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When We Choose Knaves
The Alien and Enemies Act gives the President nearly unfettered power to expel non-citizens in times of war and the Supreme Court has given the President great leeway to determine what is and what is not a war. What we are witnessing is less a constitutional crisis than a cold and cruel manipulation of existing laws to stoke fear that is shocking to our humanist sensibilities. 03-23-2025
Articles
Courage to Be Student Essays. Misbah Awan on Rana Abdelhamid
By Misbah AwanA dispatch from the Hannah Arendt Center's Courage to Be Dinner and Lecture Series.
03-30-2019
Arendt and Scholem
By Samantha HillNathan Goldman reviews The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem for the L.A. Review of Books.
03-22-2019
Racism and Antisemitism
Antisemitism has suddenly inserted itself into the questions of privilege and racism in the wake of the marches in Charlottesville and the attacks in Pittsburgh. What is not often recognized, however, is that White nationalist groups in the United States are founded upon an antisemitic ideology.11-10-2018
American Citizenship
“these citizens are united only by one thing, and that’s a big thing: that is, you become a citizen of the United States by consenting to its Constitution. The Constitution… is the constant remembrance of a sacred act, the act of foundation. And the foundation is to make a union out of wholly disparate ethnic minorities and religions, and still (a) have a union and (b) not assimilate or level down these differences.”—Arendt, 1973
11-04-2018
Understanding Trump
I doubt Mr. Trump has much to say about Hegel. But he may be the kind of instinctive statesman that Hegel described - a figure who has harnessed and embodied forces that he himself only half-understands. By contrast I fear that Mr. Macron, learned though he is, currently looks more like the embodiment of a dying order. —Gideon Rachman10-28-2018
A Liberal Nationalism
Hannah Arendt understood that nationalism—ethnic nationalism—could undermine the political equality at the center of the modern state. But she worried equally if not more about imperialism and globalization. Politics, Arendt argued, is about the artificial constitution of bounded peoples that live together in a common and shared world.10-21-2018
Citizenship and Civil Disobedience
In the years leading up to the Civil War, there were more than 70 violent clashes between Representatives and Senators in Congress. In her book "Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and Road to Civil War" Joanna Freeman tells a story of a raucous antebellum Congress replete with bullying, dueling, and fistfights.10-13-2018
The Academy Undressed
For the past year three scholars have been submitting papers to top journals specializing in the fields of activism and grievance studies. Several of their papers have been published, including a 3,000 word excerpt from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, rewritten through the lens of intersectionality theory.10-07-2018