Paul Johnson (writer)

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Paul Johnson CBE
Johnson in 2005
Born	Paul Bede Johnson 2 November 1928 (age 92) Manchester, England
Education	Stonyhurst College
Alma mater	Magdalen College, Oxford
Occupation	Journalist popular historian
Known for	Editor of the New Statesman (1965–70)
Spouse(s)	Marigold Hunt ​ (m. 1957)​
Children	Daniel Johnson Luke Johnson
Website	pauljohnsonarchives.org

Paul Bede Johnson CBE (born 2 November 1928) is an English journalist, popular historian, speechwriter, and author. Although associated with the political left in his early career, he is now a conservative popular historian.

Johnson was educated at the Jesuit independent school Stonyhurst College, and at Magdalen College, Oxford. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a journalist writing for and later editing the New Statesman magazine. A prolific writer, Johnson has written over 40 books and contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers. His sons include the journalist Daniel Johnson, founder of Standpoint magazine, and the businessman Luke Johnson, former chairman of Channel 4.

Early life and career

Johnson was born in Manchester. His father, William Aloysius Johnson, was an artist and Principal of the Art School in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. At Stonyhurst College, Johnson received an education grounded in the Jesuit method, which he preferred over the more secularized curriculum of Oxford. Whilst at Oxford, Johnson was tutored by the historian A. J. P. Taylor and was a member of the exclusive Stubbs Society.

After graduating with a second-class honours degree, Johnson performed his national service in the Army, joining the King's Royal Rifle Corps and then the Royal Army Educational Corps, where he was commissioned as a Captain (acting) based mainly in Gibraltar. Here he saw the "grim misery and cruelty of the Franco regime". Johnson's military record helped the Paris periodical Réalités hire him, where he was assistant editor from 1952 to 1955.

Johnson adopted a left-wing political outlook during this period as he witnessed in May 1952 the police response to a riot in Paris (Communists were rioting over the visit of American general, Matthew Ridgway, who commanded the US Eighth Army during the Korean War; he had just been appointed NATO's Supreme Commander in Europe), the "ferocity [of which] I would not have believed had I not seen it with my own eyes." Then he served as the New Statesman's Paris correspondent. For a time, he was a convinced Bevanite and an associate of Aneurin Bevan himself. Moving back to London in 1955, Johnson joined the Statesman's staff.

Some of Johnson's writing already showed signs of iconoclasm. His first book, about the Suez War, appeared in 1957. An anonymous commentator in The Spectator wrote that "one of his [Johnson's] remarks about Mr Gaitskell is quite as damaging as anything he has to say about Sir Anthony Eden", but the Labour Party's opposition to the Suez intervention led Johnson to assert "the old militant spirit of the party was back". The following year he attacked Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Dr No,^[6] and in 1964 he warned of "The Menace of Beatlism" in an article contemporarily described as being "rather exaggerated" by Henry Fairlie in The Spectator.

Johnson was successively lead writer, deputy editor and editor of the New Statesman magazine from 1965 to 1970. He was found suspect for his attendances at the soirées of Lady Antonia Fraser, then married to a Conservative MP. There was some resistance to his appointment as New Statesman editor, not least from the writer Leonard Woolf, who objected to a Catholic filling the position, and Johnson was placed on six months' probation.

Statesmen and Nations (1971), the anthology of his Statesman articles, contains numerous reviews of biographies of Conservative politicians and an openness to continental Europe; in one article Johnson took a positive view of events of May 1968 in Paris, an article which at the time of first publication led Colin Welch in The Spectator to accuse Johnson of possessing "a taste for violence". According to this book, Johnson filed 54 overseas reports during his Statesman years.

Shift rightward

From 1981 to 2009, Johnson wrote a column for The Spectator; initially focusing on media developments, it subsequently acquired the title "And Another Thing". In his journalism, Johnson generally deals with issues and events which he sees as indicative of a general social decline, whether in art, education, religious observance or personal conduct. He has continued to contribute to the magazine, less frequently than before. During the same period he contributed a column to the Daily Mail until 2001. In a Daily Telegraph interview in November 2003, he criticised the Mail for having a pernicious impact: "I came to the conclusion that that kind of journalism is bad for the country, bad for society, bad for the newspaper".

Johnson is a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph, mainly as a book reviewer, and in the U.S. writes for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and the National Review. He also contributes to Forbes magazine. For a time in the early 1980s he wrote for The Sun after Rupert Murdoch urged him to "raise its tone a bit."

Johnson is a critic of modernity because of what he sees as its moral relativism, and finds objectionable those who use Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to justify their atheism or use it to promote biotechnological experimentation. As a result, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker have been targets of Johnson's criticism. As a conservative Catholic, Johnson regards liberation theology as a heresy and defends clerical celibacy, but departs from others in seeing many good reasons for ordination of women as priests.

