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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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Symbolic Beliefs
I was recently in Mechelen, a small and lively city in Belgium, to speak to a group of mayors from the European Union about diversity and polarization. My address to the European mayors in Mechelen made three points. First, Polarization is not necessarily something to be feared and derided. Second, while polarization can be dangerous, it only becomes dangerous when our politics fails. And, finally, politics is based on talking with one another in ways that nurture a common sense.04-21-2024
Arendtian Sardines
Gabriele Parrino, who was a visiting a scholar at the HAC this spring, wrote about an "unprecedented event" which occurred in the Bologna in November 2019. "Against the discriminatory policies of former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini," he writes, "four different people began to sing in Piazza Maggiore. This chant became a call that grew into a crowd of six thousand people and the [idea] of the 6000Sardines spread throughout the country.'"04-17-2024
On Gaslighting
The term “gaslighting” is one of those words that comes out of nowhere and now seems to pop-up regularly. It was Merriam Webster’s “word of the year” in 2022. In its pop-psychology usage, gaslighting refers to “Confident, high-achieving women” who are “caught in demoralizing, destructive, and bewildering relationships” that caused the woman “to question her own sense of reality.”04-14-2024
The Fight Over Schedule F
Before former President Trump left office, he issued an executive order to reclassify nearly 70% of federal civil service bureaucrats into a new job category dubbed “Schedule F.” Schedule F employees would lose many of the civil service protections. President Biden rescinded the executive order, but a major promise of the former President’s campaign is that he would reclassify and fire large numbers of the civil service and replace them with loyalists.04-14-2024
Who and What We Are
Samantha Fazekas writes that Hannah Arendt’s distinction between who we are and what we are can help us learn to better take criticism of our performance at work. In the Human Condition, Arendt writes: “In acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world … This disclosure of ‘who’ in contradistinction to ‘what’ somebody is . . . is implicit in everything somebody says and does.”04-14-2024
The Supreme Court in a Divided Nation
Jill Lepore writes about how Chief Justice William Howard Taft presided over a divided Court at a time of great ideological ferment. Taft brought a pragmatic and political sensibility to the Court. He both made the Court more efficient and expanded its power and authority. And as a conservative amidst the Progressive Era, Taft set the Court on his path of obstructing progressive legislation.04-07-2024
On Zion, Zionism, and Zionists: A Biblical History
Jim Sleeper begins his long essay on the many forgotten historical and religious foundations of the shallow modern understanding of claims like “zionism,” “settler colonialism,” and “antisemitism” by quoting T.S. Eliot who writes, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” We can’t understand the eruptions in the Middle East and in the United States without facing the ancient religious passions that drive American and Jewish history.04-07-2024
Tekhines
Sarah Chandler is discovering the ancient Jewish art of measuring graves, or tekhines, and she writes about her visit to Hannah Arendt’s grave at Bard College. "I’ve invited my friends to accompany me to the cemetery that sits in the center of the campus of Bard College, located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. It is just over 100 miles north of my Brooklyn apartment, but I suspect it will take us at least three hours to get there on a Monday afternoon."03-31-2024
The Joy of Arendt Center Conferences
Arendt Center member Neil Gussman writes about his experience attending Hannah Arendt Center Conferences, most recently our conference Between Power and Authority.03-31-2024