PARANOID NATIONALISM
As public debates become increasingly organised around historical grievances, identity and trauma, has Australia’s multicultural project become a competition for recognition, attention and moral authority?
With dedicated envoys combatting particular forms of discrimination and growing demands for public recognition of communal suffering, Australia appears to be experimenting with new ways of responding to difference. But do these approaches for empathy build solidarity or deepen division?
Can a nation hold multiple histories of pain without them becoming rival claims for belonging?
Ghassan Hage
Ghassan Hage is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a fellow of both the Australian and the British Academies of the Social Sciences. He has held prestigious visiting professorship all over the world including at Harvard and the Collège de France in Paris. He is currently a Distinguished Research Fellow at Zhejiang University in China. He is internationally renown for his work on the anthropology of racism and nationalism.
Marcia Langton
Marcia Langton holds the Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne and is an anthropologist and geographer who has made extensive contributions to Indigenous knowledge and advocacy for Indigenous rights. She is a descendant of the Yiman and Bidjara peoples. She is Director of the Indigenous Studies Unit of Onemda at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Her research subjects include alcohol-related family and domestic violence, Indigenous alcohol management plans, racism, and Indigenous culture and art.
David Leser
David Leser is a two-time Walkley award-winning journalist and author of seven books, including his memoir To Begin to Know, shortlisted for the 2015 National Biography award, and Women, Men & the Whole Damn Thing, his 2019 study of the history of patriarchy and misogyny in the age of #MeToo. A former Middle East and Washington correspondent, David is a former staff writer and regular contributor to Good Weekend magazine and columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. David’s book Light Sleeper: Memoir of a Troubled Jew is being published by Penguin Random House in November 2026.
Michael Williams
Michael Williams is the editor of The Monthly. He was previously the artistic director of Sydney Writers’ Festival. He has spent the past decade at the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas in Melbourne as its founding Head of Programming in 2009 and then as its Director from September 2011. A regular host and interviewer for literary and ideas events around Australia – including a long-standing association with Sydney Writers’ Festival – his background is in publishing and broadcasting. He has hosted two shows on ABC Radio National – Blueprint for Living (2015–2016) and Talkfest (2017–2018) – was a regular on ABC TV’s The Book Club and remains a regular guest on ABC radio and TV. Michael has also worked as a breakfast presenter for Melbourne’s 3RRR, as a member of the Australia Council’s Literature Board, in publishing in Australia and New York and has written extensively for The Guardian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and elsewhere. He is currently also host of the Readings Big Book Club and the podcast Read This.
We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation - the custodians of the country on which we meet - and acknowledge their Elders, past and present.
The views and opinions expressed by the Festival participants are not necessarily the views of The Ethics Centre and our partners.