Of flags and guest lectures
A cartoon about Orban's anti-LGBTQ crusade and some words about Ann Telnaes' guest lecture in The Hague.
Orban’s Hungary against LGBTQ+
Ann Telnaes’ Press Freedom Lecture
Last Monday, I had the pleasure and honour of attending a guest lecture in the Hague by Ann Telnaes, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and press freedom advocate.
She spoke about the importance of speaking truth to power in a moment in which authoritarian power seems to run uncontrolled in many governments around the world — a prime example, the very country she lives in, the United States.
As Ann was forced to quit the Washington Post — after 16 years as one of their top cartoonists — because of censorship, her lecture and the talks that followed also focused on the struggles of our profession: economic sustainability, lawsuits, hatred, and violence. Political cartoons are under fire from multiple directions, and always at the front line, in this war, very much as the whole journalistic profession.
But, since Ann said all this much better than I could, here’s the link to her guest lecture, published on the website of the NVJ, the Dutch Association of Journalists — of which I’m a member: https://nvj.nl/actueel/persvrijheidslezing-ann-telnaes
And here’s a photo of a bunch of cartoonists, philosophers and communications experts around a table. Because another tool against the hard battles of our times is togetherness.
(from left to right: Maarten Wolterink, Stine Jensen, me, Tjeerd Royaards, Ann Telnaes, Jop Euwijk, Hajo de Reijger and Tjeerd de Boer)