Admired by conservatives in the United States and elsewhere, he is strongly anticommunist. Johnson has defended Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal, finding his cover-up considerably less heinous than Bill Clinton's perjury and Oliver North's involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair. In his Spectator column, Johnson defended his friend Jonathan Aitken, has expressed admiration for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and limited admiration for Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

Johnson was active in the campaign, led by Norman Lamont, to prevent Pinochet's extradition to Spain after Pinochet's arrest in London. "There have been countless attempts to link him to human rights atrocities, but nobody has provided a single scrap of evidence," Johnson was reported as saying in 1999. In Heroes (2008), Johnson returned to his longstanding claim that criticism of Pinochet's dictatorship on human rights grounds came from "the Soviet Union, whose propaganda machine successfully demonised [Pinochet] among the chattering classes all over the world. It was the last triumph of the KGB before it vanished into history's dustbin."

He has described France as "a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades" rather than a democracy.

Johnson is a Eurosceptic who played a prominent role in the "No" campaign during the 1975 referendum on whether Britain should stay in the EC. In 2010 Johnson noted that "you can't have a common currency without a common financial policy, and you can't have that without a common government. The three things are interconnected. So this [European integration] was entirely foreseeable. Not much careful thought and judgment goes into the EU. It's entirely run by bureaucrats."

He served on the Royal Commission on the Press (1974–77) and was a member of the Cable Authority (regulator) from 1984 to 1990.

Personal life

Paul Johnson has been married since 1958 to the psychotherapist and former Labour Party parliamentary candidate Marigold Hunt, daughter of Dr. Thomas Hunt, physician to Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, and Anthony Eden. They have three sons and a daughter: the journalist Daniel Johnson, a freelance writer, editor of Standpoint magazine, and previously associate editor of The Daily Telegraph; Luke Johnson, businessman and former chairman of Channel 4 Television; Sophie Johnson-Clark, an independent television executive; and Cosmo Johnson, playwright. Paul and Marigold Johnson have ten grandchildren. Marigold Johnson's sister, Sarah, an art historian, married the journalist, former diplomat and politician George Walden; their daughter, Celia Walden, is the wife of television presenter and former newspaper editor Piers Morgan.

In 1998 it was revealed Johnson had an affair lasting eleven years with the writer Gloria Stewart. Stewart went public with the affair to the newspapers after what she saw as Johnson's hypocrisy over his views on morality, religion and family values.

Johnson is a friend of British playwright Tom Stoppard, who dedicated his 1978 play Night and Day to him.

Johnson is a watercolourist, painting mainly landscapes, who has exhibited regularly.

Honours

In 2006, Johnson was honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President George W. Bush.

Johnson was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

Partial bibliography

Johnson's books are listed by subject or type. The country of publication is the UK, unless stated otherwise.

Anthologies, polemics and contemporary history

• Johnson, Paul Bede; Abel-Smith, Brian; Calder, Nigel; Hoggart, Richard; Jones, Mervyn; Marris, Peter; Murdoch, Iris; Shore, Peter; Thomas, Hugh; Townsend, Peter; Williams, Raymond (1957), "A Sense of Outrage", in Mackenzie, Norman Ian (ed.), Conviction, London: MacGibbon & Kee, pp. 202–17.
• Johnson, Paul Bede (1957), The Suez War, London: MacGibbon & Kee.
• ——— (1958), Journey into Chaos, Western Policy in the Middle East, London: MacGibbon & Kee.
• ——— (1971), Statesmen and Nations, Sidgwick & Jackson. An anthology of New Statesman articles from the 1950s and 1960s.
• ——— (1977), Enemies of Society, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
• ——— (1980), The Recovery of Freedom, Mainstream, Basil Blackwell.
• ——— (1981), Davis, William (ed.), The Best of Everything – Animals, Business, Drink, Travel, Food, Literature, Medicine, Playtime, Politics, Theatre, Young World, Art, Communications, Law and Crime, Films, Pop Culture, Sport, Women's Fashion, Men's Fashion, Music, Military – contributor.
• ——— (1985), The Pick of Paul Johnson, Harrap.
• ——— (1991) [1986], The Oxford Book of Political Anecdotes (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press.
• ——— (1988), Intellectuals, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
• 1994 The Quotable Paul Johnson A Topical Compilation of His Wit, Wisdom and Satire (George J. Marlin, Richard P. Rabatin, Heather Higgins (Editors)) 1994 Noonday Press/1996 Atlantic Books (US)
• 1994 Wake Up Britain – a Latter-day Pamphlet Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• 1996 To Hell with Picasso & Other Essays: Selected Pieces from "The Spectator" Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• 2009 Churchill (biography), 192 pp.
• 2012 Darwin: Portrait of a genius (Viking, 176 pages)

Art and architecture

• 1980 British Cathedrals Weidenfeld & Nicolson ISBN 0-297-77828-5
• 1993 Gerald Laing : Portraits Thomas Gibson Fine Art Ltd (with Gerald Laing & David Mellor MP)
• 1999 Julian Barrow's London Fine Art Society
• 2003 Art: A New History Weidenfeld & Nicolson

