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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
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What Goebbels Could Do With Facebook
By Roger BerkowitzThe Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen [who became famous playing the character Borat in movies] gave the Keynote Address to the Anti-Defamation League last week. His speech was deadly serious about the real danger of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and social media. I wrote recently about the “increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale” of information and misinformation on social media.”
11-23-2019
How Race Appears
By Thomas Chatterton WilliamsIn The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt laid out her concept of the polis — literally, an ancient Greek city state, but defined more broadly in Webster’s as “a state or society especially when characterized by a sense of community” — as a departure from the ancient understanding of the term...
11-20-2019
Political Algorithms
By Roger BerkowitzThat politicians lie is hardly news. Politics and truth, Hannah Arendt reminds us, have never been on good terms. "Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician's or the demagogue's but also of the statesman's trade." And yet, Arendt raises the question of "what injury political power is capable of inflicting upon truth."
11-09-2019
Self-Portrait
By Samantha HillConor Friedersdorf profiles Hannah Arendt Center NEH Fellow Thomas Chatterton Williams for The Atlantic. Looking at Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, Friedersdorf explores the ways in which the work of Chatterton Williams moves from personal experience. What ensues is a thoughtful engagement with a must read work that strikes out against the ideologically driven politics of our time.
11-06-2019
In Such Times
By Kenyon Victor AdamsLi-Young Lee describes poetry as an utterance on the ‘dying breath’ and considers the distinct physiologies of exhalation and inhalation. For Lee, the exhaling or dying breath is foundational to the poet’s work and therefore, in Baldwin’s expansive sense of poetry, the work of all artists. I see a connection between Lee’s proposal of the dying breath as the foundation for all poetic...
10-30-2019
Political Trials
By Roger BerkowitzIn the final chapters of Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt worries that the very strength of the Israeli Court in its trial of Adolf Eichmann—its fairness and its fidelity to law—prevented the court from understanding that Eichmann’s unprecedented acts required a political rather than a legal response. Eichmann himself argued that if he were guilty, it was of “aiding and abetting” in the commission of horrific crimes, that he himself had not...
10-22-2019
Letter to the Editor of the Forward
By Roger Berkowitz, Academic Director and Founder of the Hannah Arendt CenterI am the person who invited Batya Ungar-Sargon, the Opinion Editor of the Forward, to participate in a recent conference hosted by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, a conference where she contends in a column published Oct. 12 that she was protested for being Jewish and, as a result, “couldn’t proceed” with her talk.
10-19-2019
To The Editor:
I attended the conference on ‘Racism and Anti-Semitism’ at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Let me state at the outset that 1. I am not in any way affiliated or employed by the college. 2. I attend this conference annually as a community member who is interested in learning about complex political issues of timely relevance and 3. I am a Jew who has lived in Israel and who holds political views that are probably similar to those of your Opinion Editor, Batya Ungar-Sargon.10-18-2019
On the Hannah Arendt Center’s Conference: “Racism and Antisemitism”
Batya Ungar-Sargon, Reverend Jacqui Lewis, Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, Amy SchillerAfter the 12th Annual Hannah Arendt Center Conference, this year on “Racism and Antisemitism,” the journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon posted an editorial in the Forward claiming she was protested at Bard College for being Jewish. She said she was prevented from continuing to speak, and that Bard College had no plan to deal with the protesters.10-16-2019