Speech rights and speech wrongs

Onora O'Neill (Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve CBE FBA Hon FRS F Med Sci) has taught at various universities in the US and the UK. She was Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge from 1992 to 2006, President of the British Academy from 2005 to 2009, and chaired the Nuffi eld Foundation from 1998 to 2010. She has been a member of the House of Lords since 1999, and is an independent, non-party peer. She served on the House of Lords Select Committees on Stem Cell Research, BBC Charter Review, Genomic Medicine and Nanotechnology and Food and Behavioural Change and is an Honorary Member of the American
Society of Arts & Science, Austrian Academy of Sciences, and Royal Irish Academy. Last year, she was elected as a member of the Orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste, one of Germany's highest
Orders of Merit.

Onora O'Neill has published widely in political philosophy and ethics, focusing on conceptions of justice, bioethics, and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Her books include Faces of Hunger: An Essay on Poverty,
Development and Justice (1986), Construction of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy (1989), Towards Justice and Virtue (1996), and Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics (2002). She is currently working on the topics of practical judgement and normativity, trust and accounta bility, and the ethics of communication.

In her three Spinoza Lectures, collectively titled 'Speech Rights and Speech Wrongs', Onora O'Neill presents the latest results of her original research on the ethics of communication.