History

• 1972 The Offshore Islanders: England's People from Roman Occupation to the Present/to European Entry [1985 ed as History of the English People; 1998 ed as Offshore Islanders: A History of the English People] Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• 1974 Elizabeth I: a Study in Power and Intellect Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• 1974 The Life and Times of Edward III Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• 1976 Civilizations of the Holy Land Weidenfeld & Nicolson

• 1977 Education of an Establishment in The World of the Public School (pp. 13–28), edited by George MacDonald Fraser, Weidenfeld & Nicolson /St Martins Press (US edition)
• 1978 The Civilization of Ancient Egypt Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• 1981 Ireland: A Concise History from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day [as ...Land of Troubles 1980 Eyre Methuen] Granada
• 1983 A History of the Modern World from 1917 to the 1980s Weidenfeld & Nicolson – Paperback
• 1983 Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the 1980s Weidenfeld & Nicolson [later, ...Present Time and ...Year 2000 2005 ed] Weidenfeld & Nicolson – Hardcover
• 1986 The Oxford Book of Political Anecdotes Oxford University Press (editor)
• 1987 Gold Fields A Centenary Portrait Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• 1987 The History of the Jews [2001ed] Weidenfeld & Nicolson (later editions titled A History of the Jews)
• 1991 The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815–1830 Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) ISBN 978-1-78-022714-6
• 1997 A History of the American People Weidenfeld & Nicolson ISBN 0-06-093034-9 
• 2000 The Renaissance [: A Short History *] Weidenfeld & Nicolson/*Random House (USA)
• 2002 Napoleon (Lives S.) Weidenfeld & Nicolson [2003 Phoenix pbk]
• 2005 George Washington: The Founding Father (Eminent Lives Series) Atlas Books
• 2006 Creators HarperCollins Publishers (US) ISBN 0-06-019143-0
• 2007 Heroes HarperCollins Publishers (US) ISBN 978-0-06-114316-8, 0-06-114316-2; HarperCollins Publishing link to book Archived 28 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine
• 2010 Humorists HarperCollins Publishers (US) ISBN 978-0-06-182591-0
• 2011 Socrates Viking (US)

Memoirs

• 2004 The Vanished Landscape: A 1930s Childhood in the Potteries Weidenfeld & Nicolson: ISBN 978-0-7538-1933-3
• 2010 Brief Lives Hutchinson

Novels

• 1959 Left of Centre MacGibbon & Kee ["Left of Centre describes the meeting of a Complacent Young Man with an Angry Old City"]
• 1964 Merrie England MacGibbon & Kee

Religion

• 1975 Pope John XXIII Hutchinson
• 1977 A History of Christianity Weidenfeld & Nicolson /1976 Simon & Schuster /Atheneum (US) ISBN 0-684-81503-6 (S&S Touchstone division paperback edition published in 1995)
• 1982 Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Restoration St Martins Press
• 1996 The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage Weidenfeld & Nicolson/HarperCollins (US)
• 1997 The Papacy Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• 2010 Jesus: A Biography From a Believer Penguin Books

Travel

• 1973 The Highland Jaunt Collins (with George Gale)
• 1974 A Place in History: Places & Buildings of British History Omega [Thames TV (UK) tie-in]
• 1978 National Trust Book of British Castles Granada Paperback [1992 Weidenfeld ed as Castles of England, Scotland And Wales]
• 1984 The Aerofilms Book of London from the Air Weidenfeld & Nicolson

 

Sam Harris

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris

 

Sam Harris
Harris in 2016, by Christopher Michel
Born	Samuel Benjamin Harris April 9, 1967 (age 54) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Author
Education	Stanford University (BA) University of California, Los Angeles (MA, PhD)
Genre	Non-fiction
Subject	Neuroscience, philosophy, religion, spirituality, ethics, politics
Notable awards	PEN/Martha Albrand Award, Webby Award
Spouse	Annaka Harris ​ (m. 2004)​
Children	2
Parents	Berkeley Harris Susan Harris
Philosophy career
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	New Atheism
Signature
Website
samharris.org

Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, and podcast host. His work touches on a wide range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence. Harris came to prominence for his criticism of religion, and Islam in particular, and is described as one of the "Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse", along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.

Harris's first book, The End of Faith (2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction and remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 33 weeks. Harris has since written six additional books: Letter to a Christian Nation in 2006, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values in 2010, the long-form essay Lying in 2011, the short book Free Will in 2012, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion in 2014, and (with British writer Maajid Nawaz) Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue in 2015. Harris's work has been translated into over 20 languages.

