Universities have traditionally been thought of as “secular enclaves” (Bryant, 2006: 2) that have the capacity to liberalise or even eradicate personal religious beliefs. Despite this assumption, religious activity on university campuses shows no sign of declining, due in part to the failings of the secularisation thesis and the rise of religious pluralism. In the media more recently, there have been frequent references to religious organisations on campus, in particular to clashes between Christian societies and Student Unions, and between Islamic and atheist societies. The management of religion on university campuses has also become a political issue with the Prime Minister David Cameron intervening on recent guidelines (proposed by Universities U.K.) advising that external religious speakers be allowed to segregate student audiences based on gender. As a direct result of Cameron’s intervention the advisory comment was removed. In light of the above, the aim of this thesis is to explore how Christian, Jewish and Muslim students navigate the terrain of the university and whether such an environment is challenging or conducive to their faith in terms of degree content, interactions with peers and involvement in relevant societies and/or chaplaincies. This thesis also explores student reactions to the New Atheism, a label attributed to a group of provocative authors – Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens – all of whom are united in their belief that religion is irrational, false and evil. Often described as the chief proponent of the New Atheism, Richard Dawkins has also recently shown his support for UCL’s atheist society in their disagreement with the Student Union over the uploading of a satirical religious cartoon to their Facebook page. The research which forms the basis of this thesis was carried out between 2011-2013 and features the use of qualitative semi-structured interviews and the presentation of New Atheist extracts from Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris. Over 30 participants were included in the project with a minimum of 10 students from each (Islamic, Christian and Jewish) faith group. The multi-faith angle of this project offers a unique insight into how different faith groups navigate the university, with some common issues emerging across all faith groups as well as faith-specific issues. Sociological research in this area has tended to focus on Christian students and this has meant that certain concerns (such as dietary provisions and prayer space) have tended to be overlooked by researchers. The findings of this research project are multi-layered and complex. Religious students differed in terms of their expectations of higher education institutions: some students viewed the university in purely educational terms (and as having no religious function), while others saw the university as a place for both educational and spiritual development and where personal faith could be integrated with their academic studies and social life. The experience of religious students in using chaplaincies and societies was also mixed, with some students reporting fears of being “judged” by other members of the same faith group. There also appeared to be intra-religious tension across all faith groups but this was more prevalent among the Christian and Islamic societies due to denominational differences. Inter-religious (as opposed to intra-religious) tension emerged particularly in the students’ responses to the New Atheism. Rather than seeing New Atheist literature as a direct challenge to their own faith, the participants recognised that “other” religious believers might be guilty of the New Atheist’s accusations – therefore highlighting a surprising degree of convergence between religious participants and New Atheist arguments.

Raymond Aron is widely recognised as France's greatest twentieth-century liberal, but the specifically liberal quality of his thought has not received the detailed historical analysis that it deserves. His work appears to fit so well within widely accepted understandings of post-war European liberalism, which has been defined primarily in terms of its anti-totalitarian, Cold War orientation, that its liberal status has been somewhat taken for granted. This has been exacerbated by an especially strong perception of a correlation between liberalism and anti-totalitarianism in France, whose late twentieth-century renaissance in liberal political thought is viewed as the product of an 'anti-totalitarian turn' in the late 1970s. While the moral authority accumulated through decades of opposition to National Socialism and Soviet communism made Aron into an anti-totalitarian icon, his early contribution to the rediscovery of France's liberal tradition established his reputation as a leader of the renaissance in the study of liberal political thought. Aron's prominence within this wider renaissance suggests that an historical treatment of his thought is overdue, but while the assumptions underpinning his reputation are not baseless, they do need to be critically scrutinised if such a treatment is to be credible. In pursuit of this end, two main arguments are developed in the present thesis. These are, first, that Aron's liberalism was more a product of the inter-war crisis of European liberalism than of the Cold War and, second, that his relationship with the French liberal tradition was primarily active and instrumental rather than passive and receptive. The first argument indicates that Aron's liberalism developed through a dialogue with and partial integration of important strands of anti-liberal crisis thought during these inter-war years; the second that earlier liberals with whose work he is frequently associated - notably Montesquieu and Tocqueville - had no substantial formative influence on his political thought. These contentions are interrelated in that Aron's post-war interpretation of his chosen liberal forebears was driven by a need to address specific problems arising from the liberal political epistemology that he formulated before the Second World War. It is by establishing in detail the link between Aron's reading of Montesquieu and Tocqueville and these earlier writings that the thesis makes its principal contribution to the existing literature on Aron, but several other original interpretations of his work are offered across its four thematic chapters on 'Political Epistemology', 'Anti-totalitarianism', 'The End of Ideology' and 'Instrumentalizing the French Liberal Tradition'. Regarding Aron's relationship with the wider late twentieth-century recovery of liberal political thought in France, it contends that the specific liberal renaissance to which he contributed most substantially emerged not as part of the anti-totalitarian turn, but in hostile reaction to the events of May 1968. This informs a broader argument that French liberal renaissance of these years was considerably more heterogeneous than is often assumed.

