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Only Power Can Check Power
Hannah Arendt saw America’s strength in its dispersion of power, rooted in civic engagement and local governance. As executive authority expands, the true challenge is not just legal resistance but the reinvigoration of collective action. Can we reclaim the founding spirit of self-governance, or will we cede our power to those who seek to consolidate it? 02-02-2025
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Ideological Politics From Nazism and Communism to Settler Colonialism
Roger BerkowitzMany of the leftwing defenses of Hamas’ terror attack on Israel justify the attack as a response to settler colonialism. Those on the far left opposing settler colonialism embrace indigenous peoples as the political subject of the future. It seems important, therefore, to look further into the idea of indigeneity and the ideology of settler colonialism.
10-28-2023
Friendship and Humanity v.s. The Orgy of Truth Telling
Roger BerkowitzAt the end of my talk introducing the Friendship and Politics conference last week, I posed a simple question: Can an Israeli and a Gazan be friends? Is it even conceivable at this point that Israelis can come to talk to a Gazan who votes for and defends Hamas, a movement that for decades has sought the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews, and who supports the October 6th flood of torture and murder that Hamas terrorists unleashed on Israeli civilians?
10-22-2023
Politics of Absolutism from Gaza and Jerusalem to Harvard and Tik Tok
Yuval HarariWar is the continuation of politics by other means. Many people recite this mantra, but too few pay it enough attention. With the massacre Hamas perpetrated in Israel and the mounting civilian casualties in Gaza, the deep logic of war is hidden by the immense human misery it produces. As the bodies keep piling up, who will win this war? The side that achieves its political aims.
10-22-2023
In Memoriam: George Baird
Hans TeerdsOn Wednesday 17 October, Canadian architect George Baird died, aged 84. Baird is, together with Kenneth Frampton, the first two scholars from the field of architecture to understand the value of Arendt’s writings for the field of architecture.
10-22-2023
Bring Back Countervailing Powers
Roger BerkowitzMichael Lind is one of the few thinkers today who has consistently understood that the fault line of American politics are educational and cultural. One trend he puts at the center of our political dysfunction is the retreat of centers of power that exist beyond the centralized government. For Lind, both Republican and Democratic elites have given up on granting power to the people, whether that be through unions or local assemblies.
10-07-2023
Solidarity Between Marx and Arendt
Roger BerkowitzMie Inouye offers a thoughtful reflection on the nature of solidarity in the latest Boston Review forum on Solidarity. Inouye approaches solidarity from a decidedly Arendtian direction insofar as she seeks solidarity not only amongst one class or with one class but “across lines of domination.”
09-23-2023
Persuasion
Roger BerkowitzAt the very core of Arendt’s thinking about politics is her view that politics is about opinions and not truth. We all come to politics with opinions formed at times by prejudices and at other times by reason and judgment. Persuasion is the coin of politics but it is not always rational and often emotional and raw.
09-16-2023
The Boss In Their Own Country
Roger BerkowitzThe reasons for the rise of ethno-nationalism are many, and include economic insecurity, an epidemic of loneliness, and the algorithmic seduction of social media. Also leading to the rise of the right is widespread distrust and even disdain for elite, liberal technocrats who have presided over rising globalization that has brought very little advantage to most working class voters.
09-16-2023
Humanist Virtue and Constitutional Structure
Roger BerkowitzFor Arendt, the experience of freedom, of constituting and self-governing, was an essential factor in the emergence of a free political system. The great threat to freedom Arendt perceived in the United States was, first, that the U.S. Constitution did not institutionalize spaces for the practice of freedom for everyday citizens and, second, that the drive for bourgeois wealth and success tended to overwhelm the love of political action.
09-08-2023