Articles

What We're Reading: Propaganda

By Samantha Hill
Echoing Hannah Arendt’s definition of ideology in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Timothy Snyder looks at Hitler’s use of propaganda within the context of our contemporary political situation. How are singular ideas transformed into ideological narratives that claim to explain away the ills of the world?

Mrs. Stern Wanders The Prussian State Library

The Mrs. Stern in the play ’s title is actually a young Hannah Arendt, who at the time went by her married name, of Johanna Stern. Arendt speaks about her arrest in her famous interview with Günter Gaus. She tells Gaus that after the burning of the Reichstag she could no longer avoid politics.

Political Trials 

By Roger Berkowitz
In the final chapters of Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt worries that the very strength of the Israeli Court in its trial of Adolf Eichmann—its fairness and its fidelity to law—prevented the court from understanding that Eichmann’s unprecedented acts required a political rather than a legal response. Eichmann himself argued that if he were guilty, it was of “aiding and abetting” in the commission of horrific crimes, that he himself had not...

Letter to the Editor of the Forward

By Roger Berkowitz, Academic Director and Founder of the Hannah Arendt Center
I am the person who invited Batya Ungar-Sargon, the Opinion Editor of the Forward, to participate in a recent conference hosted by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, a conference where she contends in a column published Oct. 12 that she was protested for being Jewish and, as a result, “couldn’t proceed” with her talk.

To The Editor:

I attended the conference on ‘Racism and Anti-Semitism’ at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Let me state at the outset that 1. I am not in any way affiliated or employed by the college. 2. I attend this conference annually as a community member who is interested in learning about complex political issues of timely relevance and 3. I am a Jew who has lived in Israel and who holds political views that are probably similar to those of your Opinion Editor, Batya Ungar-Sargon.

To the Editor

By Samantha Hill, Assistant Director of the Hannah Arendt Center
As the assistant director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, I read Batya Ungar-Sargon’s recent column with dismay. She wrote: “But not one of my fellow speakers said a word. Two days later, I have not received a single note acknowledging what happened, which leaves me thinking they condone it.”

On the Hannah Arendt Center’s Conference: “Racism and Antisemitism”

Batya Ungar-Sargon, Reverend Jacqui Lewis, Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, Amy SchillerAfter the 12th Annual Hannah Arendt Center Conference, this year on “Racism and Antisemitism,” the journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon posted an editorial in the Forward claiming she was protested at Bard College for being Jewish. She said she was prevented from continuing to speak, and that Bard College had no plan to deal with the protesters.

When We Don’t Know What She Would Say

By Roger Berkowitz
Josh Rogin in the Washington Post asked readers to choose the public figures they would most like to hear comment on our present era. Tanner Greer published his answer: Hannah Arendt. What Greer welcomes above all in Arendt is her independence. That she approaches every issue fresh. And that before you read what she writes,  you don’t know what she will be arguing or how she will get there.

What We're Reading: Varian Fry

By Samantha Hill
Anya Schiffrin writes about how Varian Fry helped a number of German intellectuals, Jews, and leftists emigrate from Germany. Fry co-founded the Emergency Rescue Committee, which later became the International Rescue Committee. Among those Fry helped save include Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, and Victor Serge.