Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He is Senior Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey. He is a presenter of Analysis, BBC Radio 4's flagship current affairs programme and a panelist on the Moral Maze. His books include The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics (2014), From Fatwa to Jihad (2009), Strange Fruit (2008), Man, Beast and Zombie (2000), and The Meaning of Race (1996).
Malik was born in India, brought up in Manchester and now lives in London. He studied neurobiology (at the University of Sussex) and history and philosophy of science (at Imperial College, London). He was for a number of years a research psychologist at the Centre for Research into Perception and Cognition (CRPC) at the University of Sussex, working on problems of the mental representation of spatial relations. For the past decade, he has been an independent writer, lecturer, researcher and broadcaster.
Lontoon vuodet (1983-2000), TL:n muistoja, 10.10.2019
Maahanmuutto ja ihmisten etninen karsinoiminen, 29.1.2014
Kenan Malik, Strange fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate. Oneworld 2008.
Celebrating diversity or equality? by Marek Kohn, Eagle Street, June 1997
Diane Abbott draws Finns into British race debate, Eagle Street, March 1997
Politicians have the right to strong religious views. But not to be shielded from scrutiny, The Observer, 26 February 2023
India enjoyed a free and vibrant media. Narendra Modi's brazen attacks are a catastrophe, The Observer, 19 February 2023
Prevent doesn't stop radicalisation, and the Shawcross plan will just make it worse, The Observer, 12 February 2023
Debt, bad; work, good: ‘pub bore' beliefs that seal a miserable fate for the poorest, The Observer, 5 February 2023
Focusing on diversity means we miss the big picture. It's class that shapes our lives, The Observer, 29 January 2023
Hanif Kureishi helped liberate British Asians from their imposed identities, The Observer, 22 January 2023
An art treasure long cherished by Muslims is deemed offensive. But to whom? The Observer, 8 January 2023
The Twitter Files should disturb liberal critics of Elon Musk – and here's why, The Observer, 1 January 2023
ChatGPT can tell jokes, even write articles. But only humans can detect its fluent bullshit, The Observer, 11 December 2022
White Britons are declining and immigrants help prop up Christianity. Does it matter? The Observer, 4 December 2022
It can be hard to distinguish the cultural claims of right and left. Just look at Qatar, The Observer, 27 November 2022
Beware self-made ‘genius' entrepreneurs promising the earth. Just look at Elon Musk, The Observer, 20 November 2022
Sealed borders are a fantasy and talk of invasion is toxic. There is an alternative, The Observer, 6 November 2022
TS Eliot's Waste Land was a barren place. But at least a spirit of optimism still prevailed, The Observer, 30 October 2022
If this chaos does not make us rethink our idea of the good society, whatever will?, The Observer, 22 October 2022
To romanticise or demonise – not the only ways to frame working-class lives, The Observer, 16 October 2022
Libertarians will let you live life as you wish – as long as you're rich and powerful, The Observer, 9 October 2022
From Aristotle to Meloni, the ‘common good' has been used to divide and rule, The Observer, 2 October 2022
Britain is becoming a more liberal and open society. But we are ever more divided too, The Observer, 25 September 2022
The web has expanded the reach of art but nothing beats standing in front of a Picasso, The Observer, 18 September 2022
We can respect popular affection for the Queen and question the idea of royalty, The Observer, 10 September 2022'
It's no wonder I couldn't see a GP: limiting access to services is the point, The Observer, 4 September 2022
There are lies, damn lies, and then there is Home Office propaganda about migrants, The Observer, 28 August 2022
Treating refugees like ‘waste people' is abhorrent, wherever they end up, The Observer, 21 August 2022
Where Salman Rushdie defied those who would silence him, today too many fear causing offence, The Observer, 14 August 2022
Beneath the skin of our obsession with whiteness lie deeper fears about our place in the world, The Observer, 7 August 2022
If education is all about getting a job, the humanities are left just to the rich, The Observer, 31 July 2022
Worship the rich, neglect the poor? Adam Smith's words still capture how power works, The Observer, 24 July 2022
Give me a pale male PM with great policies over a ‘diverse' one reinforcing inequality, The Observer, 17 July 2022
Long gone, but speaking clearly to our age – Shelley, the poet of moral and political corruption, The Observer, 10 July 2022
It's not just the far right that should worry us. It's their ideas seeping into the mainstream, The Observer, 3 July 2022
Enemy within? Hardly... most people see why we need unions prepared to strike, The Observer, 26 June 2022
Forget sentience… the worry is that AI copies human bias, The Observer, 19 June 2022
Film bans are less about offence, more ‘community leaders' showing who's boss, The Observer, 12 June 2022
The ubderisation of Britain, Pandaemonium, 4 May 2022
In the name of job flexibility, ‘Uberisation' is spreading its tentacles across society, The Observer, 1 May 2022
In this new age of empire, the west has no need to conquer. Money and coercion do the job, The Observer, 24 April 2022
Not so black and white, Pandaemonium, 13 April 2022
Sex, Gender and sport, Pandaemonium, 6 April 2022
From pool to track: disputes over trans athletes mustn't make everyone a loser, The Observer, 3 April 2022
Sovereignty not just when it is politically convenient, Pandaemonium, 30 March 2022
As the imperial ties are being cast aside, a royal tour was always going to be a farce, The Observer, 27 March 2022
Solidarity, identity and "people like us", Pandaemonium, 9 March 2022
he people of Ukraine need our solidarity. But not just because they're ‘like us', The Observer, 6 March 2022
Covid and freedom: trivialised and tribalised, Pandaemonium, 2 March 2022
‘Freedom day' was no leap into the light. For that we must set aside tribalism, The Observer, 27 February 2022
Not just a black and white issue, Pandaemonium, 9 February 2022
Whoopi Goldberg's Holocaust remarks drew on a misguided idea of racism, The Observer, 6 February 2022
Forgetting the lessons of free speech struggles, Pandaemonium, 2 February 2022
Freedom of speech was too hard won to be cavalier now about censorship, The Observer, 30 January 2022
The poverty of moralism, Pandaemonium, 26 January 2022