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Kenan Malik | |
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 Malik in 2010 | |
| Born | (1960-01-26)26 January 1960 (age 65) Telangana, India |
| Occupation | Author, radio presenter |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | University of Sussex Imperial College London |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Subject | Religion, race, multiculturalism |
| Notable works |
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| Website | |
| kenanmalik.com | |
Kenan Malik (born 26 January 1960) is a British writer, lecturer and broadcaster, trained inneurobiology and thehistory of science. As an academic author, his focus is on thephilosophy of biology, and contemporary theories ofmulticulturalism,pluralism, andrace. These topics are core concerns inThe Meaning of Race (1996),Man, Beast and Zombie (2000) andStrange Fruit: Why Both Sides Are Wrong in the Race Debate (2008).
Malik defends the values of the 18th-centuryEnlightenment, which he sees as having been distorted and misunderstood in more recent political and scientific thought. He was shortlisted for theOrwell Prize in 2010.[1][2]
Malik was born inSecunderabad,Telangana,India and brought up inManchester, England.[3] He studied neurobiology at theUniversity of Sussex and History of Science atImperial College,London. In between, he was a research psychologist at the Centre for Research into Perception and Cognition (CRPC) at the University of Sussex.[2][4]
He has given lectures or seminars at a number of universities, includingUniversity of Cambridge (Department of Biological Anthropology);University of Oxford (St. Antony's College,Blavatnik School of Government and theDepartment for Continuing Education); theInstitute of Historical Research, London;Goldsmiths College, University of London (Department of Social Anthropology);University of Liverpool (Department of Politics);Nottingham Trent University;University of Newcastle (Department of Social Policy and Sociology);University of Oslo; and theEuropean University Institute,Florence. In 2003, he was a visiting fellow at theUniversity of Melbourne. He is currently Senior Visiting Fellow at theUniversity of Surrey.
As well as being a presenter ofAnalysis onBBC Radio 4, he has also presentedNight Waves,Radio 3's Arts and Ideas magazine. Malik has written and presented a number of TV documentaries, includingDisunited Kingdom (2003),Are Muslims Hated? (which was shortlisted for the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression award, in 2005),Let 'Em All In (2005) andBritain's Tribal Tensions (2006).Strange Fruit was longlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize in 2009.
He has written for many newspapers and magazines, includingThe Guardian,Financial Times,The Independent,Independent on Sunday,Sunday Times,Sunday Telegraph,New Statesman,The New York Times,Prospect,TLS,The Times Higher Education Supplement,Nature,Rising East,Göteborgs-Posten,Bergens Tidende andHandelsblatt. He is a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Arts.
Malik's main areas of academic interest are philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind, scientific method andepistemology, theories ofhuman nature, science policy,bioethics,political philosophy, the history, philosophy and sociology of race, and the history of ideas.
Malik is a Distinguished Supporter ofHumanists UK and a trustee of the free-speech magazineIndex on Censorship.[2]
Malik has long campaigned forequal rights,freedom of expression, and asecular society, and in defence ofrationalism andhumanism in the face of what he has called "a growing culture of irrationalism,mysticism andmisanthropy".
In the 1980s, he was associated with a number ofMarxist organisations, including theSocialist Workers Party (SWP) and theRevolutionary Communist Party (RCP), andBig Flame.
He was theRed Front candidate inNottingham East in the1987 general election. He stood as the RCP's candidate inBirmingham Selly Oak in thegeneral election in 1992, coming last out of six candidates with 84 votes (0.15%). He was also involved with anti-racist campaigns, including theAnti-Nazi League andEast London Workers Against Racism. He helped organise street patrols in East London to protect Asian families against racist attacks and was a leading member of a number of campaigns against deportations andpolice brutality including the Newham 7 campaign, theAfia Begum Campaign Against Deportations, and theColin Roach Campaign.
Malik has written that the turning point in his relationship with the left came with theSalman Rushdie affair.[5] Much of his political campaigning over the past decade has been in defence of free speech, secularism and scientific rationalism. Malik was one of the first left-wing critics of multiculturalism, has controversially opposed restrictions onhate speech, supportedopen door policies on immigration, opposed the notion ofanimal rights in a series of debates withPeter Singer andRichard Ryder, and spoken out in defence ofanimal experimentation.
Malik wrote for the RCP's magazineLiving Marxism, laterLM. Although the RCP has since disbanded, Malik has written for later incarnations ofLM, and for its online successor, the web magazineSpiked.
In aGuardian opinion piece published during the 2020US presidential transition, Malik accused president-electJoe Biden of grifting from his supporters.[6]
Malik has written of his perception that use ofwhite privilege narratives can further entrench white identity by marginalisingwhite British working classes.[7]
Malik commented on the controversy surrounding comments byWhoopi Goldberg in early‑2022 on the circumstances ofthe Holocaust and also notes at length thatNazi Germany, when embedding their distorted ideologies into law, drew on legal concepts from prevailingUnited States legislation.[8]
In March 2025,Guardian Media Group agreed to pay "substantial" damages toDouglas Murray over a column in which Malik had stated that Murray had encouraged the2024 United Kingdom riots.[9]
This in turn breeds greater resentment within sections of the working class about their marginalisation and abandonment and entrenches the idea of a "white identity", further racialising the notion of class.
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