Leadership at the Center

Administration

Roger Berkowitz: Founder & Academic Director

Roger Berkowitz is the Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center and Professor of Political Studies, Philosophy, and Human Rights at Bard College.

Roger Berkowitz: Founder & Academic Director
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)
Christine Gonzalez Stanton: Managing Director

Christine Gonzalez Stanton was named Managing Director of the Hannah Arendt Center in 2020. Prior to her current role, she was the Director of Operations at the center from 2014-2020. Christine joined Bard College in 2013 working in the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs.

Christine Gonzalez Stanton: Managing Director
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 and planning, overseeing the center's membership program, fundraising campaigns, budget oversight, and fiscal partnerships. In addition, she oversees human resource management, manages the center's staff & student office fellows, and Managing Director of the newly created Hannah Arendt Humanities Network. 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 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.
Tara Needham: Assistant Academic Director

Reach her at tneedham@bard.edu

Tara has more than twenty-five years of experience serving the public humanities at national and regional cultural organizations as well as within academia, including at the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, the New York State Writers Institute, and as organizational consultant to small non-profits. Tara has also taught extensively at the college level, most recently at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, while pursuing a Ph. D in English and writing a dissertation about political violence in novels of the late British Empire. She has been ardently reading Arendt since earning her B.A. in Philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook and is also a writer of essays, poems, and indie pop songs.
Thomas Wild: Research Director

Research Director and Associate Professor of German and Director of the German Studies Program M.A., Free University of Berlin; Ph.D., University of Munich.

Thomas Wild: Research Director
Also studied at University of Rome, La Sapienza. Has taught at institutions of higher learning in Germany, Vanderbilt University, and Oberlin College, and recently served as Alexander von Humboldt / Feodor Lynen Research Fellow at the University of Chicago. His research and teaching interests include 20th-century German literature and film; the political dimensions of culture, art, and thought; Hannah Arendt; and contemporary developments in German media and society after 1989. Among his publications are a monograph on Arendt's relationships with key postwar German writers; an intellectual biography of Arendt; and a edition of poetry by Thomas Brasch. He coedited Arendt's conversations and correspondence with the eminent German historian and political essayist Joachim Fest. He is also a literary critic and cultural correspondent for the German dailies Sïddeutsche Zeitung and Der Tagesspiegel. At Bard since 2012.
Jacob Rivers: Program Coordinator

Jake Rivers serves as the program manager of the Hannah Arendt Humanities Network. As the program manager, Jake works with various OSUN institutions across the globe to develop and implement humanities programming for the network’s students, staff, and scholars. Prior to Bard, Jake tended to Robert Frost’s former homestead in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where he coordinated poetry conferences and managed the property’s museum. He earned a BA from Suffolk University in Hispanic Literature and an MFA in Poetry from New England College. You can find his book, writings, and criticisms in various venues on and off the internet.
Philip Lindsay: Communications Coordinator

As Communications Coordinator, Philip manages our newsletters, supervises HAC Media and Sortition fellows, coordinates outreach for HAC events and maintains our website. Before joining the Hannah Arendt Center, Philip helped run a community health center for low-wage immigrant workers in NYC. He has a BA in Latin American Studies from Temple University, and a certificate in Political Economy from the London School of Economics. 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.
Arendt Center Fellows

The Hannah Arendt Center hosts postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, senior fellows, and doctoral fellows who together form a vibrant and engaged intellectual community at Bard College. Fellows teach one course per semester while pursuing their research. Our current fellows are listed, here.
Bard College Student Fellows

Every year, the Center hires a team of Bard College students to organize events, assist in video production, and support the senior staff at the office. Learn more about this year's fellows.

Leadership at the Center

Administration

Roger Berkowitz: Founder & Academic Director

Christine Gonzalez Stanton: Managing Director

Thomas Wild: Research Director