Articles

1619 to 2022

Roger Berkowitz
I’ve been teaching the 1619 Project in classes this week. I was excited to see that Mark Weitzmann has a long essay exploring Nikole Hannah Jones and the controversy around the 1619 Project as a rorschach test for the American discourse on race.

Looking Critically at DEI Curricula in K-12 Education

Roger Berkowitz
The Editors of the Journal of Free Black thought have published an abridged version of their report on “Six Unsettling Features of DEI in K-12.” It is hardly a demonization of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion syllabi. But the Journal’s report does raise serious questions about the potential harms associated with some but certainly not all DEI practices.

Is Alt-Right the New Black?

Roger Berkowitz
N.S. Lyons argues that if the youth of today rebel, "they’re likely to rebel in the only direction they now can: by becoming more traditionalist and conservative.” 

Rage and Reason: The Absurdity of Reality

Roger Berkowitz
A few weeks ago I wrote about Wyatt Mason’s reflections on the Afghan American writer Jamil Jan Kochai and his new book The Haunting of Hajji Hotak. I’m thrilled now that Jamil Jan Kochai will be joining us to speak at the Hannah Arendt Center’s Rage and Reason conference on October 13 and 14th.

Actuality Has Become Stupid

Roger Berkowitz
Wyatt Mason writes about the new book by the Afghan American writer Jamil Jan Kochai’s, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak. The absurd incursions of the real into the intelligent life of the imagination are central to the Afghan American writer Jamil Jan Kochai’s fiction, a small body of work that has been charting a path not merely to how one might write about his native country, but also to how fiction might perform a reckoning with the idiotic now.

The Dictatorial Workplace

Zephyr Teachout paints a dystopian picture of workers monitored, oppressed, and harmed by constant tracking, monitoring, and supervision. At the end of this drive to watch workers is, in the end, the desire to fully understand workers that they can be manipulated and exploited.

Tracy Strong

Roger Berkowitz
Tracy Burr Strong died on May 11th. Tracy was one of the greatest contemporary political theorists with an extraordinary range. His first book, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (1975) is still read widely as both a contribution to Nietzsche studies and to political thinking more broadly. His latest book,  Learning One’s Native Tongue, argues that the essence of American citizenship is not simply a matter of who can vote or whom has rights.

The Sanctimonious Hypocrites

Roger Berkowitz
I wrote about the free-speech case against Princeton Professor Joshua Katz two weeks ago. Now Katz has been fired from his tenure-track position not for his criticisms of colleagues, but for not cooperating with an investigation into a consensual relationship he had with a student nearly two decades ago. Katz’s wife Solveig Lucia Gold writes about her husband and how she has lost all faith in Princeton and Universities.

The Fountain of Eternal Youth

Roger Berkowitz
William Deresiewicz argues that the “young progressive elite” has traded independence and critical thinking for an immaturity that submits to authorities. The result, he argues, is a stunted development for many of the best and brightest young people in the country.