprising, given their 19th century clash. But it's not limited to UCL. They also clash with LSE and many run into Birkbeck (BBK) to be philosophy lecturers, tutors, lead a course or muscle in and are full of self-importance even at smaller events held at BBK e.g. philosophy circle. Even The British Society for the History of Philosophy is now based at KCL rather than York, which I find unacceptable given that KCL has always had an overarching religious and conservative aim which is incompatible with neutrality and acceptance of liberal philosophers, such as J.S. Mill. 

Scruton 1944-2020 (philosopher of Aesthetics) was what you would now call an anti-Woke philosopher. He made a concerted effort from the 1970's onwards to make conservatism the dominant ideology not just politically (in 1974 he co-founded a dining club: Conservative Philosophy Group, which Margaret Thatcher attended, and whose aim was to find intellectual underpinning for conservatism; he was the main intellectual influence/think tank within the Cornerstones, ultra Christian traditionalists, in the Conservative party) but in academia too (academia basically got rid of him because of his extreme traditional conservatism and bigotry e.g. editing and writing for the Salisbury Review which included anti anti-racism, anti- feminism, anti-multiculturalism, homophobia, lesbian phobia/lesbophobia). He was also strongly anti-Foucault, a gay, French philosopher who wrote on sexuality (as has Scruton but in a very different way!) as well as power and aesthetics. Scruton was anti being politically correct, or to give it its new term, anti woke. [My main source for this is the Salisbury Review, a journal for traditional conservatism.] Scruton couldn't be more different from the way I think! For more, see:

https://myspinozaresearchdiary.blogspot.com/2021/05/citation.html 

Scruton was even the government appointed chair of a home design commission! (Building Better, Building Beautiful commission) Even home design and architecture becomes political, for goodness sakes! e.g. promoting certain old fashioned/retro designs.

Scruton, and others like him, also appear to have had an obsession with Czechs, running to their country during the Communist era to establish an extreme right wing faction within the underground movement. I find this remarkable because it is not easy to cross a Communist border in either direction and stay alive - it was called the Iron Curtain for a reason! My family couldn't and didn't even try to go to or from Czechoslovakia for any reason, including just visiting family, because it was life threatening to attempt it. 

I didn't set foot on Czech soil until I was in my 20's. Indeed, I have spent all my life in London and being only in British society e.g. attending and making friends in British places while training in the Performing Arts, Music, Tennis, Art and studying academic subjects, pre-Uni as well as only attending British Unis (Open University; BBK College, University of London). I had next to no contact with Czech Society, especially since the concept of it was built around the fact that Czechs and Slovaks in the UK couldn't enter Czechoslovakia, which was no longer relevant to me as it became a free country when I was only 3 years old. Also, none of their Czech Society activities were relevant to my beliefs or interests. So I don't know any Czechs or Slovaks.

Therefore, I'm wondering how some people managed to not only regularly cross the border but smuggle books and Samizdat manuscripts, teach religion, right-wing ideology, get around the country and lead the secret police a merry dance as they ran around the streets and presented them with adjusted ID, as Kathy Wilkes famously managed. 

The main lecturers, alongside Scruton, who were at the core of this underground group (invited to help with secret philosophy seminars by a Czech intellectual, Julius Tomin, who managed to get a PhD in philosophy and be a Junior Fellow at Charles Uni during the Communist era) which was later called the Jan Hus Educational Foundation, were: Kathy Wilkes (St. Hilda's, Oxford Uni); Steven Lukes (Balliol, Oxford Uni); Charles Taylor (All Souls, Oxford Uni); Alan Montefiore (Oxford Uni); Anthony Kenny (ex-Roman Catholic Priest, lay person and academic at Oxford Uni, especially Balliol, an Ancient Philosopher like my dissertation supervisor, Anthony Price, educated at Oxford Uni and they know each other well, I believe, although they are different generations, Price is a Platonist just as Julius Tomin is); Ernest Gellner (studied at Balliol but then taught at Kings College, Cambridge Uni); Thomas Nagel (New York Uni); Anthony Savile (a Kantian and Leibnizian who remains at KCL and relatively recently strayed into to my uni, BBK, as an Honoury Research Fellow for 3 research interests: 1 on Kant; 2nd on a UCL undergrad. module on Literature & Morality; 3rd on Bayle's accusations against Spinoza including his alleged materialism and his Ethics). 

The Jan Hus Foundation spread out to branches in France and Germany. There are also people who have been influenced by Scruton, such as ones I have come across: Tim Crane at the Aristotelian Society because he was president 2016-17; Anthony O'Hear because he chaired the RIP weekly London talks. O'Hear was "Scruton's former colleague and friend" (quoted from: https://www.scruton.org/scruton )  

And others I have never met or even heard of, e.g. Ed Husain (MA at SOAS; later supervised by Scruton for his PhD which he started in 2018 at the University of Buckinghamshire); Christina Hoff Sommers (whose anti-feminism/anti-feminists stance within her backward looking so-called feminism is astounding); Alicja Gescinska (Polish-Belgian who gained her MA and PhD at Ghent Uni, writing her dissertation on Scheler and Pope John Paul II then wrote an essay on fear and freedom in 2012 before being a Post-Doc 2013-14 at Princeton Uni); Raymond Tallis (who published, a book on Dawinitis so I gather he doesn't like Darwin) and apparently the Scottish sculptor Alexander Stoddart, the Queen's sculptor, who has done the larger than life, representational statues of Hume and Smith on the Royal Mile. Another apparently influenced by Scruton is Maurice Glasman, Blue Labour (ie conservative-with-a-small-c Labour: that exists?!); Anglican Priest Giles Fraser who has been a lecturer in Philosophy at Oxford Uni, specialises in Nietzsche; Douglas Murray, seen as a far-right journalist who is anti-Foucault and anti-woke (e.g. dismissing LGBT identity, feminism and race issues as merely a form of victimhood); Mark Dooley (specialist in Kierkegaard and has written a book on Scruton); and who knows how many others. 

