Articles
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Temptations of Tyranny
Rod Dreher’s conflicted support for President Trump illustrates a broader crisis among intellectual conservatives who fear the "soft totalitarianism" of liberal institutions yet embrace the hard authoritarianism of executive overreach. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political thought, the essay contends that true freedom is preserved not through charismatic leaders but through the multiplication and decentralization of citizen power. Revitalizing democracy, it argues, requires stubborn, local acts of collective governance rather than the dangerous temptation to concentrate authority in a single figure.04-27-2025
Articles
Butterflies and Bees
Ralph Benko offers a fascinating metaphor of the Bees and the Butterflies that helps explain the political divide in the United States.04-09-2017
Listening And The Lecture
Miya Tokumitsu offers a defense of the much maligned university lecture. The attack on the lecture—that is passive learning and offers one-size-fits-all education—should not be true.04-02-2017
The Honor System
In an interview with Michael Judge, Garry Kasparov elaborates on his off-the-cuff remark that Donald Trump's press conference resembled a Soviet press conference.03-26-2017
The Courage to Be: Penny Gill
Claire Harvey, Stefan Stojanov, and Annah Heckman, HAC student fellows, share their thoughts on Penny Gill's visit for our spring 2017 "Courage to Be" Dinner and Lecture Series.03-21-2017
Hannah Arendt on Totalitarianism
Roger Berkowitz has been teaching a semester-long course on Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism for more than a decade. He is currently leading the Hannah Arendt Center's Virtual Reading Group sessions on the book. In a long essay in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Berkowitz argues that Arendt's brilliant insights into totalitarian movements is an essential guide to today's political world.
03-19-2017
Getting Religion
William Deresiewicz has published a version of the talk he gave at the Hannah Arendt Center's Fall Conference "Real Talk: Difficult Questions About Race, Sex, and Religion." Deresiewicz argues that orthodox political correctness is the new religion on campus.03-12-2017
How Quickly It Can Happen
Timothy Snyder is the latest to remind us "how quickly a modern republic can be transformed into an authoritarian regime."03-05-2017
February 19th, 2017
Masha Gessen rightly cites Hannah Arendt in Gessen's essay in praise of hypocrisy.02-19-2017