The West at a Crossroads: Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s 2024 NCF Smith Lecture

On November 26, 2024, Ayaan Hirsi Ali delivered the New Culture Forum’s prestigious 2024 Smith Lecture in central London to a packed audience. Her lecture, “The West: Sleepwalking to Disaster,” addressed critical issues plaguing Western societies, including self-loathing, historical revisionism, identity politics, threats to free speech, and the impact of mass immigration from the Islamic world on cultural values. In her powerful speech, Hirsi Ali examined the roots of these challenges and proposed bold solutions to safeguard the principles of freedom, equality, and social cohesion.