Harris has debated with many prominent figures on the topics of God or religion, including William Lane Craig, Jordan Peterson, Rick Warren, Andrew Sullivan, Reza Aslan, David Wolpe, Deepak Chopra, and Jean Houston. Since September 2013, Harris has hosted the Making Sense podcast (originally titled Waking Up), which has a large listenership. In September 2018, Harris released a meditation app, Waking Up with Sam Harris. Harris's views on a range of topics have been discussed in various academic and journalistic venues, attracting both criticism and praise to varying degrees.

Early life and education

Samuel Benjamin Harris was born in Los Angeles, California, on April 9, 1967. He is the son of actor Berkeley Harris, who appeared mainly in Western films, and TV writer and producer Susan Harris (née Spivak), who created The Golden Girls among other series. His father, born in North Carolina, came from a Quaker background, and his mother is Jewish but not religious. He was raised by his mother following his parents' divorce when he was aged two. Harris has stated that his upbringing was entirely secular and that his parents rarely discussed religion, though he also stated that he was not raised as an atheist.

While his original major was in English, Harris became interested in philosophical questions while at Stanford University after an experience with the empathogen–entactogen MDMA (colloquially known as ecstasy). The experience led him to be interested in the idea that he might be able to achieve spiritual insights without the use of drugs. Leaving Stanford in his second year, a quarter after his psychedelic experience, he visited India and Nepal, where he studied meditation with teachers of Buddhist and Hindu religions, including Dilgo Khyentse. Eleven years later, in 1997, he returned to Stanford, completing a B.A. degree in philosophy in 2000. Harris began writing his first book, The End of Faith, immediately after the September 11 attacks.

He received a Ph.D. degree in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 from the University of California, Los Angeles, using functional magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty. His thesis was titled The Moral Landscape: How Science Could Determine Human Values. His advisor was Mark S. Cohen.

Career

Writing

Harris's writing focuses on philosophy, neuroscience, and criticism of religion. He came to prominence for his criticism of religion (Islam in particular) and he is described as one of the "Four Horsemen of Atheism", along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. He has written for publications such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Economist, London Times, Boston Globe, and The Atlantic. Five of Harris's books have been New York Times bestsellers, and his writing has been translated into over 20 languages. The End of Faith (2004) remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 33 weeks.

Harris has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss' book Tools of Titans.

Debates on religion

In 2007, Harris engaged in a lengthy debate with conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan on the Internet forum Beliefnet. In April 2007, Harris debated with evangelical pastor Rick Warren for Newsweek magazine. Harris also debated with Rabbi David Wolpe in 2007. In 2010, Harris joined Michael Shermer to debate with Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston on the future of God in a debate hosted by ABC News Nightline. Harris debated with Christian philosopher William Lane Craig in April 2011 on whether there can be an objective morality without God. In June and July 2018, he met with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson for a series of debates on religion, particularly the relationship between religious values and scientific fact in defining truth. Harris has also debated with the scholar Reza Aslan.

Podcast

In September 2013, Harris began releasing the Waking Up podcast (since re-titled Making Sense). Episodes vary in length but often last over two hours. Releases do not follow a regular schedule. The podcast has a large listenership.

Meditation app

In September 2018, Harris released a meditation course app, Waking Up with Sam Harris. The app provides daily meditations; long guided meditations; daily "Moments" (brief meditations and reminders); conversations with thought leaders in psychology, meditation, philosophy, psychedelics, and other disciplines; a selection of lessons on various topics, such as Mind & Emotion, Free Will, and Doing Good; and more. Users of the app are introduced to a number of types of meditation, such as mindfulness meditation, vipassanā-style meditation, loving-kindness meditation, and Dzogchen.

In September 2020, Harris announced his commitment to donate a least 10% of Waking Up's profits to highly effective charities, thus becoming the first company to sign the Giving What We Can pledge for companies. The pledge was done retroactively, taking into account the profits since the day the app launched 2 years previously.

Views

Religion

Harris is known as one of the most prominent critics of religion, and is a leading figure in the New Atheist movement. Harris is particularly opposed to what he refers to as dogmatic belief, and says that "Pretending to know things one doesn't know is a betrayal of science – and yet it is the lifeblood of religion." While purportedly opposed to religion in general and the belief systems of them, Harris believes that all religions are not created equal. Often invoking Jainism to contrast Islam as a whole, Harris highlights the difference in the specific doctrine and scripture as the main indicator of a religion's value, or lack thereof.

Islam

In 2006, Harris described Islam as "all fringe and no center," and wrote in The End of Faith that "the doctrine of Islam [...] represents a unique danger to all of us", arguing that the War on terror is really a war against Islam. In 2014, Harris said he considers Islam to be "especially belligerent and inimical to the norms of civil discourse", as it involves what Harris considers to be "bad ideas, held for bad reasons, leading to bad behavior." In 2015 Harris and secular Islamic activist Maajid Nawaz cowrote Islam and the Future of Tolerance. In this book, Harris argues that the word Islamophobia is a "pernicious meme", a label which prevents discussion about the threat of Islam. Harris has been described in 2020 by Jonathan Matusitz, Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida, as "a champion of the counter-jihad left".

