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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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Academic Freedom in Florida
Roger BerkowitzOn the very same day that Florida Governor Ron Desantis was coming to speak at Palm Beach Atlantic University, the university put a beloved and experienced Professor’s teaching contract on hold because of complaints about his teaching about racial justice. The professor, Samuel Joeckel, has been teaching his racial-justice unit for twelve years without issue.
02-26-2023
Le Wokism in France
Roger BerkowitzThomas Chatterton Williams explores the strong French disdain for American woke ideology, and finds that both the American and the French approaches are lacking.
02-26-2023
The New Human-Machine World
Roger BerkowitzHenry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher have an important essay in which they argue that ChatGPT represents the potential of artificial intelligence “to transform the human cognitive process as it has not been shaken up since the invention of printing” and the enlightenment.
02-26-2023
The Greatest Achievement: Arendt and Art
Hannah Arendt isn’t known for writing about art. But that doesn’t mean she has nothing to say about it. Far from it.02-26-2023
Our Friend/Enemy Politics
Roger BerkowitzIn my seminar on “Truth and Politics” this semester we are grappling with the pure weaponization of claims to truthfulness and lying. And this this weekend I’m at colloquium on federalism where one theme is how federalism is embraced by whichever party or group doesn’t control political power. Principled ideas of governance and politics are fully sacrificed to the overriding goal of winning. These ideas are grounded in a larger nihilist worldview, and one thinker who understood the full implications of nihilist politics was Carl Schmitt.
02-19-2023
Waking Up
Roger BerkowitzVincent Lloyd was teaching a seminar at the Telluride Association on “Race and the Limits of Law in America.” By the end of the seminar, his students had either been expelled for being racists or had accused him of being racist and walked out of the class. Lloyd, who says he has been suspicious of the critique of woke movements, came to see the behavior of the students not as a religion, but rather as a cult.
02-19-2023
The Friendship Recession
Addie Page describes her search for new friends amidst what is increasingly being seen as a crisis of friendship.02-19-2023
Theory Has Deconstructed Objectivity
Mark Goldblatt argues that academia is heading for a showdown between the STEM fields that believe in objectivity and the social sciences and the humanities that do not. But Goldblatt’s real concern should be the loss of impartiality in the humanities and social sciences, not the loss of objectivity.02-12-2023
Impartiality and Objectivity
Roger BerkowitzHannah Arendt reminded us of the importance of impartiality in history, journalism, and scholarship. For Arendt, every selection of facts is, as a selection, partial. Bret Stephens writes about the crisis of confidence in journalism.
02-12-2023