PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS
Crossing Cultures
Ian Buruma
Is multiculturalism a blessing or a curse? Must democracy be secular or can religion play a role? Does the “West” still exist and, if so, what does it stand for? Has China successfully fused capitalism with authoritarianism? Will Islam change the West or will the West change Islam?
“I'm not a donkey, and I don’t have a field,” scoffed Max Weber when some academic non-entity criticized him for writing outside his discipline. Yet, with the rapid growth and increasing diversification of human knowledge, the forces of intellectual specialization have all but won. Nowadays, newspaper readers and editors alike bemoan what seems to be a consequence of this narrowness: the death of the free-ranging intellectual.
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American Funk
Ian Buruma Series: Crossing Cultures 2012-02-07Many American fearmongers would have us believe that the US is now in a dangerous state of funk – a loss of self-belief that signals the end of its world leadership. But they are wrong to claim that the decline of US military dominance will lead to the collapse of world order.... read Comments: 4 Recommended: 0 Read: 5465
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North Korea’s Tears
Ian Buruma Series: Crossing Cultures 2012-01-04
Images of North Koreans howling with grief over Kim Jong-il's death suggest mass hysteria. Can a whole country go mad, or is life in a totalitarian dictatorship such a daily misery that its people end up crying for their oppressors?... read Comments: 4 Recommended: 0 Read: 20409
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Is the European Dream Over?
Ian Buruma Series: Crossing Cultures 2011-12-08On the surface, Europe’s current crisis, which some people predict will tear apart the EU, is financial. But the deeper crisis is political: there is no “European people” to express the solidarity needed to see the EU through hard times.... read Comments: 4 Recommended: 3 Read: 21156
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The Lynching of Libya
Ian Buruma Series: Crossing Cultures 2011-11-07
The problem with revenge is that it provokes further revenge, setting in motion of cycle of violence and counter-violence – the culture of vendetta. That is why the summarily violent death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is a dangerous omen for Libya.... read Comments: 5 Recommended: 0 Read: 14271
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Obama’s Israel Problem
Ian Buruma Series: Crossing Cultures 2011-10-07Standing up to Israel’s uncompromising policies, and its new fanatical friends, will not be easy for Barack Obama in an election year. But to do so is to uphold the liberal tradition in which many Jews continue to believe.... read Comments: 10 Recommended: 1 Read: 19162
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Ladies First, Women Last
Ian Buruma Series: Crossing Cultures 2011-09-07
The two things that get people most excited in cultural conflicts are religion and sex, specifically the way that men treat women. Both the US response to 9/11 and the recent criminal case brought against Dominique Strauss-Kahn seem to prove the point – except that neither involved a cultural conflict.... read Comments: 4 Recommended: 1 Read: 16539
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Breivik’s Call to Arms
Ian Buruma Series: Crossing Cultures 2011-08-04Anti-Muslim populists have denounced Anders Breivik's murderous rampage in Norway last month, but their words have been sufficiently hysterical to incite a mentally unbalanced person. Indeed, Breivik’s interpretation of their survivalist rhetoric is, in an odd way, more rational than the idea that an existential war can be fought with words alone.... read Comments: 8 Recommended: 1 Read: 16640
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Europe without Turkey
Ian Buruma Series: Crossing Cultures 
2011-07-08
Most European citizens (for example, more than 60% in France and Germany) believe that Turkey should not become part of the EU, and to insist on it would smack of precisely the kind of undemocratic paternalism that has turned many Europeans against the EU already. But, on this question, the majority is not right.... read Comments: 13 Recommended: 3 Read: 26349
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The Crimes of Ratko Mladić
Ian Buruma Series: Crossing Cultures 2011-05-30There is no doubt that Ratko Mladić is guilty of serious war crimes. But trying him for genocide, even though it will be hard to prove that he ever intended to exterminate Bosnian Muslims as a group, just because they were Muslims, will further muddy the term’s already vague definition.... read Comments: 3 Recommended: 0 Read: 17128
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