Amor Mundi 10/19/14

10-20-2014

Hannah Arendt considered calling her magnum opus Amor Mundi: Love of the World. Instead, she settled upon The Human Condition. What is most difficult, Arendt writes, is to love the world as it is, with all the evil and suffering in it. And yet she came to do just that. Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection. Above all it means the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is.

Every Sunday, The Hannah Arendt Center Amor Mundi Weekly Newsletter will offer our favorite essays and blog posts from around the web. These essays will help you comprehend the world. And learn to love it.

The American Nightmare

Chair of the Federal Reserve Board Janet Yellen made waves this week by giving a speech arguing that the unprecedented rise in income inequality in the U.S. may be incompatible with American values (she should have been a speaker at last week's Arendt Center Conference "The Unmaking of Americans"). The American dream, the idea that all Americans of whatever economic or racial group can succeed through grit and perseverance, may no longer be true, the Federal Reserve Chairwoman admitted. She writes: "The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me. The past several decades have seen the most sustained rise in inequality since the 19th century after more than 40 years of narrowing inequality following the Great Depression. By some estimates, income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years, much higher than the average during that time span and probably higher than for much of American history before then. It is no secret that the past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority. I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity."

An Act of Courage

There is an undeniable and too-often unacknowledged problem with sexual violence on college campuses and in our society at large. Too many women are raped and subjected to unwanted sexual acts or abuse. But instead of having an open discussion about the issue, activists have mobilized an obscure Federal guideline to create an alternative legal system outside to deal with sexual crimes without the protections and transparency of the law. Now a group of Harvard Law School professors is fighting back. They published an op-ed in the Boston Globe in which they "call on the university to withdraw this sexual harassment policy and begin the challenging project of carefully thinking through what substantive and procedural rules would best balance the complex issues involved in addressing sexual conduct and misconduct in our community." As the professors write, in part: "As teachers responsible for educating our students about due process of law, the substantive law governing discrimination and violence, appropriate administrative decision-making, and the rule of law generally, we find the new sexual harassment policy inconsistent with many of the most basic principles we teach. We also find the process by which this policy was decided and imposed on all parts of the university inconsistent with the finest traditions of Harvard University, of faculty governance, and of academic freedom. Among our many concerns are the following: Harvard has adopted procedures for deciding cases of alleged sexual misconduct which lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process, are overwhelmingly stacked against the accused, and are in no way required by Title IX law or regulation. Here our concerns include but are not limited to the following: the absence of any adequate opportunity to discover the facts charged and to confront witnesses and present a defense at an adversary hearing; the lodging of the functions of investigation, prosecution, fact-finding, and appellate review in one office, and the fact that that office is itself a Title IX compliance office rather than an entity that could be considered structurally impartial; and the failure to ensure adequate representation for the accused, particularly for students unable to afford representation." 

Parlez-Vous

Ta-Nehisi Coates on what it means to communicate well, in a second language, with a native speaker of that language: "I am approaching the end of my third year studying French. This was the first time I'd had a complicated conversation with a native French speaker who I did not know, and managed to follow along. This means more than is immediately apparent. Before I began studying I did not understand that comprehension comes on several levels. It is one thing to understand someone whom you know and speak with regularly. It's still another to understand a stranger. And another still to understand a group of strangers who are talking about something of which you have no knowledge. So this small conversation was a moment for me-like the novice yogi going from bridge to wheel. And there again I felt one of the revelation, the discovery, the neurons firing, stretching, growing."

Cruel and Unusual

In a review of Jonathan Simon's Mass Incarceration on Trial, Jessica Pishko points to his understanding of dignity in the law as the source of his optimism for the future of the prison system: "Simon ultimately argues that American society is entering a new age of dignity-based policies, a 'dignity cascade' in his words, based on the Supreme Court's decision in Plata, where Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, 'Prisoners retain the essence of human dignity.' He traces Kennedy's logic to other Supreme Court decisions that suggest that the Eighth Amendment should be read to protect 'dignity' as an important individual right, albeit one not mentioned in the Constitution. (This is, of course, no real bar, since many well-established rights are not in the Constitution.) Dignity-based policies are an evolution that allows for a broader understanding of the Eighth Amendment, rather than relying on the civil rights arguments of the past. The 1972 Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia first raised the idea of human dignity as a value worth protecting, something beyond physical sustenance, when it invalidated the death penalty as it existed in every state for being too broad. Justice Brennan wrote in his concurring opinion that the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause forbids punishments not just because they are painful but also because 'they treat members of the human race as nonhumans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded.' Dignity-based rulings would allow for invalidation of mass incarceration as a practice because it treats people as cogs in the machine. This is where Simon focuses his efforts - he wants his readers to believe that the problem with current incarceration practices is that they treat inmates as something subhuman, and that this can be stopped. He suggests that American courts look to European laws, which have long held that humans should be treated with dignity even if they have committed crimes." For more, read Roger Berkowitz's essay on "Dignity Jurisprudence."

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