President Tharman's ICCS 2025 keynote

In his ICCS 2025 keynote, Tharman argues multiculturalism is in retreat and social cohesion is weakening worldwide. The Edelman Trust Barometer finds over half of global respondents see their society as more divided than at any time in living memory, and only 20% would live near someone holding different views. A Focal Data study across the US, UK, and six European countries identifies the strongest predictor of voting for the far right not as immigration but as the belief that minorities have better job opportunities than whites. Economic insecurity converts identity into a political weapon, and the Overton window has shifted — hate speech is more acceptable, and politicians often lead that shift.

Tharman names three drivers. First, failure to integrate immigrants, most acute in Europe. Second, the polarizing effect of fragmented media and social media algorithms — the ad-based business model rewards maximizing attention through negative content, and AI will accelerate this. Third, the growing isolation of life in advanced countries — post-pandemic, people meet at home, eat delivered food, and consume screens privately in every room of newly designed apartments. The everyday interactions that once helped people accept difference are weakening.

His response works on four fronts. Education — public school systems must mix children of all backgrounds in and out of class, and must visibly uplift those who start behind. Urban design — over 75% of Singapore's population lives in integrated estates that mix ethnicities and incomes at every block, with shared facilities for sport, learning, and play; Denmark is now redeveloping what it calls ghettos and providing preschool language support for immigrants. Media — the EU's Digital Services Act holds large platforms accountable for content and forces them to dial back algorithmic amplification of disinformation; Singapore, Australia, and others are following. Some call it overregulation, but a regulated landscape beats letting society unravel. Fourth, a culture of everyday respect — not just a source of unity but of mutual upliftment, because knowing someone backs you is the strongest motivation to rise.

Caption language: en · Fetched: 2026-05-02

As we look around the world, we see multiculturalism in retreat and social cohesion weakening in too many societies. The Edelman trust barometer is one indication of this. It's a very large scale global survey done each year and it found that more than half of all respondents globally felt that their societies were now more divided than at any time in living memory. More than half now felt they lived in more divided societies than they could ever remember and only 20% of respondents said they would live near someone who had different views from them. So just think about that. Just think about that. These f facts reflect a mix of factors besides a waning enthusiasm for multiculturalism. They also reflect political polarization which is advancing on the world with the weakening of the moderate middle ground and the rise of the extremes.

Particularly the rise of parties of the radical right. parties which preach overtly or sometimes subtly exclusion. Exclusion of other cultures, other races, other nationalities. What is most worrying is the way in which culture and identity is being injected into economic debates, economic contention, identity and even exclusionary views, you could call them reactionary views, have always been lurking below the surface. But economic insecurity or at least the perception that I am losing and someone else is winning converts identity and culture into a more virulent a more divisive political weapon. The data tells us what is happening.

One study done by a polling firm focal data of eight countries across the Atlantic, US plus Britain plus six European countries, found that the best predictor of whether someone was likely to vote for a right-wing nationalist party, a far-right party, was the belief that minorities have better access to job opportunities than white people. That was the single best predictor more than immigration, more than other conventional sources of tension between social classes. whether minorities had better job opportunities than white people. That belief was the single most important predictor of whether someone was likely to vote for the extreme right. So you can see how culture and identity are adding virolence to what have always been economic debates and sources of contention. They add virolence to the feeling that the system is not fair.

Someone else is winning and I'm losing. If you like the overturn w overturn window, a term that political scientists use for the range of views and opinions that are deemed acceptable by the mainstream. The overturn window has shifted in both the advanced democracies and younger democracies. It has now become more acceptable to propagate hate speech and very often it is politicians that take the lead. And we have seen a sharp rise in anti- minority speech in many developing countries. What has caused this phenomenon, this trend? It is not recent. It's not due to who wins elections, who has won the last elections in this or that country. The forces are somewhat deeper. I will mention just a few. First, the failure to control immigration and particularly to integrate immigrants.

And this has been most pronounced, a problem most pronounced in Europe where you have large and sudden waves of immigration and you fail to integrate people in terms of where they live, whether they live in mixed towns or live in concentrated suburbs or even towns with a very heavy concentration of immigrants makes makes a difference whether they're integrated in the workforce and seem to be contributing actively to society makes a difference. Failure to integrate immigrants leads to both under assimilated immigrants themselves and the white working class within the within these societies to lose faith in the system. So that's one factor. A second factor has been the polarizing effects of a fragmented media landscape and the rise of the social media. And I want to say immediately that there is a good argument for the social media.

It empowers many more voices around the world. It leads to free access to information and it has a democrat democratizing effect in many societies. But we can't run away from the fact that much of the social media is now shaped by algorithms run by large tech companies that themselves have a polarizing effect. We no longer live in a world where even with differences of views, we have a shared reality, a shared framework of facts upon which we base our views. We no longer live in that world because increasingly a fragmented lead media space and social media algorithms, in other words, a more divided media is leading to a more divided public and more divisive politics. It is polarizing the political landscape.

