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Con-solatio, Compassion, and Friendship
I was honored this week to have been chosen by Con-solatio to receive their annual Compassion Award at a ceremony in New York City. Con-solatio sends missionaries around the world to the poorest and most forlorn places on the planet. The goal is not to convert people or to educate them or to build them houses. It is simply to console them, to show them compassion, to be their friends.Featured
When We Don’t Know What She Would Say
By Roger BerkowitzJosh Rogin in the Washington Post asked readers to choose the public figures they would most like to hear comment on our present era. Tanner Greer published his answer: Hannah Arendt. What Greer welcomes above all in Arendt is her independence. That she approaches every issue fresh. And that before you read what she writes, you don’t know what she will be arguing or how she will get there.
Not Just Racism
By Roger BerkowitzOn the eve of the Hannah Arendt Center’s Conference Racism and Antisemitism, it is worth thinking about Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Talking To Strangers. Gladwell seeks to understand what happened to Sandra Bland that led to her hanging in a Texas prison. It is known that Bland was pulled over in the Prairie View, Texas by officer Brian Encinia.
What We're Reading: The History of Antisemitism
By Samantha HillJudith Butler reviewed Bari Weiss’s new book How to Fight Anti-Semitism for Jewish Currents. Butler’s book review is notable for a couple of reasons and worth reading whether one finds oneself politically closer to Butler or Weiss. The primary reason being: It’s rare to read a real book review these days that systematically works through the arguments in a text. Butler, a pro-BDS supporter, argues that Weiss lacks an historical understanding of antisemitism.
In the Archive with Hannah Arendt
By Samantha HillWhen Hannah Arendt arrived at the German Literature Archive in Marbach Germany in June 1975 to organize Karl Jasper’s papers, she stood up in the cafeteria and began reciting Friedrich Schiller by heart. She was fond of “Das Mädchen aus der Fremde”, but this is pure speculation. As Arendt said to Günter Gaus in her last interview, she carried German poems around in her hinterkopf. I’d wager she knew more than one.
Jaspers and Heinrich Blücher’s Common Course
By Roger BerkowitzAs World War II came to an end, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers republished a revised edition of his 1923 book The Idea of the University. Jaspers saw universities as essential to the maintenance of a vibrant democracy. He was worried that the universities in Germany had become overly specialized and technical and that they had lost their true calling as institutions dedicated to communication and truth.
What We're Reading: Wendell Berry
Jedediah Britton-Purdy chronicles the life and work of Wendell Berry in The Nation. Berry’s writing, which won him a National Humanities Medal in 2011, has now been gathered in two volumes. The focus of Berry’s writing which reflects his agricultural lifestyle, has always spoken to larger political issues like environmentalism, violence, and economic inequality.The State Courts Fight Back
By Roger BerkowitzIn June the United States Supreme Court in Rucho v. Common Cause refused to intervene in two cases that considered constitutional challenges to political gerrymandering in North Carolina and Maryland. The Court found the Congressional maps to be “highly partisan, by any measure,” and “blatant examples of partisanship driving districting decisions.” And the Court held...
An Appeal, A Denial, and A Letter Published
The following is a letter sent by Alan Sussman to the Board of Directors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. Sussman is a trustee of one donor-advised-fund managed by the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and he asked the Federation to send $1,000 to a group that opposes Israel's occupation of the West Bank. To his surprise and chagrin, his request to donate his family's money was denied.What We're Reading
By Samantha HillMike Jay writes about Walter Benjamin and Intoxication and Kathryn M. Rudy offers a startling account of how much it costs to be successful in some fields of academia.