When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2005, Denmark found itself at the center of a global battle about the freedom of speech. The paper’s culture editor, Flemming Rose, defended the decision to print the 12 drawings, and he quickly came to play a central part in the debate about the limitations to freedom of speech in the 21st century. In his new book, The Tyranny of Silence, Mr. Rose writes about the people and experiences that have influenced the way he views the world and his understanding of the crisis, including meetings with dissidents from the former Soviet Union and former Muslims living in Europe. He provides a personal account of an event that has shaped the debate about what it means to be a citizen in a democracy maintaining free speech and how to coexist in a world that is increasingly multicultural, multireligious, and multiethnic.
Kit Yarrow, Ph.D., is an award-winning consumer psychologist, a professor, author, consultant and speaker. Her home base is Golden Gate University, where she is a jointly appointed professor of both psychology and marketing. As part of her ongoing research on the psychology of consumers, Dr. Yarrow conducts interviews and ethnographies on a regular basis. She shares her findings and analysis in her books, Decoding the New Consumer Mind (Wiley, 2014) and Gen BuY (Wiley, 2009) which Ethan discusses with her in this interview.