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A Constitutional Crisis?
Is the U.S. facing a constitutional crisis, or is it all political theater? This analysis breaks down the escalating tensions between the executive branch and the courts—separating fact from fiction and exploring what’s really at stake for American democracy.02-16-2025
Articles
We All Should Have Something to Hide
Roger BerkowitzOne repeated argument against apps that allow for encryption and privacy is that those who have nothing to hide should not worry about the loss of privacy. But who is it that has nothing to hide? The human heart and mind is a factory of fantasies that remind each of us of the darkness that lurks within us.
01-29-2021
The Political Uses of Shame
Manu Samnotra argues that shame—an intensely private emotion—can play an important role in political engagement. Building on Hannah Arendt’s writings, Samnotra argues that shame can motivate people to create political spaces and engage in political action.01-14-2021
The Politics of Small Things
Roger BerkowitzJeffrey Goldfarb writes that his 2006 book The Politics of Small Things was inspired by Hannah Arendt’s idea that “politics is about people meeting each other as equals in their differences, speaking and acting together.” In his Democracy Seminar, Goldfarb invites activists to speak about the ways they act together.
12-23-2020
The Credentialed Few
Roger BerkowitzJennifer Senior writes that the reason Congress is out of touch is not that it has too many millionaires, but that it is filled with people with too many academic credentials. This is a fact central to the argument for sortition—the selection of representatives by lot rather than by election. The Arendt Center held a webinar asking the question of whether it would be good to bring randomly selected citizens into the legislative process in October.
12-23-2020
Moving Past Race Reductionism
Roger BerkowitzI recently wrote about a study by Shaylyn Romney Garrett and Robert D. Putnam who argue that—contrary to popular expectations—the years in which black Americans performed best on metrics of economic and social prosperity were before the Civil Rights Movement; Garrett and Putnam show that since the 1970s, black achievement has stagnated. How does this fact require that we reassess both the Civil Rights Movement and the new Movement for Black Lives?
12-17-2020
Institutional Conservatism
David Kilon interviews Corey Robin about the real dangers posed by Trumpism and the new conservatism of the Republican Party. Hint, it is not authoritarianism.12-10-2020
Elusive Racial Progress
Roger BerkowitzIn a common narrative, racial progress in the United States was slow or non-existent until the Civil Rights Movement, at which time there was a sustained improvement in racial equality. Shaylyn Romney Garrett and Robert D. Putnam argue that this view is not born out by facts. On the contrary, the years in which black Americans performed best on metrics of economic and social prosperity were before the Civil Rights Movement; since the 1970s, black achievement has stagnated.
12-10-2020
Tania Bruguera was Arrested
Tania Bruguera, the Cuban-American artist, founder of the Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (Instar) in Havana, and former NEH/Hannah Arendt Center Distinguished Fellow here at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, has been arrested and placed under house arrest.12-10-2020