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Everything Is Still Falling Apart
Roger BerkowitzMars Hill was an evangelical church founded by a charismatic figure Mark Driscoll that was based in Seattle. Driscoll proved a controversial figure, at once a brilliant evangelical leader and a bullying leader also accused of plagiarism and fraud. Mike Cosper tells this story in his podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. The podcast speaks to our present moment, whether or not one is interested in Christianity or in megachurches. It is an extraordinary example of how to tell a story of our time through an in-depth exploration of one exemplary cultural catastrophe. I had the pleasure of speaking with Cosper and Yuval Levin- who will also be speaking at our Fall Conference -on the most recent episode of Cosper's podcast.
06-19-2022
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Arendt’s Political Relevance
Roger Berkowitz shares John Thomason's examination of Arendt's ideas applied to the present time.06-09-2019
Immortality and Politics
Roger Berkowitz writes about immortality, Arendt, and Amber Scorah's reflections on grief.06-02-2019
The New Aristocrats
By Roger BerkowitzMatthew Stewart in The Atlantic rehearses the truth that the top one percent of Americans are villains and the bottom 99 percent are the good guys. The reality, he argues, is more complicated. Stewart divides us instead into three classes. There is the top 0.1 percent who are masters of the universe and the bottom 90 percent who are losing out in a race to the bottom. In between is the top 9.9 percent who Stewart calls “the new aristocrats.” While it is easy to claim to be part of the 99%, many who do so are part of this new aristocracy who Stewart argues are “accomplices in a process that is slowly strangling the economy, destabilizing American politics, and eroding democracy.”
05-26-2019
A Disjunctive or Disruptive President?
By Roger BerkowitzJack Balkin of Yale Law School recently described Donald Trump as a disjunctive president. Using a model developed by Stephen Skowroneck, Balkin argues that Trump represents the “last gasp of the vanishing Reagan era that began in 1980.” He writes...
05-19-2019
Hannah Arendt’s Ethics
By Samantha HillTwo pieces on Hannah Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil appeared this week. In a review essay for Contemporary Political Theory John Macready offers a probing critique of Deirdre Lauren Mahony’s Hannah Arendt’s Ethics...
05-12-2019
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
Who is a Whistleblower?
By Roger BerkowitzDaniel Ellsberg was the quintessential whistleblower. He was an expert insider who had evidence of government misconduct. After attempts to expose the misconduct to his superiors, he offered it to journalists. Ellsberg’s whistleblowing led to the publication of “The Pentagon Papers,” which became the raw material for one of Hannah Arendt’s prescient essays “Lying in Politics.”
04-28-2019
Left Totalitarianism?
By Roger BerkowitzI continually hope that the right-wing narrative about left-wing intolerance (and even left-wing totalitarianism) is overblown. As a professor at Bard College—a liberal arts college that welcomes and relishes difficult conversations—I hope that the trend of censoring right-wing views is overblown and a passing fad.
04-17-2019
Fear of Fascism
By Samantha HillJacob Mikanowski profiles Timothy Snyder for The Chronicle Review. Snyder is a historian of the Holocaust and professor at Yale University. His new work, The Road to Unfreedom, chronicles the rise of authoritarianism today.
04-14-2019