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Roger Berkowitz
Founder & Academic DirectorRoger Berkowitz is the Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center and Professor of Political Studies, Philosophy, and Human Rights at Bard College, where he writes and speaks about how justice is made present in the world. He is author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition and editor of The Perils of Invention: Lying, Technology, and the Human Condition (2021).Roger Berkowitz
Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center and Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights, Berkowitz writes and speaks about how justice is made present in the world. He is author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition, co-editor of Artifacts of Thinking: Reading Hannah Arendt's Denktagebuch (2017), Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (2010), The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis (2012), and editor of the annual journal HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center. His essay "Reconciling Oneself to the Impossibility of Reconciliation: Judgment and Worldliness in Hannah Arendt's Politics," has helped bring attention to the centrality of reconciliation in Hannah Arendt's work. The Arendt Center organizes an annual conference every October. Professor Berkowitz edits the Hannah Arendt Center's weekly newsletter, Amor Mundi. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Bookforum, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Paris Review Online, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, The American Interest, and many other publications. Berkowitz is the 2019 recipient of the Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought given by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in Bremen, Germany. (Photo Credit: Doug Menuez)
Founder & Academic Director -
Christine Gonzalez Stanton
Executive Director[email protected]
As a member of the senior management team at the Hannah Arendt Center, Christine works closely with the Founder & Academic Director, and the Advisory Board. She has a broad responsibility for center-wide operations, external relations, membership programs, fundraising, grant life cycles, community outreach, budget oversight, academic partnerships, and fiscal management.Christine Gonzalez Stanton
Christine Gonzalez Stanton was named Executive Director of the Hannah Arendt Center in 2020. Prior to her current role, she was the Director of Operations at the center from 2014-to 2020. Christine joined Bard College in 2013 working in the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs. In 2014, she transitioned from ODAA to join the team at the Hannah Arendt Center. Her career spans over 20 years in business management working in the fields of higher education, arts, and non-profit community organizations. Prior to joining Bard College, Stanton held positions working for a world-renowned glass artist, Dale Chihuly, in Seattle, WA, where she managed museum and gallery contracts. Stanton earned her BA degree in Sociology from the Ohio State University. She's a member of the National Association of Non-Profit Organizations and Executives and has received numerous awards throughout her career for her commitment to students and the community.
Executive Director -
Jana Mader
Director of Academic Programs[email protected]
Jana Mader is Director of Academic Programs at the Hannah Arendt Center. She leads the Center’s academic programming, publications, and editorial initiatives, shaping its intellectual and public presence. She develops curricular programs and advances engagement with Hannah Arendt’s scholarship through collaborative and public-facing initiatives.Jana Mader
Jana Marlene Mader is a writer, editor, and professor working at the intersection of literature, art, and the environment. Her work explores how places shape artistic and political imagination. She is the author of several books, including Walk Her Way New York City (Hardie Grant, 2025; co-authored), an illustrated walking guide to women’s history in New York. Her first novel appeared in 2018.
Director of Academic Programs
Her writing and translations have been published in Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, DIE ZEIT, and brand eins, and she has collaborated with cultural institutions including Lenbachhaus München and Galerie EIGEN + ART. She also writes Fieldnote Fridays, a Substack rooted in walking, landscape, and history.
She is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Division of Languages and Literature at Bard College and holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Before joining Bard in 2021, she taught at the University of North Carolina and The Juilliard School. More about her work can be found at janamarlene.com. -
Hillary Harvey
Communications ManagerHillary leads the Center's strategic communications to engage diverse audiences. Working closely with the Founder, she designs integrated campaigns and shapes the editorial calendar to guide messaging and expand outreach. She collaborates with partners, vendors, and content creators, and oversees the Student Media Fellows program.Hillary Harvey
Prior to joining the Hannah Arendt Center, Hillary was Communications Specialist for Ulster County Executives Jen Metzger and (now-Congressman) Pat Ryan, organizing press events, public hearings, and social media management for the Exec's Office and 20+ governmental departments. She served on Ulster County's first Innovation Team, which built and managed the Ulster County COVID-19 Hotline, where she designed and directed Knowledge Management to enable 100+ call agents to answer 35,000 service requests during the pandemic. Hillary earned her BA degree from Bennington College and built her early career as a freelance photographer, and print and radio journalist.
Communications Manager -
Philip Lindsay
Director of Democracy Innovation Program[email protected]
Philip leads the Democracy Innovation Hub where he runs workshops for public servants and educators on citizens' assemblies and participatory democracy.Philip Lindsay
Before joining the Hannah Arendt Center, Philip helped run a small community health center in NYC for immigrant communities. He has a BA in Latin American Studies from Temple University, where he focused on political economy and social movements. He spent a year in Germany as a Congress-Bundestag (CBYX) Fellow focusing on the politics of climate change. In his free time, he enjoys organizing intimate concerts and building community through the arts.
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Jess Feldman
Klemens von Klemperer Postdoctoral FellowJess Feldman is the Klemens von Klemperer Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. They hold an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Brown University and a B.A. in Economics from Amherst College. Jess's research focuses on ideas of collective action in the history of political thought.Jess Feldman
Jess's book manuscript, Democracy and the General-Strike Tradition, draws on 20th-century political thought, contemporary democratic theory, and African-American political thought to develop an account of how the general strike has shaped the democratic imaginary. Jess's work on W.E.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction has been published in Political Theory, and an essay on Hannah Arendt's political theory won the Best Paper Award (2024) from the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association. For more information about Jess and their work, visit jlfeldman.com.
Klemens von Klemperer Postdoctoral Fellow -
Thomas Wild
Research DirectorWild is Professor of German Studies and Literature, and works on modern European and German literature and culture. In his research as well as in his teaching he’s particularly interested in the intersections between literature and history, politics, and philosophy. A current focus of his work addresses the poetics and ethics of multilingualism.Thomas Wild
Thomas Wild has published an introductory book on Hannah Arendt’s life, work, and reception and a monograph on Hannah Arendt’s intellectual relationships with post-war writers. His most recent book on the distinguished poet Ilse Aichinger discusses a contemporary poetics of hospitality. Several editions of letters emerged from Thomas Wild’s ongoing intrigue for correspondences and intellectual networks, including prominent writers such as Uwe Johnson, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, and Joachim Fest. Poetry is an interlocutor in most of his courses and in many of his publications, among the latter are a collection of poems by Thomas Brasch and translations of contemporary American poets. Thomas Wild serves as general editor on the distinguished international team preparing the first scholarly edition of Hannah Arendt’s Complete Works, which appears in print and digitally, presenting all published and unpublished writings of this eminent thinker in the original English and in the original German – a project providing the foundation for future research on Hannah Arendt, digital humanities, and what it means to think in a plurality of languages.
Research Director
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Helene Tieger ‘85
Head of Archives & Special CollectionsHelene and her team are responsible for the Hannah Arendt Personal Library, which came to Bard after Hannah Arendt’s death in 1975. Researchers are welcome to view these books by appointment in our reading room in the Stevenson Library, or they can access hundreds of these titles as scanned pdfs on the Hannah Arendt Personal Library site. -
Arendt Center Student FellowsEvery year, the Center hires a team of Bard College students to help with Center operations, event logistics, and support the senior staff at the office. Learn more about this year's fellows.
If you are interested in being a Courage To Be or Courage to Lead student fellow, email Director of Academic Programs, Jana Mader [email protected].
If you are interested in learning more about working at the center to help with business operations, email Executive Director, Tina Stanton [email protected].
For those interested in Student Media Fellow positions, email Communications Manager, Hillary Harvey [email protected].
