Author Archives: Kenan Malik

A WALK ON THE TYNE

March 24, 2018 by Kenan Malik

Loud, brash and self-confident. I love Newcastle. It is also a photographer’s dream. Dotted throughout the city are architectural gems. And a stroll through the city centre along the Tyne, with its glorious succession of bridges, each framing the next, and both banks framed by striking buildings, Victorian to postmodern, is a visual feast. I was in Newcastle most recently to take part in the Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival discussion on Rethinking Civilisations at the Sage Gateshead. I had, […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: architecture, bridges, newcastle, photography

WHAT IS EDUCATION FOR?

March 19, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on barring racists from Britain.) It was published in the Observer, 18 March 2018, under the headline ‘Let’s not give up on the idea that a good education is a search for truth‘. Sam Gyimah is very taken by Moneysupermarket.com. Seven years ago, the newly elected Tory MP for East Surrey wrote an article for Conservative Home, bemoaning the fact that there […]

Categories: Academia, Britain • Tags: education, universities, utilitarianism

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #35

March 15, 2018 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . A brief history of Stephen Hawking: A legacy of paradox Stuart Clark, New Scientist, 14 March 2018 ‘I think most physicists would agree that Hawking’s greatest contribution is the prediction that black holes emit radiation,’ says Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. ‘While we still don’t have experimental […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE WORKING CLASS, IMMIGRATION & THE LEFT

March 11, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on sports and ethics.) It was published in the Observer, 11 March 2018, under the headline ‘Aping populist attacks on migrants is not a winning strategy for the left’. On Christmas Eve 1980, Paul Mercieca, the communist mayor of Vitry, near Paris, led a gang of 60 men, mainly Communist party supporters, in a ‘direct action‘ to stop 300 Malian immigrants from […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: communist party, immigration, left, pcf, populism, working class

FROM LIMEHOUSE TO STRATFORD

March 9, 2018 by Kenan Malik

London is interlaced with a network of old canals and hidden rivers. Walking the network is a treat, providing a new perspective on the city and its history, especially for a photographer. The waterways are lined with buildings that reveal surprising colours and shapes. And, of course, there are reflections and distortions aplenty. The photographs here are from a recent walk in east London from Limehouse to the Olympic Park in Stratford, along the Limehouse Cut and the River Lee. The […]

Categories: Britain, Photos • Tags: canals, limehouse, london, olympic park, photos

WAYS OF SEEING CIVILISATIONS

March 4, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the influence of John Berger on the new BBC series Civilisations, was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants’ Act.) It was published in the Observer, 4 March 2018, under the headline ‘Can Civilisations make sense of art when we have different ways of seeing?‘ ‘Never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one.’ […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: art, bbc, cave art, civilisation, culture, david olusoga, john berger, kenneth clark, mary beard, picasso, postmodernism, simon schama, ways of seeing

THINKING ALLOWED ON THE WHITE WORKING CLASS

March 2, 2018 by Kenan Malik

. This is a discussion on BBC Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed programme on ‘the white working class’ , in which I took part with Gurminder Bhambra and Noam Gidron. . The painting is ‘The Workers’ by Walker Scott.

Categories: Class, Politics • Tags: brexit, donald trump, identity politics, racism, white working class, working class

THE NEED FOR AN INTELLIGENT DEBATE ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

February 25, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on fears about AI, was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on the latest migration figures.) It was published in the Observer, 25 February 2018, under the headline ‘Worry less about the march of the robots, more about the techno panic’. A robot cleaner infiltrates Germany’s ministry of finance by blending in with the pool of legitimate machines. After initially performing routine cleaning tasks, the robot, using facial recognition, […]

Categories: Politics, Science & Technology • Tags: artificial intelligence, deepfake, elon musk, fake news, liberties, stephen hawking, terrorism

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #34

February 23, 2018 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . Massacre in Myanmar Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo, Simon Lewis & Antoni Slodkowsk, Reuters, 8 February 2018 Bound together, the 10 Rohingya Muslim captives watched their Buddhist neighbors dig a shallow grave. Soon afterwards, on the morning of Sept. 2, all 10 lay dead. At least two were hacked to death by Buddhist […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

CINEMATIC FANTASIES AND POLITICAL FAIRY TALES

February 18, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the new Marvel film Black Panther and the response to it, was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on the significance of questions.) It was published in the Observer, 18 February 2018, under the headline ‘Black Panther has a burden that no superhero is strong enough to carry’. I like my fictional heroes laced with moral ambiguity. When I was young, my favourite sci-fi series was not […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: black identity, black panther, black politics, blake's 7, film, radicalism, usa, utopianism

DONALD TRUMP AND BRITAIN’S LIBEL LAWS

February 15, 2018 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times on Donald Trump’s fancy for stricter libel laws. It was published under the headline ‘Trump Wants British Libel Laws. America Does Not.’ While American lawmakers once sought to protect their citizens from the clutches of British libel law, Mr. Trump now wants British-style laws in the United States. . After a long campaign by free-speech organizations, the British libel law was finally amended five years ago. The 2013 […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech, International • Tags: british libel laws, british politics, donald trump, first amendment, free speech, libel, libel tourism, usa

FAKE NEWS AND THE GATEKEEPERS OF TRUTH

February 11, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece in response to a Treasury tweet on how British taxpayers ‘helped end the slave trade‘.) It was published in the Observer, 11 February 2018, under the headline ‘Fake news has a long history. Beware the state being keeper of “the truth”‘. . Before Facebook, there was the coffee house. In the 17th-century, panic gripped British royal circles that these newly established drinking […]

Categories: Free Speech, Politics • Tags: censorship, donald trump, emmanuel macron, fake news, free speech

100 DAYS BEHIND BARS

February 9, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This week Osman Kavala spent his 100th day in prison. Kavala is one of most important public intellectuals in Turkey, has played a prominent role both in defending the rights and liberties of all in Turkey, including Kurds and Armenians, and in bringing together people of different political viewpoints to discuss their differences in civil debate. He was arrested in October, and now faces trumped-up charges of organizing the June 2013 Gezi Park protests, of supporting the failed coup of […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: censorship, erdogan, free speech, osman kavala, repression, turkey

IMMIGRATION AND CULTURAL LOSS

February 4, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on the concept of radicalisation, in the wake of the conviction of Darren Osborne who drove his van into a crowd of Muslim worshippers.) It was published in the Observer, 4 February, under the headline ‘That working class lives are more fraught is not down to immigration’. Last month, the Commons home affairs select committee published a report entitled Immigration Policy: Basis for […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: cultural loss, david goodhart, eric kaufmann, immigration, white identity, working class

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #33

February 2, 2018 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . Buy banned books Bonny Brooks, Quilette, 30 January 2018 Of course, the woke among us will shrug and say that Laura Moriarity should check her (white) privilege. Alas, such people suffer from hubris and fail to realise that, in the end, this identity puritanism will come for everyone – yes, even black […]

Categories: Pandaemonium