Ian Buruma (born December 28, 1951) 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.

Ian Buruma
Ian Buruma (2015)
Born	(1951-12-28) December 28, 1951 (age 70) The Hague, Netherlands
Occupation	Writer, historian
Nationality	Dutch
Genre	Nonfiction
Subject	China, Japan, Occidentalism, Orientalism

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.[1]

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.[2][3][4] He went to study at Leiden University in 1971, and obtained a Candidate degree in Chinese literature and History in 1975. He subsequently pursued postgraduate studies in Japanese cinema from 1975 to 1977 at the College of Art (Nichidai Geijutsu Gakko) of the Nihon University (Tokyo, Japan).

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[5] and has written for The Guardian.[6] He held fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin (1991) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. (1999), and he was an Alistair Horne fellow of St Antony's College in Oxford, UK. In 2000, he delivered the Huizinga Lecture (on "Neoromanticism of writers in exile") 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.[7][8]

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".[9] 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 [Ghomeshi's] behavior – how much consent was involved – I have no idea, nor is it really my concern."[10]

There was significant "outrage" over his defense of the article.[11][12][13] 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".[14] More than 100 contributors to the Review, a group of acclaimed authors that included Joyce Carol Oates and Ian McEwan, signed a letter of protest to express fears that Buruma's exit threatened intellectual culture and "the free exploration of ideas".[15][16][17][18][19]

Awards

In 2004, Buruma was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Dr.h.c.) 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".[20] He is among the 100 top global thinkers of 2010, as selected by the Foreign Policy magazine.[21] Foreign Policy explained his contribution as a public intellectual:

Many liberals these days seem at pains to establish their bona fides as tough-minded hawks when it comes to global threats, but the Dutch man of letters has made a career out of affirming the classic liberalism of the open-door variety. His writing in recent years has attracted the ire of critics who think he equivocates on the dangers of radical Islam, but Ian Buruma made his response this year with a typically judicious and politically relevant book, Taming the Gods, that reflects on the Western capacity for religious pluralism. According to Buruma, Western society is robust enough to embrace even illiberal practices, so long as these are not violent. "Living with values that one does not share", he wrote in a recent column on France's burqa ban, "is a price to be paid for living in a pluralist society".

In April 2012, he was awarded the Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life at the Princeton Theological Seminary.[22] 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.[8] He has held a number of editorial and academic positions and has been termed a "well-regarded European intellectual".[5] 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".[23] He has been a regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2001.[24]

Personal life

Buruma has been married twice. He and his first wife, Sumie Tani, had a daughter, as did he and his second wife, Hotta Eri.[25][26] Buruma is a nephew of the English film director John Schlesinger, with whom he published a series of interviews in book form.[27]

Bibliography

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (May 2018)

• Richie, Donald & Ian Buruma (1980). The Japanese Tattoo. Weatherhill.
• Buruma, Ian (1983). Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, Drifters, and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes. New American Library.
• A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture. London: Jonathan Cape. 1984. ISBN 978-0-224-02049-7.
• Tokyo: Form and Spirit (1986) with James Brandon, Kenneth Frampton, Martin Friedman, Donald Richie ISBN 978-0-8109-1690-6
• God's Dust: A Modern Asian Journey (1989) ISBN 978-0-7538-1089-7
• Great Cities of the World: Hong Kong (1991)
• Playing the Game (1991) novel ISBN 978-0-374-52633-7
• The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and in Japan (1994) ISBN 978-0-452-01156-4
• Introduction for Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art (1998) by Jodi Cobb ISBN 978-0-375-70180-1
• Voltaire's Coconuts, or Anglomania in Europe (UK title) (1998) or Anglomania: a European Love Affair (US title) (1999) ISBN 978-0-7538-0954-9
• The Pilgrimage from Tiananmen Square, The New York Times (1999)
• The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West (2000) compilation ISBN 978-0-571-21414-3
• De neo-romantiek van schrijvers in exil ("Neoromanticism of writers in exile") (2000) ISBN 978-90-446-0028-5
• Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (2001) ISBN 978-0-679-78136-3
• Inventing Japan: From Empire to Economic Miracle 1853–1964 (2003) ISBN 978-0-679-64085-1
• Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (2004) with Avishai Margalit ISBN 978-0-14-303487-2
• Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (2006) ISBN 978-1-59420-108-0 winner of The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for the Best Current Interest Book.
• Conversations with John Schlesinger (2006) ISBN 978-0-375-75763-1
• Commentary on the History of China for the time period of The Last Emperor, The Criterion Collection 2008 DVDs (ASIN: B000ZM1MIW, ISBN 978-1-60465-014-3).
• The China Lover (2008) novel ISBN 978-1-59420-194-3
• China's class ceiling, published in the Los Angeles Times
• Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents (2010) ISBN 978-0-691-13489-5, with some historical examples of the value the separation of religion and national governance with the separation of church and state as one example.
• Grenzen aan de vrijheid: van De Sade tot Wilders (Limits to Freedom: From De Sade to Wilders) (2010) ISBN 978-90-477-0262-7 – Essay for the Month of Philosophy in the Netherlands.
• Year Zero: A History of 1945. New York, NY: The Penguin Press. 2013. ISBN 978-1-59420-436-4.
• "The Man Who Got It Right", The New York Review of Books (2013)
• Theater of Cruelty: Art, Film, and the Shadows of War (2014) ISBN 978-1-59017-777-8
• — (July 20, 2015). "The Sensualist: What Makes 'The Tale of Genji' So Seductive". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 91 (20): 64–71.[lower-alpha 1]
• Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War (2016)
• — (June 19, 2017). "Dance with the Dragon: Are the United States and China on a Collision Course?". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 93 (17): 61–66.[lower-alpha 2]
• A Tokyo Romance. New York, NY: The Penguin Press. 2018. ISBN 978-1-101-98141-2.
• The Churchill Complex: The Rise and Fall of the Special Relationship and the End of the Anglo-American Order. United Kingdom: Atlantic Books. 2020. ISBN 978-1-78649-465-8.[lower-alpha 3]

Notes

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ian Buruma.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Ian Buruma.

• Official Website, with curriculum vitae
• Column archive at Project Syndicate
• Column archive at The Guardian
• Column archive at The New York Review of Books
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Ian Buruma at IMDb
• Works by or about Ian Buruma in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Ian Buruma collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Article archive at Journalisted

Interviews

• Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Ian Buruma from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Ian Buruma discusses A Murder in Amsterdam FORA.tv