Medical law and ethics students are normally taught that mental capacity is a key concept. Simply put, if the patient has capacity then their autonomous decisions are respected, while if they lack capacity then decisions are made on their behalf based on what is in their best interests. This paper will challenge that supposition and claim that only in rare cases does it matter in terms of the outcome whether a patient has capacity or not. The paper will then turn to the ethical issues.

Panel Discussion on The Future of Work in the Age of AI

Join us at the Nelson Mandela Hall, Saïd Business School (University of Oxford) for a fascinating discussion on the future of work in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), featuring:

Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor, MIT, and Sanjaya Lall Visiting Professor, University of Oxford

Sir Chrisopher Pissarides, Regius Professor of Economics, LSE, and Nobel laureate in economics

Helen Margetts, Professor of Internet and Society, University of Oxford

Every year, All Souls College seeks to elect 2, occasionally 3, by examination in a range of subjects, including Politics (which includes International Relations and Political Theory.) Examination Fellows are full members of the College's governing body; they receive a stipend or scholarship allowance if eligible for scholarship status, free board and single accommodation in College, and various other benefits. The College normally pays the University fees of Examination Fellows who are studying for degrees at Oxford.

One of the most pressing foreign policy challenges that the ten countries of Southeast Asia (ASEAN-10) faces today and in the coming years is how to position themselves between the US and China as the geopolitical rivalry between the two superpowers intensifies. Most in Southeast Asia claim they would prefer not to have to choose between the two superpowers, but that position will become increasingly difficult to maintain as the US and China pressure states in the region to align with them.

Thomas Schelling’s theoretical work on coercive diplomacy carries important lessons for U.S. security policy toward a rising China. This talk will address the challenges in combining credible threats and credible assurances in deterring a PRC military attack on Taiwan and the need to differentiate clearly between unconditional restrictions on the transfer of militarily relevant technology to China and conditional threats to punish China economically if Beijing adopts certain proscribed policies.

In this seminar, co-authors Marya Besharov and Pip Wheaton willl come together with Sue Riddlestone OBE to launch the joint Skoll Centre and Ashoka Climate Changemaker Playbook, a collection of strategies and tactics for how to unlock our collective power to take climate action. With a foreword by Christiana Figueres and case studies of five leading climate changemakers from Ashoka's network, this playbook is for anyone wondering how to take action, and and how to encourage those around you to do the same.

In the summer of 2020 following the brutal police murder of George Floyd, debates about the place of the Confederate symbols erupted across the US. Calls for Confederate monuments to be razed followed as did cries for street names or schools bearing Confederate names to be changed. Since that summer more than 120 Confederate monuments had been removed, including those in Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia. But why does the American Civil War continue to elicit such reactions – some intensely violent – more than a century and a half after its close?

If you are supportive of disability advocacy, should you also be vegan? Should your thoughts on euthanizing a pet be consistent with how you might think about humans in search of assisted suicide? Scholars in disability studies have recently called for greater engagement with animal studies as a field. But complicated questions remain. Disability activists have long been fighting to reclaim the humanity of disabled people, for example, who have historically been constructed in ableist terms as somehow less than human. Should disability and animal activism therefore be linked together?

On the occasion of the publication of Like Love, a collection of essays written over the past 20 years, Maggie Nelson will address her genre-spanning career, which has included criticism, autobiography, lyric prose, poetry, scholarship, and art writing. Nelson will discuss the differences and overlaps between these genres, as well as between her abiding preoccupations, which include aesthetics, ethics, feminism, queer issues, art, and the unpredictable, myriad ways in which content finds form.