Sunita Sah’s Defy explores what it takes to speak out against authority
In an age where “speaking truth to power” has become both a rallying cry and a personal risk, Sunita Sah’s Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes is a thoughtful, if at times narrowly-focused, meditation on how and when to say “no” in an age that too often rewards silence, submission and complicity.
Sah, a professor of organizational psychology at Cornell University, sets out to explore a deceptively simple, though profoundly important question. When should someone who has been raised to be compliant, polite and cooperative defy authority? This question resonates far beyond academic debate. It is a challenge most professionals will face at some point in their careers.
The book is built around three questions Sah encourages readers to ask themselves: what kind of situation is this? Who am I? What does a person like me do in a situation like this? These reflective prompts form the core of a model that moves away from Stanley Milgram’s famous binary depiction of obedience versus defiance. Sah instead maps a spectrum that begins with uneasy compliance, passes through questioning, and eventually arrives at the courage
to resist.
Sah draws on powerful case studies, including Rosa Parks’ defiance of segregation, Greta Thunberg’s climate protests, and whistleblowers like Jeffrey Wigand, who exposed tobacco tampering in the 1990s. These narratives are compelling, but their repetition underlines one of the book’s key limitations: its lens remains largely trained on the US and UK.
Refreshingly, however, Defy does not romanticize resistance. Sah is clear-eyed about the risks – damaged careers, personal loss, even threats to physical safety. She is pragmatic too: sometimes, the wisest course is to delay defiance until you’re in a stronger position, such as when you’ve left the organization, gained seniority, or earned a reputation that insulates you from retaliation. The emphasis on strategic timing over impulsive reaction is one of the book’s most valuable insights.
The most compelling sections are those where Sah draws on her own experience. Raised in a British Asian family where being a “good girl” meant working hard and respecting authority, she reveals how her self-image as someone afraid to speak up evolved into a professional identity as someone perceived as outspoken. Her personal story gives the book its heart.
Yet even here, a note of tension lingers. Sah’s anecdote about feeling intimidated into undergoing an unnecessary X-ray, despite being a fully qualified medical doctor at an Ivy League institution, raises questions about how well she can truly grasp the paralysis felt by those with far less privilege.
To be fair, Sah offers no glib solutions. Defiance, she argues, must be grounded in clarity about one’s values, and must often be built through years of preparation and practice – through small acts of resistance that accumulate into larger moments of courage. She distinguishes between authentic defiance and the kind of posturing that merely mimics dissent to blend in or gain social capital. True defiance, she insists, is not performance, but conviction.
Still, the book avoids harder questions. Is there such a thing as too much defiance – enough to fracture teams, destabilize businesses or polarize communities? And how should dissent be handled in high-stakes, hierarchical environments like the military, where obedience is often a prerequisite for survival? These questions remain largely unexamined.
Despite its limitations, Defy is a timely and engaging read, offering no easy answers but plenty of food for thought. In an era where the cost of silence can be as high as the cost of speaking out, Sah’s message is both sobering and empowering. Saying no is a matter not simply of courage, but of careful preparation, values-based reflection, and knowing when the time is right.
Piers Cain is a management consultant
