Has the Nation Stunted Our Moral Imagination?

April 11, 2025

Has the Nation Stunted Our Moral Imagination?

Pankaj Mishra in Conversation with Nesrine Malik and Mohsin Hamid

The resurgence of nationalism worldwide is having a catastrophic impact, abetting xenophobia, trade conflict, and war. Has the nation-state, a decaying nineteenth century form which increasingly asserts itself through desperate lunges for territory and resources, prevented the growth of our moral imagination? Pankaj Mishra explored these questions in conversation with Nesrine Malik and Mohsin Hamid.

This event was co-sponsored by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and is the first of three webinars in advance of the Georgetown Global Dialogues in Rome.

Participants

Nesrine Malik

Nesrine Malik is an acclaimed British Sudanese author and journalist known for her wide-ranging commentary on issues of race, identity, politics, and international affairs. She is the author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent (2019) and has columns in leading outlets including the Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post that address topics ranging from Islamophobia and feminism to African politics, with deep insights into the ways colonial and postcolonial legacies shape our contemporary world. Malik received the 2021 Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism.

Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid is an acclaimed British Pakistani author known for creative fiction and commentary that address contemporary global issues. His recent novels include The Last White Man (2022) and Exit West (2017), which received the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. His book The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and later adapted into a successful film. Hamid’s engagement with themes of political turmoil, cultural displacement, and shifting individual and collective identities informs his influential essays on contemporary affairs in leading outlets including The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Paris Review.

Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra (moderator) is a renowned Indian author, essayist, and literary critic with a global readership. Two of his prize-winning books, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals who Remade Asia (2012) and Age of Anger: A History of the Present (2017), explore the history of colonialism and its enduring legacies in our contemporary global era. Mishra is also the author of two critically acclaimed novels: The Romantics (1999) and Run and Hide (2022). His columns and essays have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books, among other outlets. Mishra is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.