PUBLIC LECTURE ON 'RACE AND THE MEDIA' BY YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN
Noted journalist-broadcaster-author Yasmin Alibhai-Brown will deliver a public lecture on 'Race and the Media'.
Venue: Vernon Harcourt Room, St Hilda's College, Cowley Place
Date and Time: Wednesday, May 28, 5.30pm, followed by drinks
The event is open to all. Enquiries may be directed to raheel.dhattiwala@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk
SPEAKER PROFILE :
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown came to Britain in 1972 from Uganda. She completed her M.Phil. in literature at Oxford in 1975. She is a journalist, radio and television broadcaster and author of several books. She is now a regular columnist on The Independent and London’s Evening Standard, and a Vice President of the United Nations Association, UK.
Her writings always mix the intensely personal with the political. Her views are unpredictable except on a few issues where she has remained steadfast – immigration most of all. She can be depended on to be disloyal to blind interest groups and patriotism. She is a feminist who furiously criticises some forms of feminism, an anti-racist who will always expose black and Asian hypocrisies and oppression, a Muslim calling for reformation, a British citizen who battles for real equality for immigrants and their children. On the 10th of September, 2001, the day before the Al-Queda attacks in the US, she wrote a column calling for international action against the Taliban. The day after she criticised the US for its hubris. Why does she irritate so much? is the refrain. The list of people who have previously been offended by her words include Prince Charles, Cherie Blair, Bruce Anderson, Melanie Phillips Boris Johnson, Rod Liddle, David Blunkett and his erstwhile lover Kimberley Quinn, Keith Vaz, The Board of Jewish Deputies ( she believes Israel gives Jewish people a sense of place and security but she is a passionate defender of Palestinian rights) The Muslim Council of Britain, Ken Livingstone, Dianne Abbot, the National Black Alliance and many others. Then there are the mullahs and Muslim apologists who want to go further and kill her.
In 2000 she published, Who Do We Think We Are? which went on to be published in the US too, an acclaimed book on the state of the nation. After Multiculturalism, a pamphlet re-assessing the multicultural ideology in Britain was the first critical examination by a social democrat of a settled and now damaging orthodoxy. In 2001 came the publication of Mixed Feelings, a book on mixed race Britons which has been praised by all those who have reviewed it to date.
On April 25, she brought her acclaimed play, Nowhere to Belong; Tales of an Extravagant Stranger, to Oxford. She will return again this month on May 28 to speak at St Hilda’s College on Race and the Media.
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