Ian Buruma


Ian Buruma is a Dutch writer and editor who lives and works in the United States. In 2017, he became editor of The New York Review of Books, but left the position in September 2018.
Much of his writing has focused on the culture of Asia, particularly that of China and 20th-century Japan. He was the Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College from 2003 to 2017.

Early life and education

Buruma was born and raised in The Hague, Netherlands. His father, Sytze Leonard "Leo" Buruma, was a Dutch lawyer and the son of a Mennonite minister, and his mother, Gwendolyn Margaret "Wendy" Schlesinger, a Briton of German-Jewish descent. He went to study at Leiden University in 1971, and obtained a Candidate degree in Chinese literature and History in 1975. Subsequently, he then performed a postgraduate education in Japanese cinema from 1975 to 1977 at the College of Art of the Nihon University.

Career

Overview

Buruma lived in Japan from 1975 to 1981, where he worked as a film reviewer, photographer and documentary filmmaker. During the 1980s, he edited the cultural section of the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong. He later traveled throughout Asia working as a freelance writer. Buruma is a board member of Human Rights in China and a fellow of the European Council of Foreign Relations. Buruma has contributed numerous articles to The New York Review of Books since 1985. He held fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and he was an Alistair Horne fellow of St Antony's College in Oxford, UK. In 2000, he delivered the Huizinga Lecture in the Pieterskerk in Leiden, Netherlands.
From 2003 to 2017, Buruma was Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College, New York. In 2017, he became editor of The New York Review of Books, succeeding founding editor Robert B. Silvers.

''New York Review of Books'' controversy

In September 2018, Buruma left the NYRB position in the wake of a dispute about his decision to publish an essay by the Canadian talk show host Jian Ghomeshi. Ghomeshi was acquitted in 2016 of one count of choking and four counts of sexual assault, after over 20 women complained either to the police or in the media. The publication of the essay was controversial, in part because Ghomeshi wrote that the allegations against him were "inaccurate". In an interview with Slate magazine, Buruma defended his decision to publish, and denied that the article was misleading because it had failed to mention that Ghomeshi had been required to issue an apology to one of the victims as part of the terms of a case against him. He also denied that the title, "Reflections from a Hashtag", was dismissive of the #MeToo movement; stated that the movement has resulted in "undesirable consequences"; and said: "I’m no judge of the rights and wrongs of every allegation. ... The exact nature of behavior – how much consent was involved – I have no idea, nor is it really my concern."
Buruma subsequently left The New York Review of Books amid "outrage" over his defense of the article. The Review later stated that it had departed from its "usual editorial practices", as the essay "was shown to only one male editor during the editing process", and that Buruma's statement to Slate about the staff of the Review "did not accurately represent their views". Some commentators expressed fears that Buruma's exit threatened to inhibit the intellectual culture in the United States.

Awards

In 2004, Buruma was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Theology from the University of Groningen.
In 2008, Buruma was awarded the Erasmus Prize, which is awarded to an individual who has made "an especially important contribution to culture, society or social science in Europe". He is among the 100 top global thinkers of 2010, as selected by the Foreign Policy magazine. Foreign Policy explained his contribution as a public intellectual:
In April 2012, he was awarded the Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life at the Princeton Theological Seminary. Buruma has won several prizes for his books, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for Theater of Cruelty. He has held a number of editorial and academic positions and has been termed a "well-regarded European intellectual". He argued in 2001 for wholehearted British participation in the European Union because they were the "strongest champions in Europe of a liberal approach to commerce and politics". He has been a regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2001.

Personal life

Buruma has been married twice. He and his first wife, Sumie Tani, had a daughter, as he did with his second wife, Hotta Eri. Buruma is a nephew of the English film director John Schlesinger, with whom he published a series of interviews in book form.

Selected works

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