Jacob Mchangama

Jacob Mchangama (born 1978) is a Danish lawyer, human-rights expert, and social commentator who is the founder and director of Justitia, a Copenhagen think tank focusing on human rights and the rule of law. For six years he served as chief legal counsel at CEPOS.^[1][2]

Early life and education

In 2003, he received a cand.jur. degree from the University of Copenhagen. In 2004, after studying in Venice and Strasbourg, he received a degree in human rights and democratization from the European Inter-University Centre.

Career

He was an assistant professor in International Human Rights at the University of Copenhagen from 2005 to 2007, and an adjunct professor there from 2007 to 2012.

From 2004 to 2007 he was a paralegal at Evershes. From 2007 to 2008 he was an attorney at Plesner. From 2008 to 2014 he was a chief legal counsel at CEPOS. He founded Justicia in 2014, and has been its director since that time.^[3][4]

Writings

Mchangama has contributed extensively to such publications as the Danish newspaper Information^[5] and Berlingske Tidende,^[6] the Norwegian website Minerva,^[7] and the American journals National Review and Foreign Affairs.^[8] He has written on such subjects as the oppression of women in Islam http://www.nationalreview.com/author/jacob-mchangama,^[9] the mass rapes in Cologne on New Year's Eve 2016 http://mchangama.blogs.berlingske.dk/2016/01/11/koln-og-det-vaerdimaessige-ophorsudsalg/,^[10] and the danger of laws against “hate speech,”^[11] blasphemy,^[12] and Koran-burning.^[13]

He reported in August 2011 that the European left was using the recent mass murder in Norway “to argue for limiting free speech” on the grounds that certain speech “can lead to murder.” Mchangama strongly challenged this premise.

In a February 2012 article, he maintained that “the combination of a debt crisis, an aging population addicted to public welfare benefits, one and a half decades of low growth rates, and increasing competition...is revealing the dark underbelly of welfarism” in Denmark. “It is not an overstatement,” he claimed, “to say that the balance between the state and the individual has been shifted decisively in favor of the state.” Because of a growing need for higher tax income, the Danish government was now harassing citizens in ways that violated their rights, and was dangerously skewing “the balance between public welfare and the free market...in favour of the former,” thus revealing the tendency of the welfare state to eat away at “the capitalist foundation which sustains it” and the fact that welfare ultimately “comes not only at the expense of economic freedom but also individual freedom and choice.”^[14]

In March 2013 Mchangama dismissed the “putative consensus” around UN Human Rights Counsil Resolution 16/18, which was seen as resolving divisions between free-speech advocates and those who would criminalize defamation of religion, as a “charade.” While the US saw the resolution as affrming First Amendment-style speech rights, Pakistan saw it as banning “advocacy of religious hatred.” In the middle were Europeans, who, Mchangama pointed out, were often eager to defend Islam from criticism. While praising the US for “standing firm on the need to counter intolerance and hatred through debate rather than censorship,” Mchangama called on the US to vigorously confront other interpretations of R 16/18.^[14]

A February 2015 essay on the 26th anniversary of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie criticized the widespread notion that “free speech should not be 'abused' to insult the religious convictions of minorities,” and cited a recent speech by Barack Obama stating that when “we defend the legal right of a person to insult another’s religion, we’re equally obligated to use our free speech to condemn such insults.” Mchangama challenged this view, noting a recent London demo by Muslims who “were perfectly happy to exercise their right to free speech and association” but whose “core message was that those very rights should be denied to those with whom they disagree, and that insult to religious feelings is a kind of extremism not too dissimilar from that of the murder of cartoonists.”^[15]

In a March 2, 2015, Wall Street Journal op-ed, Mchangama lamented the “long-running pattern” in Europe “of bending to Islamist 'outrage' instead of defending free speech for all.” He noted with dismay that Denmark's current prime minister, Helle Thorning Schmidt, had demanded in 2006 that then-Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen distance himself from the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, that the Danish newspaper Politiken had agreed to a 2010 settlement in which it apologized for offending Muslims by reprinting Muhammed cartoons, and that Denmark’s former minister of foreign affairs, Uffe Ellemann Jensen, had expressed no sympathy for cartoonist Lars Vilks after an attempt on his life, saying that Vilks “had asked and begged to be attacked.” Mchangama warned against the rise of “offense creep,” whereby jihadists were being permitted to limit debate, and urged the democratic West to push back.^[16]

In April 2017, writing for The Washington Post, Mchangama called for Denmark to end its law of banning blasphemy. He noted that, while Denmark ranked first in the 2016 "Rule of Law Index," the country shares a ban on blasphemy similar to that of countries like Iran and Pakistan.^[17]

Honors and awards

Mchangama received the Venstre Party's Freedom Prize in 2013 for his involvement in the public debate about rights in Denmark and abroad. In his acceptance speech, Mchangama underscored that freedom and democracy do not come naturally – they need to be fought for as hard in a country like Denmark as in any other part of the world. “No one has won freedom by being silent.”

References

External links

• Foreign Policy articles written by Mchangama