Featured
Featured Article
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
Featured
Between Languages
Roger BerkowitzWhen asked by Günter Gaus what was irretrievably lost when she had to flee the Nazis and leave Germany and Europe behind, Hannah Arendt answered: “The Europe of the pre-Hitler period? I do not long for that, I can tell you. What remains? The language remains.” In a profile of the writer Lydia Davis, Wyatt Mason dives into this question of how knowing many languages changes and enriches a writer.
12-10-2021
Thinking is Out of Order
Roger BerkowitzIn her last book The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt writes that “thinking is out of order.” Thinking frees us from the world of appearances and allows us to think things beyond our common sense that we share with others. In this way, thinking is not about the pursuit of truth but it is, Arendt argues, about the pursuit of meaning. Thomas Bartscherer meditates on Arendt’s characterization of thinking as out of order.
12-03-2021
The Soul Lit Suddenly From Within
Roger Berkowitz
Wyatt Mason writes about translating poetry and specifically Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. Amidst long ruminations on Baudelaire’s rhythmic syllables, Mason highlights the poet’s fight against all that is common.
11-26-2021
A Failure of Leadership
Roger BerkowitzThere may be no more dangerous trend in higher education than the epidemic of administrators. For over ten years we’ve been reading articles about administrative bloat—spending on administration now nearly equals spending on faculty at many major universities. Philip Mousavizadeh writes about the “proliferation of administrators” at Yale University, where in the last 20 years “the number of managerial and professional staff... has risen three times faster than the undergraduate student body.”
11-19-2021
Speer Goes to Hollywood
Roger BerkowitzI was privileged to conduct a Question and Answer session with Vanessa Lapa and Tomer Eilav about their new documentary “Speer Goes to Hollywood.” The documentary is based on over 40 cassette recordings in which Speer sought to edit and create a Hollywood movie about his life and involvement in the Nazi Party. You can listen to a podcast of the Q&A here.
11-12-2021
Great Circles
Roger BerkowitzThe idea that inequality emerges with civilization is often attributed to Jean Jacques Rousseau. But today it is simply an accepted fact. Yet, in their new book The Dawn of Everything David Graeber and David Wengrow argue that archaeological evidence shows that the rise of urbanization did not inevitably lead to hierarchical and unequal societies.
11-12-2021
Racism and The Great Replacement
Roger BerkowitzAt the 2019 Arendt Center Conference, Ian Buruma moderated a panel on The Great Replacement, a popular right-wing theory in France that immigrants and other minorities are replacing the Catholic French. Now, one of the leading French presidential candidates, Eric Zemmour is embracing the theory.
11-05-2021
The Dawn of Freedom
Roger Berkowitz
David Graeber’s books have become an increasingly important part of my intellectual life. His searching and restless exploration of what it means to live in freedom is at the forefront of his last and posthumously published book The Dawn of Everything, co-written with David Wengrow. Review by William Deresiewicz.
10-28-2021
Revitalizing American Democracy
Roger BerkowitzOn Hannah Arendt’s 115th birthday on October 14th, the Hannah Arendt Center convened its Annual Fall Conference, Revitalizing Democracy: Sortition, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom. The effort was to explore the movement for citizen assemblies from a wide plurality of perspectives from activists, artists, public intellectuals, business persons, and students. Watch a recording of the webcast here.
10-22-2021