The HA Journal

Our annual publication presents new scholarship on Hannah Arendt.

The HA Journal embodies the desire to remain true to Arendt’s irreverent, provocative, and vibrant spirit. As such, we publish essays that provoke, surprise, and enlighten as they speak to and about the common world.

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HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center Vol. VIII

Volume VIII of HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College includes essays by Eric Ward, John McWhorter, Etienne Balibar, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, Marc Weitzmann, and others from the Hannah Arendt Center’s 2019 annual conference, “Racism and Antisemitism.” It features an exchange between critical theory scholars Seyla Benhabib, Martin Geuss, and Martin E. Jay on the occasion of Jürgen Habermas’s 80th birthday. The volume includes three essays on Hannah Arendt and poetic thinking as well as a series of reflections from the Hannah Arendt Center’s Quote of the Week series on feminism and the political. Contributors include Peter Baehr, Roger Berkowitz, Peter Brown, Antonia Grunenberg, Samantha Hill, Eric Kaufmann, Jana Marlene Mader, Philippe Nonet, Ellen Rigsby, Jana Schmidt, Adam Shatz, and Natan Sznaider.

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Past Volumes

Volume I

Includes 12 essays based on talks originally given at three Hannah Arendt Center Conferences. “Human Being in an Inhuman Age” was held in 2010; “Lying and Politics” and “Truthtelling: Democracy in an Age without Facts” took place in 2011 and are combined here in “Truthtelling.
Volume II

Volume II includes four essays based on talks given at the 2012 Arendt Center Conference, “Does the President Matter? A Conference on the American Age of Political Disrepair.”
Volume III

Volume 3 of HA is a jam-packed double issue. It includes talks and essays given at the Hannah Arendt Center in 2013 and 2014, including at two of our annual conferences, “Failing Fast: The Educated Citizen in Crisis” and “The Unmaking of Americans: Are There Still American Values Worth Fighting For?”

Volume III
The essays manifest the Hannah Arendt Center’s unique approach to thinking about politics today, one inspired by Hannah Arendt’s bold and provocative embrace of the humanist tradition to illuminate pressing political issues.
Volume IV

Volume 4 of HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College draws principally on talks given at the 2015 Hannah Arendt Center Conference, "Does Privacy Matter?”

Volume IV
Volume 4 features contributions from Edward Snowden, Robert Litt, David Brin, Ben Wizner and Dr. Anita Allen, among others. As with the three previous issues, readers of the new issue of HA will experience the Hannah Arendt Center’s unique approach to thinking about politics today, inspired by Hannah Arendt’s bold and provocative embrace of the humanist tradition to illuminate pressing political issues.
Volume V

Volume 5 of HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College offers a collection of essays designed to think provocatively on how we speak about the most difficult questions that divide us and why it is important to do so.

Volume V
These essays were originally given as talks at the Arendt Center’s October 2016 conference “Real Talk: Difficult Questions about Race, Sex, and Religion" by noted scholars and humanists including Göran Adamson, Roger Berkowitz, William Deresiewicz, Mary Gaitskill, Janet Halley, Erica Hunt, Greg Lukianoff, Uday Mehta, Deroy Murdock, and Judith Shulevitz. Taken together these essays begin a project of speaking about issues that are too often passed over in awkward silence. Additionally, this volume includes three essays on Donald J. Trump's election as President of the United States. In the aftermath of the election, we asked leading thinkers to think about Trump's victory in light of Arendt's writings. These essays by Roger Berkowitz, Leon Botstein, and Marianne Constable are attempts to do just that. Finally, Volume 5 of HA republishes “Useless Freedom,” an essay by Mary McCarthy adapted from a speech first given at Bard College in 1987. Collectively, these essays begin to find a language through which a new and more plural conversation on race, sex, and religion might spring forth.
Volume VI

Volume VI of HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center includes essays from our 2017 conference: “Crises of Democracy: Thinking in Dark Times.”

Volume VI
This year’s conference marked the 10th anniversary of the Hannah Arendt Center. The essays by Micah White, Zephyr Teachout, Yascha Mounk, Linda Zerilli, Walter Russell Mead, Roger Berkowitz, Marc Jongen, and Ian Buruma approach the global rebellion against liberal democracy from plural political and experiential viewpoints. Additionally, this volume includes an open letter which was penned against the Arendt Center, addressing the invitation of Marc Jongen, along with a number of public responses that followed. Reflecting on the concept of natality in Hannah Arendt’s writing, Volume 6 also features essays by Drucilla Cornell, Lori Marso, and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek on the question: Is the Private Political?

The HA Journal

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Past Volumes

Volume III

Volume IV

Volume V

Volume VI