Den breda mitten, eller bara mitten, är ett centralt begrepp i Centerpartiets identitet. Trots detta är Centerpartiets sakpolitik inte särskilt positionerad i ”mitten”. Partiet är snarare det mest högerlutande partiet av samtliga riksdagspartier vad gäller ekonomiska frågor. Samtidigt är själva idén med den breda mitten att etablera ett bredare samarbete över blockgränser men exkludera Vänsterpartiet och Sverigedemokraterna på grund av deras respektive ytterkantsposition. Rent sakpolitiskt är den breda mitten en gåta. Medan fenomenet inte tillåter sig att begripas speciellt väl ur ett sakpolitiskt perspektiv, argumenterar föreliggande uppsats för att det bättre kan förstås utifrån dess symboliska betydelse. Den breda mitten undersöks således som en instans av sekulär religion. Genom intervjuer med Centerpartister kartläggs ett religiöst meningssystem som grundas på; (1) ett heligt ideal om en icke-extrem politisk karaktär i form av mitten; (2) en moralisk gemenskap som sluter upp kring idealet och försvarar det från all form av upplevd extremism, men som är mer intresserad av sitt förakt för Sverigedemokraterna och (3) upplevelser av hur ritualer kring motståndet mot Sverigedemokraterna och självuppoffring för idealet erbjuder frälsning från synden att kunna associeras med Sverigedemokraterna via högeridentiteten. Religionens funktion tolkas vara att reglera diskrepansen mellan partiets identitet och praktik genom ritualer och moraliska argument som triumferar över sakliga problem med motstånd mot Sverigedemokraterna som den övertygande mekanismen. Mitten identifieras vidare som den perfekta täckmanteln för en förlorad högeridentitet och för de framgångar som motståndet mot Sverigedemokraterna bringar partiet, då motstånd mot båda ytterkantspartierna gör att Centerpartiet kan hävda sig som mitten och därigenom attrahera den större grupp väljare som finns där. Motståndet mot Sverigedemokraterna tolkas i sin tur som den grundläggande drivkraften bakom fenomenet den breda mitten, en drivkraft som inte bara bygger på framgångar i termer av en ökad väljarbas utan också på en upplevd välvilja, en dold förhoppning om en alternativ och självständig högergemenskap men även på en möjlighet för Centerpartiet att göra upp med sin egen historia av främlingsfientlighet. / The broad middle, or just the middle, is a central concept in the identity of The Centre Party in Sweden. Despite this, the politics of The Centre Party is not particularly positioned in “the middle”. Rather, The Centre Party is the most right-leaning party of all the parliamentary parties when it comes to economic issues. Simultaneously, the very idea behind the broad middle is to establish wider cooperation across block boundaries but exclude the parliamentary parties The Left Party and The Sweden Democrats due to their respective outer edge position. As a matter of concrete policy, the broad middle is an enigma. While the phenomenon does not allow itself to be understood particularly well from a concrete political perspective, the present thesis argues that it can be better understood based on its symbolic meaning. The broad middle is thus analysed as an instance of secular religion. Through interviews with members of The Centre Party, a religious meaning system is mapped which is based on; (1) a sacred ideal of a non-extreme political character in the form of the middle; (2) a moral community that defends the ideal by protecting it from all sorts of experienced extremism, but whose interest lies more in its contempt for The Sweden Democrats and (3) experiences of how rituals surrounding the antagonism towards The Sweden Democrats and self-sacrifice for the ideal offers salvation from the sin of being associated with The Sweden Democrats trough a Right-wing identity. The function of the religion is interpreted as regulating the discrepancy between The Centre Party’s identity and practise through rituals and moral arguments that triumphs over factual problems with the antagonism towards The Sweden Democrats as the convincing mechanism. The middle is further identified as the perfect cover for a lost Right-wing identity and for the successes that the antagonism towards The Sweden Democrats brings the party, since opposition to both the outer-edge parties allows The Centre Party to assert itself as the middle and thus attract the larger group of voters who are located there. The antagonism towards The Sweden Democrats is in turn identified as the primal driving force behind the phenomenon the broad middle, a driving force that is not only based on successes in term of increased voters but also on an experienced benevolence, a hidden hope for an alternative and independent Right-wing community as well as on an opportunity for redemption with The Centre Party’s own history of xenophobia.