Amor Mundi

Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies

This is episode 10, “Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies.” It features the Arendt Center's Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz and Jonas Kunz, co-founder of the Bard Institute for the Revival of Democracy Through Sortition, giving a talk and leading a discussion over Zoom. The talk was organized by Lawrence Davis-Hollander and the Scoville Memorial Library and took place on Saturday, April 18, 2020.

Radical Racial Imaginations

Roger Berkowitz
A bit over a year ago I attended a symposium on  “Black Intellectuals & The Condition of the Culture” at Skidmore College, featuring Margo Jefferson, Darryl Pinckney, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Orlando Patterson and John McWhorter. The conversations were free and provocative and at times brilliant. Now the transcripts of the symposium have been published by SALMAGUNDI.

Listen to the Experts?

Roger Berkowitz
Over and again we hear the refrain: “Listen to the experts.” Amidst a crisis that has witnessed a disastrous response from President Trump and  the federal government and from many states and cities—Mayor Bill DeBlasio has been particularly inept causing untold misery for New Yorkers like myself—there is a desire to have the experts guide us. 

I Am (Not) a Monster

Roger Berkowitz

In “I Am (Not) a Monster,” a new movie by Dr. Nelly Ben Hayoun, Dr. Hayoun travels around the world dressed as Hannah Arendt to ask thinkers and activists about the origins of knowledge. Ben Hayoun, a Senior Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center and the founder of the University of the Underground, begins with Arendt’s idea that “To act is to begin something new.”

Failed President

Samantha Hill
Writing for the New York Review of Book, Fintan O’Toole dissects Trump’s failed leadership. Faced with a real emergency, Trump has been unable to set aside his self-promoting narcissism to guide the American people. O’Toole highlights the extent to which Trump’s delimited worldview as a business leader has influenced his posturing in managing the pandemic, examining at elisions in his language and refusal to face reality.

How to Think About Change

This is episode 8, “How to Think About Change” It features the Arendt Center's Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz in a Zoom conversation with both Chiara Ricciardone- a political thinker, and the Klemens von Klemperer Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, and with Micah White- Activist, co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, and author of The End of Protest. Ricciardone and White are married and co-founders of the Activist Graduate School.

The Rule of Nobody

This is episode 9, “The Rule of Nobody,”  It features the Arendt Center's Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz in a Zoom conversation with Philip K. Howard, lawyer and activist. Howard has written five books including “The Death of Common Sense” and “The Rule of Nobody,” a reference to Hannah Arendt’s description of bureaucratic rule.  He also started Common Good, a nonpartisan...

20-20 Foresight 

Roger Berkowitz
Seth Cotler points us to a book review written in 1983 by Samuel T. Francis that makes clear how much of the politics of populism and racism we are experiencing today was already visible to those with eyes to see it. The review of a book by Kevin Philips argues that the frustrations with America’s obsolete constitutional and political system will bring about a racially charged right-wing revolution in the United States. 

Solidarity

Roger Berkowitz
When Li Wenliang saw the danger posed by the Corona Virus and tried to sound the alarm, he was forced to remain silent by the Chinese police. Dr. Li died from Covid 19, alongside thousands of others in Wuhan. During this time as the world learned of the ravages of the virus first in China and then in Italy, the United States refused to act to protect its citizens. With no national plan, no national testing strategy, no effort to acquire supplies, and no leadership...