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It’s Political Power, Stupid
Today’s populist revolts against globalization are not only economic in nature—they are fundamentally political. As Hannah Arendt warned, the elevation of economics over politics, especially under imperialism and globalization, leads to the collapse of political judgment and self-determination. Her historical analysis now reads like prophecy: we are witnessing the return of politics in its most raw and terrifying form.04-06-2025
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Friends of Academia
By Roger BerkowitzRandall Kennedy writes that all “friends of academia” must sound the alarm in response to Harvard University’s decision to remove Ronald Sullivan and his wife Stephanie Robinson as Faculty Dean’s of the undergraduate college’s Winthrop House.
05-19-2019
What Illiberal Democracy Means
By Roger BerkowitzIn the United States, terms like “academic freedom” and “free speech” have come to be scoffed at by many students and faculty. They have somehow been turned into conservative talking points.
05-12-2019
Student Protests
By Samantha HillStudents at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts are trying to get Camille Paglia fired “and replaced by a queer person of color.” The campaign was provoked by a talk Paglia proposed on “Ambiguous Images: Sexual Duality and Sexual Multiplicity in Western Art.”
05-12-2019
Naive Thinking on Race
Roger BerkowitzInterviewing Thomas Chatterton Williams, Otis Houston asks Chatterton Williams about a line from Terence “I am human; nothing human is alien to me.” Isn’t that naive, Houston asks? Chatterton Williams responds in praise of a certain naivete.
05-05-2019
When YouTube Overtakes Life
By Roger BerkowitzJesse Singal tells the story of Desh Amila, a Sri Lankan immigrant and Australian citizen who “has built a career out of facilitating intellectually oriented public events, often between people with serious disagreements.” Desh, as he is called, has specialized in organizing difficult conversations on topics like Islamic extremism.
05-05-2019
Reading Arendt Now
By Samantha HillPeople often ask me, “Why Arendt?” The honest answer is that I fell in love with her writing my freshman year of college, reading The Human Condition on a brown leather sofa in the library, between the stacks.
05-05-2019
Arendt on Marx
By Samantha HillGeoffrey Wildanger reviews the first volume of Hannah Arendt’s Critical Edition The Modern Challenge to Tradition: Fragmente eines Buchs, focusing on Arendt’s unfinished Marx manuscript.
05-02-2019
The New Loyalty Oaths
By Roger BerkowitzWhen I was a graduate student teaching at UC Berkeley I was asked to sign a statement that I would report people with suspicious immigration backgrounds. When I applied for professorships at certain traditionally religious schools, I was asked to swear that I would not promote abortion in my classes.
04-28-2019
Prison Abolition
By Samantha HillThe New York Times Magazine featured an extensive profile of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s campaign for prison abolition. The article breaks down the provocative term “abolition” to look at the language and arguments that surround prison culture in the United States, where more than 2 million people are incarcerated.
04-28-2019