Kenan Malik

Kenan Malik was made a patron of Humanists UK for his contribution to humanist philosophy.

Writer and broadcaster

Kenan 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, and has gone on to become a well known writer and commentator on science, politics and ideas. He has written for The Guardian, Financial Times, The Independent, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, New Statesman, Prospect, TLS, THES , and Nature. He is a presenter on BBC Radio 4's Analysis, writing and presenting programmes on "The origins of values", "Cells, souls and science", "A need for Utopia?", and "Thinking in public".  He has also written and presented two TV documentaries: "Disunited Kingdom" (Channel 4, 2003), on the negative consequences of multiculturalism; and "Are Muslims Hated'?", a critique of the idea of Islamophobia (Channel 4, 2005).

His book The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society (Palgrave / New York University Press, 1996) examines the ideas of race, multiculturalism and pluralism. In Man, Beast and Zombie: What Science Can and Cannot Tell Us About Human Nature (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000), which has been called “the best of all possible attempts to see what science has to say on this broad subject”, he investigates contemporary theories of human nature.

His 2008 book Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate (Oneworld) has been described as "a powerful attach on cultural relativism... and an impressive defence of Enlightenment rationalism and universalism." (Observer review by Antony Andrew, 29.06.08. The book is an account of the relationships between scientific and political ideas of human differences, and between ideas of human nature and human differences. In 2009 he gave BHA’s annual Voltaire Lecture on “The Guilt of Science? Race, Science and Darwin”

Buy books by Kenan Malik at Amazon.co.uk through this link and a portion of the sale price will go to Humanists UK.

See also
Ethical Odyssey, Kenan Malik on "the moral labyrinth presented by scientific developments" in the RSA journal, Feb 2007
http://www.kenanmalik.com/index.html 
A debate with Patron Sir Bernard Crick on "What should integration mean in Britain today?" ( JCWI Bulletin , Winter 2004/ 2005) at http://www.kenanmalik.com/debates/crick_jcwi.html
Kenan Malik on Islamaphobia in Prospect
Kenan Malik discussing “The origins of values” here.
Kenan Malik's critique of Tariq Ramadan's The Quest for Meaning

 

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