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Temptations of Tyranny
Rod Dreher’s conflicted support for President Trump illustrates a broader crisis among intellectual conservatives who fear the "soft totalitarianism" of liberal institutions yet embrace the hard authoritarianism of executive overreach. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political thought, the essay contends that true freedom is preserved not through charismatic leaders but through the multiplication and decentralization of citizen power. Revitalizing democracy, it argues, requires stubborn, local acts of collective governance rather than the dangerous temptation to concentrate authority in a single figure.04-27-2025
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The New Hannah Arendt Papers Website
Roger BerkowitzWhile her personal library is at Bard College, Hannah Arendt left her personal papers to the Library of Congress. For years those papers have been available in-person at the library and, in part, over the web via an outdated, clunky, and incomplete digital interface. This week the Library of Congress launched its new website for the Hannah Arendt Papers.
06-10-2021
The Culture of Complaint
Roger BerkowitzWe are living at a time when any action that one disagrees with leads not to a discussion and engagement but to a complaint and a demand for punishment. This is especially true at the top universities in the country. Disagreements that should be fodder for intellectual growth are now opportunities to exert power and punish one’s perceived enemies.
06-10-2021
A Club Drug, Posttraumatic Stress, and Hannah Arendt
Craig RothsteinThis week, the New York Times reported on the successful phase III FDA trial of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, MDMA, more commonly known as the club drug Ecstasy or Molly. The introduction of an intense drug-experience-as-medicine represents a particularly Arendtian moment for Western healthcare.
05-14-2021
History Is Watching
Roger BerkowitzShortly after the January 6th failed insurrection in Washington DC, PEN held a writers benefit that featured a panel of writers talking about post-Trump politics. Peggy Noonan adopted a hopeful tone, arguing that after a short period of time where feelings of loss would be respected and salved, Republicans would come to their collective senses and re-enter the real world.
05-06-2021
On Grade Inflation
Roger BerkowitzAs an academic year of unprecedented trials limps to a close, the predictable articles on grade inflation rise like daisies. It is hard to get worked up. Grade inflation is one of the few facts we can all agree on in our increasingly fact-free world. It is here to stay. But one thing often forgotten is that grade inflation actually hurts students.
05-06-2021
Our Epistemological Crisis
Roger BerkowitzThe crisis of truth is upon us and for many this is a phenomenon associated with Donald Trump. But Hannah Arendt diagnosed the crisis of truth in modern politics over 60 years ago. And in her essay “Truth and Politics” Arendt argues that one foundation for that crisis is the loss of a non-political standpoint from which one can speak about the world and politics.
04-22-2021
The Humanities, Science, and the Soul
Roger BerkowitzSara Cederberg looks at the now perennial “crisis of the humanities” and writes that one reason for the crisis is “the fact that there is no longer a case to be made for the cultivation of the soul.” If the humanities emerged as a project of national storytelling so that humanists were engaged in the “preservation and cultivation of the nation’s soul,” the turn to science as the dominant cultural force has left the humanities adrift.
04-01-2021
HAC Student Fellow Isis Pinheiro Awarded Watson Fellowship
Selected from a nationwide finalist pool of over 150, Pinheiro was one of 42 college seniors to receive a Watson Fellowship for the 2021–22 academic year. She will spend the year traveling to England, Japan, China, Italy, and Guyana, where she will examine “the intersection of fashion and Black American culture through streetwear [and] explore how streetwear, and Black culture more broadly, have been globalized.”03-18-2021
Both-Sides-Ism
Roger BerkowitzIt is well known that we are suffering a crisis in truth alongside hyper-partisanship and a massive loss of trust in public institutions. As part of that hyper partisan atmosphere, however, it is usually the case that everyone thinks it is only the “other” side that spreads lies and misinformation.
03-18-2021