Scruton believed that teaching Christian theology is the answer to totalitarianism. Only 6 took the 'Cambridge Diploma & Certificate in Religious Studies' exam, which was awarded by the Department of Divinity at Cambridge University. So clearly not popular! They were supposed to teach philosophy not religion but Scruton only managed to organise a Religion course with a Divinity department. I'm puzzled how this right wing interference and ideology behind it helped. There were Czechs in the West working hard to free the Czechs without such an ideology and without running to the country! How about just supporting them. The Czechs doing it for themselves and for each other without ultra Christian Conservative ideology coming into it. 

Unfortunately, his ultra-right Conservative ideology lives on through his Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation in London, which even has a director who focuses on 'student engagement'. I don't agree with this - students should be free to think without people running after them trying to drag them into a certain direction, be it ideology, politics, religion. Students must be free to explore and decide for themselves what they wish to believe in, identify with, whether it is religion, politics, or what they identify as, e.g. their gender and sexuality. This student engagement director is one of several "Scrutonians dedicated to furthering Scruton's work and thought"🙄😥😱 (see: https://www.scruton.org/the-foundation ) who is on the Foundation's staff list:

Fisher Derderian (Executive Director)

Zewditu Gebrayohanes (Director, Student Engagement)

Dr Samuel Hughes (Senior Fellow, The Built Environment)

Dr Mikolaj Slawkowski (Director, Central European Programmes)

Ben Southwood (Director, UK Programmes) 

(Sources: https://www.scruton.org/our-staff )

The Foundation both hosts and sponsors all manner of events, research and projects. The Scruton Foundation's board includes many of those I mentioned above as being influenced by Scruton, as well as several others:

Board of Directors

Lady Scruton, Horsell’s Farm Enterprises

Mark Henrie, Arthur N. Rupe Foundation

Dr Yuval Levin, American Enterprise Institute

Marek Matraszek, The Jagiellonian Trust

Dr Luder Whitlock, Orlando Museum of Art

Advisory Board

Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, Encounter Books

Annette Kirk, Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal

Zsolt Németh, Member of Hungarian Parliament

Douglas Murray, The Spectator

Avik Roy, The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity

Marion Smith, Common Sense Society

Justin Shubow, National Civic Art Society

Alexander Stoddart, the Queen's Sculptor in Ordinary in Scotland

Robert Adam, Architect

Andrew Balio, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Future Symphony Institute

Dr Stephen Blackwood, Ralston College

Nicholas Boys Smith, Create Streets

Dr Mark Dooley, Philosopher, Journalist

Jessica Douglas-Home, The Mihai Eminescu Trust

The Rt Hon Sir John Hayes, MP for South Holland and the Deepings, UK

Dr Pano Kanelos, St. John’s College, Annapolis

Academic Advisory Board

Professor Nigel Biggar, Christ Church, University of Oxford

Dr James Bryson, Ludwig Maximillian University, Munich

Professor F. H. Buckley, George Mason University

Professor Daniel Cullen, Rhodes College 

Dr Alicja Gescinska, University of Buckingham

Professor Robert Grant, University of Glasgow

Professor Ferenc Hörcher, University of Public Service

Professor Daniel Mahoney, Assumption University

Professor Wilfred McClay, University of Oklahoma

Professor Anthony O’Hear, University of Buckingham

Dr James Orr, University of Cambridge

Dr Jonathan Price, University of Oxford

Dr Christina Hoff Sommers, American Enterprise Institute

Professor Duncan Stroik, University of Notre Dame

Professor Robert Tombs, University of Cambridge

(Source: https://www.scruton.org/our-board)

There is also something called 'The Roger Scruton Centre for the Study of Western Civilisation' (don't know exactly how this differs from the Foundation, can't say I understand all this posthumous fuss over him) which lists their "services" as including actively influencing political and social policy; running around universities doing talks as well as somehow preserving so-called Western culture and tradition. 

See: https://rogerscruton.org/services/

Indeed, all the information on this post is common knowledge, freely available on the internet and easy to find. 

I think universities need to be liberal-minded and Woke so they do not introduce bias in their teaching or research, and so can present well balanced, well thought out views and ideas. The liberal position is a valid one, to think otherwise is misguided. I am liberal and certainly don't lean towards the Right in any shape or form. I have never been influenced by Scruton or any Conservative ideology. I'm a Centralist and if I lean anywhere, I lean to the Left because Socialism (not to be conflated with Communism 🙄) has a social conscience.