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Democracy and Dissent
Today, it is worth recalling Arendt’s foundational defense of public dissent as well as her outspoken resistance to legalized denaturalization based on political opinions.03-16-2025
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Remembering Kirstie McClure
Kirstie McClure has died. A longtime friend of the Hannah Arendt Center, McClure was most recently a beloved professor of Political Theory at UCLA. My own memories of Kirstie are of a truly rare intellectual intensity, always accompanied by a smile. Her writings on Arendt’s social question were some of the earliest and best.12-23-2023
The Negation of Politics
Roger BerkowitzOn Friday, December 15th, Masha Gessen was finally awarded the 2023 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thinking in Bremen. The award ceremony, however, did not take place in the beautiful City Hall in Bremen, where it is traditionally given. Just days before the ceremony, rumors emerged that the Heinrich Böll Foundation, had decided to rescind the award. The cause was an article Gessen published in The New Yorker, “In the Shadow of the Holocaust.”
12-17-2023
Non-Ideological Thinking
Roger BerkowitzRabbi David Wolpe resigned from the antisemitism advisory committee at Harvard. He reminded us all that most students at Harvard are there to get an education and are not in the grip of morally reductive ideologies. At the same time, Wolpe recognizes that there is an ideology at Harvard “that grips far too many. The ideology that works only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil.”
12-10-2023
To Think About Horror in Serious Ways
Roger BerkowitzDavid Marchese interviews writer and veteran Phil Klay on the humanity and inhumanity of war. Klay finds the humanity of war in its moral complexity, the struggle to see and acknowledge the reality of morally complex thinking that goes beyond ideological and partisan positions.
12-02-2023
One of my Students Responds
Roger BerkowitzMy former student and current Arendt Center employee, Tobias Hess, asked to write about his feelings of unease about my characterization of some student protests for Palestine on college campuses. Like many students and non-students, and like myself, Hess is moved deeply by the plight of seemingly excessive destruction by Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza.
12-02-2023
A Young Jew Looks to Gaza
Tobias HessThe student movement for Palestine has been largely characterized as naive, and often, anti-semitic. But Tobias Hess, former HAC student-fellow and current employee of the Center, argues that the student movement is indicative of a sincere and understandable outrage. This is especially true for young Jews who, he says, feel betrayed by the "promise of Jewish self-determination [which has] spiraled into craven, narrow minded nationalism."
12-01-2023
A Non-Ideological Thinking
Roger BerkowitzIn a speech at The Federalist Society last week, Bari Weiss points out the many similarities between what happened in Israel on October 7, and what happened in New York City and Washington DC. on September 11, 2001.
11-19-2023
Citizens’ Assemblies and Beyond
Roger BerkowitzI spent Friday and Saturday at the Hannah Arendt Center's Democracy Innovation Workshop: Citizens' Assemblies and Beyond. The workshop gathered scholars, organizers, and government officials in New York City to learn about and explore how to use deliberative democratic innovations At a moment when hope is a rare word, the growing interest in citizen assemblies offers real possibilities for a revival of empowered citizenship and meaningful self-government.
11-12-2023
The Letter Wars
Roger BerkowitzThe horrific war in the Middle East has unleashed a paper war of public letters, where academics, artists, and students sign letters and statements supporting one side or the other. One thing is clear, signing these letters is popular. Instead of thinking for oneself, articulating one’s own views, and making an argument, signatories to such letters simply join a collective statement that demands little of them intellectually or politically.
11-04-2023