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The New Class War

Roger Berkowitz
David Brooks revisits what he got right and wrong about the rise of the creative class. Above all, he admits that he was wrong when he wrote in 2000,  “The educated class is in no danger of becoming a self-contained caste. Anybody with the right degree, job, and cultural competencies can join.” That view that the creative elite was benign and open to all was, he writes, “one of the most naive sentences I have ever written.”

A Full-Text Search Tool for the Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress

On June 16th the Hannah Arendt Center hosted a panel discussion to celebrate the launch of the new Library of Congress Hannah Arendt Papers digital archive. You can watch it here. Rob McQueen, one of our members, has now created a supplemental search tool that enables full-text searches of the archive. McQueen explains his new search tool below. 

From Roger Berkowitz, Our Founder and Academic Director

Three events dominated the last year. The Covid-19 pandemic spurred online life and online education to an extent few could have predicted. Confined to our homes, many of us could nevertheless teach classes over Zoom, socialize with friends on House Party, and talk over Facetime. When the pandemic struck, the Arendt Center didn't close down. We pivoted.

Curricular Disputes

Roger Berkowitz
Abstract debates about critical race theory or antiracism curricula often lead nowhere. It is imperative that we engage in specific efforts to develop meaningful curricula that address the reality of racial inequality in our history and our present. And that is proving difficult, as is shown by the case of Deemar v. Board of Education of the City of Evanston/Skokie.

The Mythic Arendt

Roger Berkowitz
Felix Heidenreich writes about how Hannah Arendt has become an iconic and even mythic thinker in Germany today, and one might say also outside of Germany as well. He argues that “The fascination for Arendt is comprehensible and fertile as long as Arendt is taken seriously as a philosopher” or at least as a political thinker. 

The 500 State Project

Roger Berkowitz
The United States of America was created not as a democratic state but as a federal constitutional republic with democratically elected representatives. As Alexis de Tocqueville saw, the spirit of American democracy came out of the townships in New England. And Hannah Arendt argues that the greatest innovation and central idea of the United States Constitutions was the dispersion and expansion of federated powers alongside a rejection of central government and sovereignty.

On Selbstdenken

Roger Berkowitz
The incredible popularity of Hannah Arendt in recent years is likely traceable to her reflections on themes such as  totalitarianism, loneliness, and lying in politics. Her work is thought to be relevant to our modern political and cultural situation. And it is. But Arendt’s importance today goes beyond her substantive insights into our political condition.

The Problem is Not the Virus; The Problem is Society.

Roger Berkowitz
Sarah Schulman’s book Conflict Is Not Abuse is one of the better arguments, from a progressive perspective, against de-platforming and in favor of having difficult conversations. Schulman makes an essential argument, that we too often confuse the feeling of conflict or being uncomfortable with the experience of abuse or serious medical trauma.

Revitalising Democracy: Citizen Juries as a Response to the Failure of Expert Rule

Roger Berkowitz

I was in Ljubljana in early June to speak at a conference, “What Kind of Government?” You can watch recordings of the talks including my own talk “Revitalising Democracy: Citizen Juries as a Response to the Failure of Expert Rule.”