Roger Scruton

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Roger Vernon Scruton (born 27 February 1944) is an influential conservative philosopher. He waa a Resident Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge from 1969-71 and is considered one of the most influential members of the Peterhouse Right. He co-founded the Conservative Philosophy Group with John Casey and was editor of the Salisbury Review from 1982 to 2000. [1]

In 2002 he was caught taking payments from the tobacco industry in exchange for writing pro-smoking articles in the Wall Street Journal.

Biography

According to a profile in the Times Higher Education, Scruton

came from a Labour-voting family, his experiences of Paris in May 1968 shifted him sharply to the Right. It also gave him a lifelong aversion to the "satanic mendacity" of thinkers such as Michel Foucault, who seemed to provide a rationale for the violence and transgression of the soixante-huitards. [2]

Tobacco money

Scruton was caught taking payments from the tobacco industry in exchange for writing pro-smoking articles in the Wall Street Journal.

After The Guardian's disclosure in 2002 that Scruton had 'asked Japan Tobacco for a £1,000 a month rise to an annual £66,000 to help place articles defending the right to smoke in newspapers, including the WSJ, the Financial Times, The Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Independent,' he was dropped by both the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. [3]

Affiliation

Notes

  1. SCRUTON, Prof. Roger Vernon’, Who's Who 2011, A & C Black, 2011; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2010 ; online edn, Oct 2010 [Accessed 14 March 2011]
  2. Matthew Reisz, 'Right-thinking aesthetic', Times Higher Education, 25 June 2009.
  3. Rebecca Allison, Wall Street Journal drops Scruton over tobacco cash, The Guardian, 5 February 2002