Christianity

Harris is critical of the Christian right in politics in the United States, blaming them for the political focus on "pseudo-problems like gay marriage." He is also critical of liberal Christianity—as represented, for instance, by the theology of Paul Tillich—which he argues claims to base its beliefs on the Bible despite actually being influenced by secular modernity. He further states that in so doing liberal Christianity provides rhetorical cover to fundamentalists.

Spirituality

Harris holds that there is "nothing irrational about seeking the states of mind that lie at the core of many religions. Compassion, awe, devotion, and feelings of oneness are surely among the most valuable experiences a person can have."

Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.

— Sam Harris, 

Harris rejects the dichotomy between spirituality and rationality, favoring a middle path that preserves spirituality and science but does not involve religion. He writes that spirituality should be understood in light of scientific disciplines like neuroscience and psychology. Science, he contends, can show how to maximize human well-being, but may fail to answer certain questions about the nature of being, answers to some of which he says are discoverable directly through our experience. His conception of spirituality does not involve a belief in any god.

In Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (2014), Harris describes his experience with Dzogchen, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice, and recommends it to his readers. He writes that the purpose of spirituality (as he defines it – he concedes that the term's uses are diverse and sometimes indefensible) is to become aware that our sense of self is illusory, and says this realization brings both happiness and insight into the nature of consciousness. This process of realization, he argues, is based on experience and is not contingent on faith.

Science and morality

In The Moral Landscape, Harris argues that science answers moral problems and can aid human well-being.

Free will

Harris says the idea of free will "cannot be mapped on to any conceivable reality" and is incoherent. Harris writes in Free Will that neuroscience "reveals you to be a biochemical puppet."

Social and political views

Harris describes himself as a liberal, and states that he supports raising taxes on the wealthy, decriminalizing drugs and legalizing same-sex marriage. In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Harris said that he supported most of the criticism against Bush administration's war in Iraq, and all criticism of fiscal policy and the administration's treatment of science. Harris also said that liberalism has grown "dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world" when it comes to threats allegedly posed by Islamic fundamentalism. He is a registered Democrat.

During the 2016 United States presidential election, Harris supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party presidential primaries against Bernie Sanders, and despite calling her "a terribly flawed candidate for the presidency," he favored her in the general election and came out strongly in opposition to Donald Trump's candidacy. Harris has criticized Trump for lying, stating in 2018 that Trump "has assaulted truth more than anyone in human history." During the 2020 United States presidential election, Harris supported Andrew Yang in the Democratic primaries. Harris also introduced Yang to podcaster Joe Rogan.

Artificial intelligence

Harris has discussed existential risk from artificial general intelligence in depth. He has given a TED talk on the topic, arguing it will be a major threat in the future and criticizing the paucity of human interest on the subject. He argues the dangers from artificial intelligence (AI) follow from three premises: that intelligence is the result of physical information processing, that humans will continue innovation in AI, and that humans are nowhere near the maximum possible extent of intelligence. Harris states that even if superintelligent AI is five to ten decades away, the scale of its implications for human civilization warrant discussion of the issue in the present.

Reception

Reception of Harris's ideas has spanned a range of topics and come from a variety of journalistic and academic sources.

Harris's first two books, in which he lays out his criticisms of religion, received negative reviews from Christian scholars. From secular sources, the books received a mixture of negative reviews and positive reviews. In his review of The End of Faith, American historian Alexander Saxton criticized what he called Harris's "vitriolic and selective polemic against Islam," (emphasis in original) which he said "obscure[s] the obvious reality that the invasion of Iraq and the War against Terror are driven by religious irrationalities, cultivated and conceded to, at high policy levels in the U.S., and which are at least comparable to the irrationality of Islamic crusaders and Jihadists." By contrast, Stephanie Merritt wrote of the same book that Harris's "central argument in The End of Faith is sound: religion is the only area of human knowledge in which it is still acceptable to hold beliefs dating from antiquity and a modern society should subject those beliefs to the same principles that govern scientific, medical or geographical inquiry - particularly if they are inherently hostile to those with different ideas."

Harris's next two books, which discuss philosophical issues relating to ethics and free will, received several negative academic reviews. In his review of The Moral Landscape, neuroscientist Kenan Malik criticized Harris for not engaging adequately with philosophical literature: "Imagine a sociologist who wrote about evolutionary theory without discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, Mayr, Hamilton, Trivers or Dawkins on the grounds that he did not come to his conclusions by reading about biology and because discussing concepts such as 'adaptation', 'speciation', 'homology', 'phylogenetics' or 'kin selection' would 'increase the amount of boredom in the universe'. How seriously would we, and should we, take his argument?" Philosopher Daniel Dennett argued that Harris's book Free Will successfully refuted the common understanding of free will, but that he failed to respond adequately to the compatibilist understanding of free will. Dennett said the book was valuable because it expressed the views of many eminent scientists, but that it nonetheless contained a "veritable museum of mistakes" and that "Harris and others need to do their homework if they want to engage with the best thought on the topic." On the other hand, The Moral Landscape received a largely positive review from psychologists James Diller and Andrew Nuzzolilli. Additionally, Free Will received a mixed academic review from philosopher Paul Pardi, who acknowledged that while it suffers from some conceptual confusions and that the core argument is a bit too 'breezy', it serves as a "good primer on key ideas in physicalist theories of freedom and the will".

