David Leser

Australia has spent years building new ways to recognize suffering and combat discrimination, from dedicated envoys to public reckonings.

But are these approaches deepening division rather than healing it? Join professors Ghassan Hage and Marcia Langton and journalist David Leser in conversation with Simon Longstaff, asking the question nobody wants to ask: Is empathy killing our nation? This is the 2026 session, Paranoid Nationalism.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Uh, my name's Simon Longstaff.

I don't know if I pronounced that correctly, Ghassan... uh, in China.

He's internationally renowned for his work on anthropology of racism and on the topic, of course, of nationalism.

And then down the end there, David Leser, who's a, a Walkley Award-winning journalist who I, I just think he writes the most beautiful prose.

Uh, I'm a real admirer of every word he's ever written that I've [laughs], that I've read.