I cannot account for why its taken me until now to blog about this, but last month I was invited onto Sky News to give the English PEN view on extremism, free speech, and the conviction of Anjem Choudhary.
The notorious Islamist preacher had been convicted of supporting terrorism on the basis of Tweets he had posted, pledging allegiance to ‘the’ Caliphate, rather than ‘a’ Caliphate. The prosecutors argued (successfully, as it turns out) that this constituted support for ISIS. Continue reading
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This week 59 Productions (the radical design and production company than I had a hand in setting up) announced their latest project. Its an adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass by Duncan Macmillian, the acclaimed writer of People Places Things. The show is directed by my friend Leo Warner and is a co-production with Home and the Lyric Hammersmith.
City of Glass (part of Auster’s New York Triology) is an intriguing post-modern detective story that plays with ideas of reality, identity and imagination. I think its a perfect fit for the kind of art that Warner and the remarkable 59 Productions team create. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, he outlines their approach. Continue reading
The parliamentary Committee on Arms Export Controls is about to publish a report into the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. It appears as though British-made weapons have been used to commit human rights abuses in Yemen.
Its draft report, seen by Newsnight’s Gabriel Gatehouse, said: “The weight of evidence of violations of international humanitarian law by the Saudi-led coalition is now so great, that it is very difficult to continue to support Saudi Arabia.”
The committee said it seemed “inevitable” that such violations had involved arms supplied by the UK which would mean it was in violation of its own legal obligations.
I’m not sure, but I think the phrase “its own legal obligations” means aspects of UK law that prohibt certain kinds of sale.
It’s stuff like this that makes me (and human rights groups) extremely distrustful of the Conservative Government’s proposed ‘Bill of Rights’. This is a proposal to place our human rights protections entirely within the UK legal framework, with no reference to the law and jurisprudence of European Court of Human Rights.
As the Saudi arms sales story shows, this Government, in keeping with all past and future governments, cannot really be trusted to abide by its own rules and laws! There is therefore something extremely comforting about the European Convention on Human Rights, which is a treaty and an obligation that other countries can hold us to (and of course, we can hold them to it as well).
On human rights, I’m glad that Britain is not currently a ‘law unto itself’ and fear for the time when that changes.
As someone who blogs about freedom of expression I really can’t let the ridiculous burkini controversy in France go by without comment.
Policemen have literally been forcing women to disrobe in public. That is deeply illiberal and wrong.
The arguments for enforcing such a policy do not stand up. Continue reading
The author Malcolm Gladwell wrote the popular book Outliers: The Story of Success. ‘Outliers’ is term he gives to incredibly successful people, but I’ve used the same word to describe that particular sub-genus of political activist, who persists in challenging authority when others are intimidated into silence. These people are often sued, imprisoned, attacked and even murdered because of what they write. It is my great privilege to work with and on behalf of such people at English PEN. They are compelling because they are so unusual in their societies (a fact that makes them even more vulnerable as people in power seek to make a public example of them). What makes such a person?
Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast series Revisionist History has only recently been launched but it’s already in the Top 10 downloads on iTunes. Episode 03 ‘The Big Man Can’t Shoot‘ revisits the idea of what makes some people take different decisions to others, told through the fascinating story of two basketball players. It gives some insight into what makes both types of ‘outlier’—the successful sportsman; and the tenacious political activist.
The episode asks why barely any professional basketball players shoot free throws underhand. It’s a technique that is proven to yield more points for a player… but it’s also deemed ‘cissy’ or a ‘grandma shot’. Social pressures prevent basketball players from making a simple change to improve their game!
The reason for this bad choice is not ignorance. Basketball player Wilt Chamberlin said he knew he was better shooting underarm than over, but he chose the inferior technique anyway.
Gladwell explains that we all have a psychological threshold that must be met before we change our behaviour. Towards the end of the episode he describes what’s going on in our heads when we make these kinds of choices:
He doesn’t care! The kind of person who would let bad things be said about him in his own autobiography is the kind of person who would shoot a free throw that other people think looks ridiculous. … Someone who puts the responsibility of mastering the task at hand ahead of all social considerations. Who would rather be right than liked.
…
It takes courage to be good. Social courage. To be honest with yourself, to do things the right way.
To my mind, the idea that someone like Lydia Cacho or Liu Xiaobo or Mazen Darwish has ‘courage’ is true, but also slightly trite, because it only describes what they have done, not why or indeed how. Courage is difficult behaviour to discuss because it is unclear whether it can be learnt or whether it is innate.
Malcolm Gladwell’s contributions here offer arguments for both. First, his discussions of a low psychological ‘threshold’ that can inspires radical behaviour (or a high threshold that can discourage it) implies that something innate. It’s just a part of our personality that we acquire at an early age. However, as he describes elsewhere in Outliers, a great deal of talent can actually be acquired through practice (specifically, focused practice).
Perhaps courage, as displayed by the political activists and writers I work with, can be similarly taught!? I wonder what this looks like in practice?
Photo: Syrian journalist and activist Mazen Darwish (right), recipient of the 2014 PEN Pinter Prize for an International Writer of Courage. Darwish spent 4 years detained without trial in Syria. © Robert Sharp