Harris's book on spirituality and meditation received mainly positive reviews as well as some mixed reviews. It was praised by Frank Bruni, for example, who described it as "so entirely of this moment, so keenly in touch with the growing number of Americans who are willing to say that they do not find the succor they crave, or a truth that makes sense to them, in organized religion."

Harris has been accused of Islamophobia by journalist Glenn Greenwald and linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky. Greenwald wrote that Harris's Islamophobia is revealed by his statements such as: "the people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists," and "[t]he only future devout Muslims can envisage — as Muslims — is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, politically subjugated, or killed." After Harris and Chomsky exchanged a series of emails on terrorism and U.S. foreign policy in 2015, Chomsky said Harris had not prepared adequately for the exchange and that this revealed his work as unserious. Kyle Schmidlin also wrote in Salon that he considered Chomsky the winner of the exchange because Harris's arguments relied excessively on thought experiments with little application to the real world. In a 2016 interview with Al Jazeera English's UpFront, Chomsky further criticized Harris, saying he "specializes in hysterical, slanderous charges against people he doesn't like."

Harris has countered that his views on this and other topics are frequently misrepresented by "unethical critics" who "deliberately" regard his words out of context. He has also criticized the validity of the term Islamophobia. "My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences, but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people," he wrote following a disagreement with actor Ben Affleck in October 2014 on the show Real Time with Bill Maher. Affleck had described Harris's and host Bill Maher's views on Muslims as "gross" and "racist," and Harris's statement that "Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas" as an "ugly thing to say." Affleck also compared Harris's and Maher's rhetoric to that of people who use antisemitic canards or define African-Americans in terms of intraracial crime. Several conservative American media pundits in turn criticized Affleck and praised Harris and Maher for broaching the topic, saying that discussing it had become a "taboo."

Harris's dialogue on Islam with Maajid Nawaz received a combination of positive reviews and mixed reviews. Irshad Manji wrote: "Their back-and-forth clarifies multiple confusions that plague the public conversation about Islam." Of Harris specifically, she said "[he] is right that liberals must end their silence about the religious motives behind much Islamist terror. At the same time, he ought to call out another double standard that feeds the liberal reflex to excuse Islamists: Atheists do not make nearly enough noise about hatred toward Muslims."

In April 2017, Harris stirred controversy by hosting the social scientist Charles Murray on his podcast, discussing topics including the heritability of IQ and race and intelligence. Harris stated the invitation was out of indignation at a violent protest against Murray at Middlebury College the month before and not out of particular interest in the material at hand. The podcast episode garnered significant criticism, most notably from Vox and Slate. Harris and Murray were defended by conservative commentators Andrew Sullivan and Kyle Smith, as well as by neuroscientist Richard Haier, who stated that the points Murray claimed were mainstream actually do receive broad scientific support. Harris and Vox editor-at-large Ezra Klein later discussed the affair in a podcast interview, where Klein criticized Harris for rebuking tribalism in the form of identity politics while failing to recognize his own version of tribalism. Hatewatch staff at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) wrote that members of the "skeptics" movement, of which Harris is "one of the most public faces," help to "channel people into the alt-right." Bari Weiss wrote in her opinion column that the SPLC had misrepresented Harris's views.

Harris was profiled by Weiss in The New York Times as part of the "Intellectual Dark Web" (a term coined semi-ironically by Eric Weinstein). She described the group as "a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation — on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums — that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now." In November 2020, Harris stated that he does not identify as a part of that group.

In 2018, Robert Wright, a visiting professor of science and religion at Union Theological Seminary, published an article in Wired criticizing Harris, whom he described as "annoying" and "deluded". Wright wrote that Harris, despite claiming to be a champion of rationality, ignored his own cognitive biases and engaged in faulty and inconsistent arguments in his book The End of Faith. He wrote that "the famous proponent of New Atheism is on a crusade against tribalism but seems oblivious to his own version of it." Wright wrote that these biases are rooted in natural selection and impact everyone, but that they can be mitigated when acknowledged, whereas Harris offered no such acknowledgement.

The UK Business Insider included Harris's podcast in their list of "8 podcasts that will change how you think about human behavior" in 2017, and PC Magazine included it in their list of "The Best Podcasts of 2018." In January 2020, Max Sanderson included Harris's podcast as a "Producer pick" in a "podcasts of the week" section for The Guardian.

