Articles

Giving Tuesday

By Samantha Hill
Hannah Arendt Center fellow Amy Schiller writes about what happens when only rich people give to charity for the Washington Post. On “Giving Tuesday”, which follows “Cyber Monday” each year after Thanksgiving, Schiller highlights how up to thirty percent of all charitable gifts in the United States are made in December. And while charity has always been a part of the American mythos, who gives has changed over time, and giving on average has declined.

Totalitarianism and Loneliness

By Roger Berkowitz
Martha Minow recently spoke accepted the Leo Baeck Medal  at the Leo Baeck Institute on November 19, 2019. Minow describes what she calls “upstanders,” those who stand up to dehumanizing and oppressive systems and have the courage to act against bureaucratized evil. “To be an upstander,” Minow writes, “may seem daunting especially if it implies solo, heroic action.

Child Chef

By Samantha Hill
Adam Shatz writes about his life as a child chef for the New Yorker magazine. Shatz’s adolescent cooking career was provoked by early experiences with bullying and antisemitism. Turning to the kitchen, he went from baking chocolate cake, to starting a catering company at age 11, to being the subject of his art teacher’s documentary for a local cable-access channel, to studying in France, and eventually writing about culture and politics...

What Goebbels Could Do With Facebook

By Roger Berkowitz
The Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen [who became famous playing the character Borat in movies] gave the Keynote Address to the Anti-Defamation League last week. His speech was deadly serious about the real danger of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and social media. I wrote recently about the “increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale” of information and misinformation on social media.”

Dreams Under Dictatorship 

By Samantha Hill
Mireille Juchau revisits a book published by Charlotte Beradt in 1985 on The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation. Beradt was an acquaintance of Hannah Arendt’s and translated five her essays. Beradt’s work echoes Arendt’s work in the The Origins of Totalitarianism,and challenges readers to think about spaces of freedom in thinking, beyond the public and private realm:   

What We're Reading: The Firing Line

By Roger Berkowitz
John McWhorter comments on the firing of Steven Wilson, formerly CEO of a group of charter schools in New York that serve primarily students of color. Wilson was fired after a petition circulated titled,  “Hold the CEO of Ascend Public Charter Schools Accountable for White Supremacist Rhetoric.”  What exactly was the “white supremacist rhetoric” that Wilson was guilty of?

Political Algorithms

By Roger Berkowitz
That politicians lie is hardly news. Politics and truth, Hannah Arendt reminds us, have never been on good terms. "Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician's or the demagogue's but also of the statesman's trade." And yet, Arendt raises the question of "what injury political power is capable of inflicting upon truth."

What We're Reading: Better Angels

Nellie Bowles looks at the organization Better Angels, which hosts conversations for Republicans and Democrats across the country, helping to bridge the political and cultural divide on the ground.  

Self-Portrait

By Samantha Hill
Conor Friedersdorf profiles Hannah Arendt Center NEH Fellow Thomas Chatterton Williams for The Atlantic. Looking at Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, Friedersdorf explores the ways in which the work of Chatterton Williams moves from personal experience. What ensues is a thoughtful engagement with a must read work that strikes out against the ideologically driven politics of our time.