Studies have shown that regular exposure, if I have regular exposure to a feed of news and stories that accords with my ideological pref preferences, accords with my own views. It is not only meeting my preferences, it strengthens my preferences. It makes me more partisan and it polarizes. In other words, it's not just like other consumer goods where you're meeting people's preferences. Fine, people have different preferences. Here, it is shaping and accentuating partisanship and it is a polarizing force. And the advertisingbased social media business model which is dominant also has an incentive to maximize attention and it is well known that to maximize attention you propagate negative messages. This too is well known and this too is polarizing. And as if all this is not enough, wait for what is coming.

Rapid advances in AI are about to set into motion further changes. AIdriven search interfaces and chat bots may very well create a flood of synthetic media. of dubious provenence. It's not yet prevalent, but it's coming. So that's the second factor, and I'll come back to that briefly later. We have to recognize that a fragmented lead media's landscape and the rise of the social media with all its pluses has negatives which are now cascading through our whole political landscape around the world. A third factor not as much noticed is the growing isolatedness of life particularly in more advanced countries. Societies can advance economically whilst regressing socially.

And what we are seeing today is in many advanced countries and there good studies on this by sociologists that people are more likely to even postcoid post pandemic people are more likely to have meetings at home now much more than before likely to shop from home I put up my own hand more likely to eat not in the restaurant in the neighborhood, but to eat takeaways or delivered orders. More likely to be entertained at home, not go to the movies, movie theaters. Even more even more likely to be worshiing at home. Even the architecture of homes and the architects describe this is changing. Apartments are now being configured so that every room has maximum screen opportunities. In other words, you're not even meeting in the living room or the family room. Every room has its own screen exposure and apartments are now being designed that way.

So people are living lives more on their own. And the weakening of interactions that this all means, the weakening of interactions with people who live around you, people in the same town, which used to be very regular interactions in most societies, people went out. They met each other not just at work, but they went out to the bar, to the restaurant, to the movie theaters, or just hanging around in a public space. The weakening of those interactions has consequences because it was those interactions that enable people to understand differences and to accept people who disagreed with them. And this too is contributing to the loss of social cohesion. How do we respond? How do we restore trust in each other, trust in the system? How do we build shared hopes and shared purpose?

The truth is that no political system, democracies included, can give us assurance that moderate integrationist tendencies will prevail in government or amongst the people. History shows that no system gives that gives assurance of this. And too much of the evidence of recent times is that we are regressing. We are moving away from integration. We are moving away from moderate tendencies towards more polarizing behavior, views, and politics. Shared values and belief in a common future does not come naturally and there are always counterveilling sentiments below the surface. Multicultural societies must therefore be actively woven. Actively woven. Traditionally, in many societies, that meant weaving a quilt. You know what quilts are? They're very attractive. Different patches, different designs, and then they're stitched together.

You can see very clearly the very different patches on a quilt. And it's a work of art. But at times of stress, at times of economic insecurity, at times where there are polarizing forces in many societies, the quilt is easily forced apart. The stitching beacons and the stitching can be broken. So we need to weave a different cloth to sustain multiculturalism and to sustain the resilience of that cloth. We have to weave the threads differently. Weave threads of different colors, even different textures into a single tapestry. Involve many artisans in making a single piece of batique as it has been done and create a larger motif of a nation with many strands and many histories but a nation at one with itself. That is the fabric of society that we have to weave.

It requires above all building opportunities for interaction, that interweaving of lives. And it requires putting in place sensible guardrails to prevent extremism and to keep people not too far from the moderate middle even if they have differences of views. Education is still fundamental. That's where we must start. It is the most powerful tool we have for integrating people. Bring children of all backgrounds together, particularly in public school systems, regardless of ethn ethnicity and social class, and bring them together not just for classroom time, but keep them in school after classroom time. the whole range of activities, dance, music, doing their own hip-hop sports.

And equally important, equally important as the social mixing of children through an education system has to be the effectiveness of education in uplifting people of all background. Without evidence of people getting ahead on their merits with the necessary support from the government and from the community for those who start from behind. Without that evidence that people with the necessary support when they're disadvantaged can get ahead on their merits, it will be very difficult to sustain a sense of togetherness. In other words, education systems must be effective in uplifting every individual and every group. And I must say that's what we put great effort into in Singapore. Second important space for creative public policy is urban design. urban design, especially to prevent enclaves, ethnically or even socially defined enclaves.

Singapore's integrated housing estates are well known. They are unique in their scale. the fact that more than 75% of the population lives in integrated housing estates. Mix of ethnicities in every block, every precinct and the whole estate and a mix of people from different income groups, different economic vocations all the way from the poorest to the upper middle income group. Importantly, it's not just about housing. It's about the facilities for recreation, for learning, for interaction, for morning chong. I didn't do it very well, I know, but uh a whole set of activities that just bring people together, common spaces in every neighborhood where you can develop your skills in a football court or watch together or try out a new dance together. It's not just housing, it's an estate of social life.