Recognition

Harris's first book, The End of Faith (2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction.

The Waking Up podcast won the 2017 Webby Award for "People's Voice" in the category "Science & Education" under "Podcasts & Digital Audio".

Harris was included on a list of the "100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People 2019" in the Watkins Review, a publication of Watkins Books, a London esoterica bookshop.

Personal life

Harris is a martial arts student and practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

In 2004, he married Annaka Gorton, an author and editor of nonfiction and scientific books. They have two daughters, and live in Los Angeles.

In September 2020, Harris became a member of Giving What We Can, an effective altruism organization whose members pledge to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities, both as an individual and as a company with Waking Up.

Afghan refugees

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Afghan refugees are citizens of Afghanistan who were compelled to abandon their country as a result of major wars, persecution, torture and genocide. The 1978 Saur Revolution followed by the 1979 Soviet invasion marked the first wave of internal displacement and international migration from Afghanistan to neighboring Iran and Pakistan. Smaller number went north and began residing in various cities across the then Soviet Union. When the Soviet forces left Afghanistan in February 1989, many refugees returned to their homeland. They again migrated to neighboring countries during and after the Afghan Civil War (1992–1996).

Afghanistan became one of the largest refugee-producing countries in the world.^[1] Over 6 million Afghan refugees were residing in both Iran and Pakistan in the year 2000.^[2] Currently, they are the third largest group after Venezuelan refugees and Syrian refugees.^[3] Some countries that were part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) established special programs to allow thousands of Afghans to resettle in North America or Europe.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]} As stateless refugees or asylum seekers, they are protected by the well-established non-refoulement principle and the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

They receive the maximum government benefits and protections in countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.^[16][17] For example, those that receive green cards under 8 U.S.C. § 1159 can immediately become "non-citizen nationals" of the United States pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1452(b), without needing to meet the requirements of 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a).^[18] This allows them to travel with distinct United States passports.^[19] Australia provides a similar benefit to admitted refugees.

Contents

• 1 Internal displacement
• 2 Neighboring and regional countries
  • 2.1 Pakistan
  • 2.2 Iran
  • 2.3 India
• 3 International aid
• 4 Statistics
• 5 Human rights abuses
• 6 See also
• 7 References
  • 7.1 Citations
  • 7.2 Sources
• 8 External links

Internal displacement

There are over one million internally displaced people in Afghanistan.^[20] Most Afghans experience displacement as a result of military actions and violence by the warring factions, although there are also reasons of major natural disasters.^[21] The Soviet invasion caused approximately 2 million Afghans to be internally displaced, mostly from rural areas into urban areas.^[21] The Afghan Civil War (1992–1996) caused a new wave of internal displacement, with many citizens moving to northern areas in order to avoid the Taliban totalitarianism.^[21] Afghanistan continues to suffer from insecurity and conflict, which has led to an increase in internal displacement.^[22][23][24]

Neighboring and regional countries

Further information: Afghan diaspora

Native people from Afghanistan lawfully reside and work in about 92 countries around the world.^[25][26] About three in four Afghans have gone through internal and/or external displacement in their life.^[21] Unlike in certain other countries, all admitted refugees and those granted asylum in the United States are statutorily eligible for permanent residency (green card) and then U.S. nationality or U.S. citizenship.^[18] All of their children automatically become Americans if they fulfill all of the requirements of 8 U.S.C. § 1408(4), 8 U.S.C. § 1431(a) or 8 U.S.C. § 1433(a).^[27] This extends their privileges, and gives all of them additional international protection against any unlawful threat or harm.^[28]

Pakistan

Main article: Afghans in Pakistan

The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is the Durand Line. Most Afghan refugees in Pakistan reside in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, not very far from the Durand Line.

Approximately 1,438,432 registered Afghan refugees and asylum seekers temporarily reside in Pakistan under the care and protection of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).^{[25][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]} Of these, 58.1% reside and work in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 22.8% in Balochistan, 11.7% in Punjab, 4.6% in Sindh, 2.4% in the capital Islamabad and 0.3% in Azad Kashmir.^[31][33] Most were born and raised in Pakistan in the last four decades but are considered citizens of Afghanistan.^[36] They are free to return to Afghanistan under a voluntary repatriation program or move to any other country of the world and be firmly resettled there.

Since 2002, around 4.4 million Afghan citizens have been repatriated through the UNHCR from Pakistan to Afghanistan.^[31][37] Members of the Taliban and their family reside among the Afghan refugees in Pakistan.^{[38][39][40][41][42]} Others such as the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants and their family members, who are awaiting to be resettled in the United States,^{[4][5][9][10]} are also residing in Pakistan. Regarding the Taliban, Prime Minister of Pakistan stated the following:

What the Taliban are doing or are not doing has nothing to do with us. We are neither responsible, nor the spokesperson for the Taliban.^[43]

— Imran Khan, July 2021

Iran

Main article: Afghans in Iran

Afghan children at Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Esfahan, Iran. (2007)

As of October 2020, there are 780,000 registered Afghan refugees and asylum seekers temporarily residing in Iran under the care and protection of the UNHCR.^{[25][29][44][45]} The majority of them were born in Iran during the last four decades but are still considered citizens of Afghanistan. According to Iranian officials, 2 million citizens of Afghanistan who have no legal documents and over half a million Iranian visa holders also reside in various parts of the country.^[44][45] Iran has long been used by Afghans to reach Turkey and then Europe where they apply for political asylum.^[46][47][48] As in Pakistan, the Afghan refugees are not firmly settled but reside there on a temporary basis.

