pluralism | Pandaemonium

SHOULD OFFENCE BE BANNED? OR HATE?

March 25, 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 necessity of abortion rights). It was published in the Observer, 25 March 2018, under the headline ‘The ‘Nazi pug’: giving offence is inevitable and often necessary in a plural society’. Does making a film of a dog giving a Nazi salute constitute a hate crime? And should high street retailers stock racist and Nazi books? Two questions raised this week […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: anti-racism, anti-semitism, censorship, free speech, hate speech, hope not hate, left, offence, pluralism

FREE SPEECH IN AN AGE OF IDENTITY POLITICS

August 13, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of my TB Davie Memorial lecture that I gave at the University of Cape Town on Thursday 13 August. It is truly an honour and pleasure to be able to deliver this lecture, and to be able to follow the speakers who have gone before me, speakers such as Walter Sisulu, Wole Soyinke, Edward Said and Noam Chomsky. It is an honour, too, to be the fiftieth speaker in this great series. But being the fiftieth speaker raises […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: academic freedom, black identity, censorship, free speech, identity politics, left, moral autonomy, offence, pluralism, racism, therapeutic society, trigger warnings, universalism, universities

IN THE WILDERNESS ABOUT CHARLIE HEBDO

August 8, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I took part on Friday in a debate on ‘The state of free expression after Charlie Hebdo‘ at the Wilderness Festival, with Anshuman Mondal and Tahmima Anam. It was a good debate, but frustratingly short. I agreed with virtually all the issues raised by Tahmima Anam (her main argument, from the perspective of a Bangladeshi-born writer, was that the state is amore dangerous threat to free speech than extremist groups.) But Anshuman Mondal (‘There is almost nothing that Kenan and I […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: anshuman mondal, censorship, charlie hebdo, free speech, freedom struggles, pluralism, racism, rights

RACE, SCIENCE AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY

March 15, 2011 by Kenan Malik

A second extract from the talk I gave last week on ‘Why both sides are wrong in the race debate’. I posted the first extract yesterday. For a fuller version of the argument see my book Strange Fruit. THE DEBATE ABOUT RACE IS NOT A DEBATE ABOUT WHETHER DIFFERENCES exist between human populations. Jon Entine, a staunch defender of the idea of race, defines race as ‘human biodiversity’. That is meaningless. No one, on either side of the debate, would deny […]

Categories: Race & Immigration, Science & Technology • Tags: armand leroi, black identity, diversity, genealogy, genetics, identity politics, joseph harker, pluralism, race realism, racial science, rick kittles