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On Gaslighting
The term “gaslighting” is one of those words that comes out of nowhere and now seems to pop-up regularly. It was Merriam Webster’s “word of the year” in 2022. In its pop-psychology usage, gaslighting refers to “Confident, high-achieving women” who are “caught in demoralizing, destructive, and bewildering relationships” that caused the woman “to question her own sense of reality.”Featured
Some Reflections on War
Roger BerkowitzThe Russian war of aggression in Ukraine raises questions about what Hannah Arendt called “the war question.”
A World Arendt Would Recognize
Roger BerkowitzThe Folio Society has just published the first-ever illustrated edition of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. This two-volume set includes famous propaganda images and documentary photography from the USSR and the Third Reich and also a new introduction by Anne Applebaum.
Useless Freedoms
Roger BerkowitzPeter Maguire reminisces about his time at Bard when his “teachers cared about my education, they did not care about my ego.” Maguire reprints some of the comments he received on the end of term criteria sheets that Bard professors still fill out for every student.
A Decade in a Week
Roger BerkowitzIt was Vladimir Lenin who said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” And now it is Vladimir Putin who has punctuated Lenin’s remarks. Our world has changed.
Russia Invades Ukraine
Roger BerkowitzHannah Arendt wrote about war, genocide, and totalitarianism. Her mantra was to look reality squarely in the face and seek to understand it and to resist it. But first to understand it. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is a human tragedy. It is also a geopolitical earthquake that threatens to transform the world in which we live.
Virtuals, Intellectuals, and The New Ideological Divide
Roger BerkowitzN.S. Lyons considers the Trucker protests in Canada now spreading around the world and argues that the protests force us to consider the divide between what he calls the physicals and the virtuals.
Leviathan Wakes
Roger BerkowitzThe pseudonymous N.S. Lyons provides 20 reasons why the woke revolution, for want of a better term, has a long way to run.
The HAC Dialogue Project:
Exercising Plurality and Good Will
Susan Oberman and Christine Gonzalez StantonWho could have predicted that in 2021, in the midst of a pandemic, the Virtual Reading Group would become a centerpiece in the lives of Arendt readers around the world? Lifelong connections and friendships have been forged through the Arendt Center's efforts to bring people together to think about the most pressing issues in our political world. A brief history of the VRG.
Does Harvard Discriminate Against Asians?
Roger BerkowitzJay Caspian Kang believes in affirmative action and racial preferences. But when he dives into the Harvard case coming to the Supreme Court, Kang argues that Harvard’s approach to affirmative action reveals “a profoundly broken system that relies on obfuscation and misdirection, especially when it comes to the treatment of Asian applicants.”