Iran's initial response towards Afghan refugees, driven by religious solidarity, was an open door policy where Afghans in Iran had freedom of movement to travel or work in any city in addition to subsidies for propane, gasoline, certain food items and even health coverage.^[49][50] In the early 2000s, Iran's Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants Affairs (BAFIA) initiated registration of all foreigners, including refugees. It began issuing temporary residence cards to certain Afghans.^[51] In 2000, the Iranian government also initiated a joint repatriation program with the UNHCR.^[51] Laws were passed in order to encourage the repatriation of Afghan refugees, such as limits on employment, areas of residence, and access to services including education.^[51]

India

Main article: Afghans in India

India hosts approximately 15,806 Afghan refugees within its borders.^[29][52][53] The majority of them reside and work in the nation's capital Delhi, specifically in the neighborhoods of Lajpat Nagar, Bhogal and Malviya Nagar.^[52] Some of them operate "shops, restaurants and pharmacies."^[52] India became a host for Afghan refugees in the Soviet–Afghan War in 1971.^[54] Much of Afghanistan's Christian community thrives within India.^[55] In 2021, following the end of the War in Afghanistan, India offered an emergency visa (the 'e-Emergency X-Misc Visa') to all Afghan nationals, regardless of their religion.^[56][54]

International aid

Due to the ongoing conflict, insecurity, unemployment, and poverty in Afghanistan, the Afghan government has had difficulty coping with its internally displaced population in addition to the influx of returnees in a short period of time. In order to meet the needs of returning refugees, the UN has appealed the international community for $240 million in humanitarian assistance.^[20]

In March of 2003, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the UNHCR signed a tripartite agreement, as an effort to facilitate voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees.^[57] In 2015, the high level segment of the UNHCR's 66th Executive Committee meeting concentrated on Afghan refugees. This was an effort to bring international attention and promote sustainable solutions for the Afghan refugee situation.^[26]

Statistics

As shown in the chart below, Afghan refugees were admitted to other countries during the following periods:

• Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989)
• Afghan Civil War (1992–96)
• Taliban Rule (1996–2001)
• War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

Country	Soviet–Afghan War (1979–89)	Civil War (1992–96)	Taliban Rule (1996–2001)	War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
Pakistan	3,100,000 [58]			1,438,432	[25][29][31][30][33]
Iran	3,100,000 [58]			780,000	[25][29][44]
Germany				147,994	[25]
Turkey				129,323	[29]
Austria				40,096	[25][59]
France				31,546	[25]
Sweden				29,927	[25]
Greece				21,456	[25]
India				15,806	[29][60]
United States				15,490	[61][62]
Switzerland				14,523	[25]
Italy				12,096	[25]
Australia				10,659	[25]
United Kingdom				9,351	[25]
Indonesia				7,629	[29][63][25]
Tajikistan		1,161 [64]	15,336 [64]	5,573	[25]
Netherlands				5,212	[25]
Belgium				4,689	[25]
Norway				4,007	[25]
Finland				3,331	[25]
Malaysia				2,661	[29][25]
Romania				2,384	[65]
Canada				2,261	[25]
Denmark				2,134	[25]

Human rights abuses

See also: Deportation of Afghan refugees from the United States

Human rights abuses against admitted Afghan refugees and asylum seekers have been documented widely. This include mistreatment, persecution or torture in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Hungary, Germany, the United States and in several other NATO-members states.^[66][17] Afghans living in Iran, for example, were deliberately restricted from attending public schools.^[67][68][69] As the price of citizenship for their family members, Afghan children as young as 14 were recruited to fight in Iraq and Syria for a six-month tour.^[70]

Afghan refugees were regularly denied visa to travel between countries to visit their family members, faced long delays (usually a few years)^[71] in processing of their visa applications to visit family members for purposes such as weddings, gravely ill family member, burial ceremonies, and university graduation ceremonies; potentially violating rights including free movement, right to family life and the right to an effective remedy.^[72][73][74] Racism, low wage jobs including below minimum wage jobs, lower than inflation rate salary increases, were commonly practiced in Europe and elswhere. Many Afghan refugees were not permitted to visit their family members for a decade or two. Studies have shown abnormally high mental health issues and suicide rates among Afghan refugees and their children.^{[75][76][77][78][79][80]}