NIGEL BIGGAR is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, where he directs the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life. He holds a B.A. in Modern History from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in Christian Theology & Ethics from the University of Chicago.

Described as “one of the leading living Western ethicists” (by John Gray, formerly Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, in New Statesman, 25 November 2020), Professor Biggar was appointed Commander of the British Empire “for services to higher education” in Her Majesty the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours list.

Among hisecent books are Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (William Collins, 2023), What’s Wrong with Rights? (Oxford University Press, 2020), and In Defence of War (OUP, 2013).

In the press he has written on the possibility of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Northern Ireland in the Irish Times, on the Iraq war in the Financial Times, on Scottish independence in Standpoint magazine, on the morality of Britain’s nuclear deterrent in The Scottish Review, and on Charlie Hebdo and freedom of speech in The Times.

He has lectured at the Royal College of Defence Studies, London; the UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham; the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr, Hamburg; the US Military Academy, West Point; the US Naval Academy, Annapolis; and the National Defense University, Washington, DC.

His hobbies include walking over battlefields. In 1973 he drove a Morris Traveller from Scotland to Afghanistan; and in 2015 and 2017 he trekked across the mountains of central Crete in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh-Fermor and his comrades, when they abducted General Kreipe in April-May 1944.

“I don’t disagree that the Empire caused sometimes very grave, very atrocious harm, but it also did some very great good. You can’t weigh those two things up together in some kind of quantitative fashion.”