Denmark is another very interesting example. They, like many European societies, found that it was not an advantage for social resilience to have neighborhoods with large concentrations of minorities, immigrants essentially. And they are now seeking to achieve integrated housing by redeveloping whole neighborhoods, replacing what they call ghettos and at the same time providing extra support for immigrants starting from preschool so they can learn the language early get used to local mores. I do want to mention a point which I just mentioned in the context of Singapore's housing estates. whatever the configuration of housing estates because not everyone can replicate what Singapore did starting from scratch because we started from scratch from urban slums and very poor housing conditions.

But for societies which have a legacy already of segregated neighborhoods, it is still important to provide public spaces. It is still important and it's particularly important for poor or disadvantaged teenagers to have those spaces. the athletic fields, the sports courts, public swimming pools, libraries with beautiful spaces for people to just hang out. Public spaces play a critical role and more so for disadvantaged youth. Third issue which I mentioned earlier media fragmentation and the almost intractable problem of social media algorithms and I'll have to say that this is the most complex of the problems. There's no we are nowhere near international agreement on regulation of the social media platforms. We are making advances.

There's extensive discussion taking place between the EU, many of us in the region, including Singapore and some other countries. But this is a problem that we are still very far from being able to solve. It requires bold thinking. and not leaving it to the marketplace. And that means both government and civil society has to actively work together with media companies including the tech companies to provide a safer and more sustainable landscape for democracy. It is not today sustainable. The European Union's new digital services act is a good example. They've taken the lead in several respects. They will hold the social media platforms accountable for content requiring quick removal of hate speech. We do the same in Singapore, Australia, a few other countries are doing it as as well.

They're also going further to address the algorithmic risks which pose systemic risk. They require the larger platforms to dial back on algorithmic amplification of disinformation. It's difficult. It's tricky. A lot of the onus is on the platforms themselves, but the laws are in place. the laws are in place to mitigate systemic risk. It's a start and some may say this is overregulation and so on. It is more regulation than we are used to, but far better to have a regulated media landscape and have some sacrifice to the freedom of the market than to have a society gradually unravel. There'll be no easy step off from this race between the leading tech companies and the platforms that they run. They have an incentive. They have an incentive for algorithms to keep people within their own platforms.

And as I mentioned, they have the incentive to maximize attention through negative news. So this is a algorithmic treadmill and there's no easy stepping off. It'll it can only be addressed through regulation. regulations set by the public sector but with significant civil society involvement and in fact in the case of the European Union's digital services act civil society was very actively involved in working with public sector officials in formulating the plans and with extensive interaction with the private companies themselves the established news media will also have to respond to the challenge If established news brands can show that they have a brand of journalism that's built on accuracy, fairness, and transparency. If they can show that they're reporting the world as it is and separating news from opinion.

And if they can show that when they report, when they publish opinion, they're providing different perspectives for people to appreciate without it becoming a shouting match. That will restore trust and the value of their brands. I don't hold out the Singapore media to be a model for the world, but I must say that we have fortunately been able to retain our mainstream media as by far the largest source of news for citizens by the choice of citizens because they have access to a plethora of alternatives, but they still rely on the mainstream media as their major source of news. And that must be maintained. People must have that shared reality and that common framework of facts. And if there are social media platforms that abide by the same norms and some of them do in fact that too will be providing a service.

That too will be providing a service that helps us maintain a society that is together. Fourth, we have to develop a culture of respect and solidarity that comes from actions in everyday life. There are many examples, but it requires everyone to pitch in. It's not just a job for governments, politicians and governments. It requires civil society, educators, as I mentioned earlier, the religious and community leaders and individuals too have agency. Everyday deeds and actions matter because when they're done frequently enough and people can see that they are done, they cascade. And when they cascade, they create norms. They create a culture. A community of respect is what we must aim to build in each of our societies. It goes to the heart of social cohesion and goes to the heart of multiculturalism. It is a source of unity.

That is obvious. But it's more than a source of unity. It is also a source of mutual upliftment. We uplift people not just by putting more financial resources in play and not just by opening up more more opportunities. Those are both important. We have to be willing to allocate resources to help those who have less, those who are disadvantaged. And we've got to be able to open up opportunities for all. We need both. But we also need something more. We need something more intrinsic to upliftment. And that is we need the motivation that drives people to strive to overcome difficulties and to do their best. And the respect we lend each other is the most powerful source of motivation. Knowing that there are others who are backing you, who have hope in you, who know you can do it is how we all do it and how we rise together.

Thank you very much for listening to me. [applause] Thank you his excellency for giving us much food for thought.