Controversy isn’t new to public figures. Scandals, accusations, and all sorts of salacious bits of juicy gossip constantly circulate them like a digital swarm of flies. Although controversy in itself shouldn’t discourage us from engaging with controversial figures, the tricky part lies in what kind of platform we as a community are willing to give them. The recent guest speaker, Johann Hari, and his tenuous relationship with journalistic integrity, has raised that question.
As of 2011, Hari went from The Independent’s star columnist to a disgraced journalist. In an apology published in The Independent, Hari admitted to not only rampant plagiarism since 2001 but also changing the Wikipedia pages of his critics by accusing them of homophobia, anti-semitism, and various other problematic behavior. He even embellished his own page. Most notably, Hari was exposed for fabricating his Orwell award-winning article on human rights atrocities in the Central African Republic (CAR), according to a Financial Times article. Hari claimed in his article that “Children would bring us the severed heads of their parents and scream for help, but our orders were not to help them.” In an interview with the The Telegram, non-governmental organization workers in CAR accused the journalist of inventing the claim at worst and grossly exaggerating the issue at best, and pointed out multiple inconsistencies in his quotes and holes in his stories. Additionally, Hari has been called out by multiple intellectuals across the political spectrum, ranging from Noam Chomsky to Nick Cohen, for malicious misrepresentation in his reporting.
In light of these discoveries, the Council of the Orwell Prize stripped Hari of his 2008 prize and The Independent put him on probation; Hari resigned from the newspaper after four months. He then took a two-year-long sabbatical before returning and releasing his book Chasing the Scream (2015), which detailed the horrors of the war on drugs and his own relationship with drug abuse. Hari re-framed himself as a mental health advocate, publishing two other books about anxiety and depression called Lost Connections (2018) and Stolen Focus (2022).
Hari issued a full public apology on September 15, 2011 in an Independent article acknowledging his malicious behavior and expressing genuine remorse for his misdeeds and the potential harm his dishonesty caused. He also returned his Orwell prize.
Despite his penitence, I still take issue with the way Hari continues to promote himself as a trailblazer who single-handedly broke down social norms with his new book. Hari’s new image only serves to crowd out qualified scientific voices and step over genuine research, making him seem like the lone warrior fighting for mental health. In addition, Hari’s more recent books are also under scrutiny. Notable scientific experts such as Scottish psychologist Stuart James Ritchie and neuroscientist Dean Burnett criticizing Lost Connections and Stolen Focus for their lack of evidence and deliberate misrepresentation of studies to support Hari’s claims. In particular, Hari claims “between 65 and 80% of people on antidepressants are depressed again within a year,” which Ritchie revealed was taken from a popular science book rather than a scientific study, casting severe doubt on the validity of the rest of his claims and his “reformed” journalistic integrity. This issue is particularly distressing because Hari is encouraging his readers to stop taking prescribed antidepressants, which could potentially mislead them and put them at risk. This advice is especially pernicious given the fact that depressed individuals are an incredibly vulnerable population that Hari’s dubious-at-best content is targeting.
According to Assistant Head of School for Student Life Amie Creagh, Deerfield brought in Hari with the help of Lavin, an intellectual talent agency. Dean of Students Samuel Bicknell said that Hari confirmed the practicality of the cell-phone policy’s intention to “create more opportunities for connection.” However, by allowing Hari to speak on stage, Deerfield Academy not only tolerated but also implicitly validated Hari’s stance against antidepressants and, to a degree, overlooked his past abuses. It’s wildly hypocritical to cast someone known to have plagiarized and gone directly against Deerfield’s academic values on numerous occasions. Allowing Johann Hari to rehabilitate his reputation by instrumentalizing the Deerfield student body is unacceptable. The impacts of his malicious reporting, especially since he has set his crosshairs on teenagers like Deerfield students, cannot be understated. That is not to say that everything he says is entirely wrong, but as a school so focused on promoting integrity, the Academy should be more careful when selecting future guest speakers.