Amor Mundi

What’s the Point of Museums?

Roger Berkowitz
There is a yearning for a truly non-biased and fully-inclusive museum. And since such a museum and such a show cannot exist, one group of curators have asked, "What's the Point of Museums?"

What we learned

The midterm elections saw many crazy Trump-identified candidates lose, which dragged down the Republican Party and allowed the Democrats to hold the Senate. As of now, however, Republican candidates did win the popular vote. What is more, the Republicans continued to make strong inroads into core Democratic constituencies in Hispanic and Black voters, as well as college-educated white women in the suburbs.

Realists, Optimists, and Revisionists

Roger Berkowitz
As Ukraine consolidates its victories in the South, it is worth asking, when and how will this war end? Ivan Krastev asks this question and outlines three different positions, the realists, the optimists, and the revisionists. 

Taiwanese Nationalism

Roger Berkowitz
I landed in Taipei just hours ago en route to a four day workshop on Nationalism sponsored by OSUN’s Hannah Arendt Humanities Network and the National Sun-Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung. On the flight over I read a recent essay by Orville Schell that argues how Taiwan’s incredible success has led to a global crisis.

Bigger Brain: Student Fellow Sage Saccomanno reflects

Sage Saccomanno
When I started working at HAC as a fellow three years ago, I never expected to be starting my own business before I graduated from Bard.

A Week of Confusions

Roger Berkowitz
An attempted attack on the husband of the Speaker of the House of Representatives is met with denial and conspiratorial deflection. Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, and J.D. Vance might actually become U.S. Senators. Kanye West and Kyrie Irving are cancelled. The confusion inherent in these events is evidence that the foundations of our world are shifting. Hannah Arendt warned against trying to understand the present by simple analogy to the past. We have to be open to the possibility that something radically new is upon us. In this case, the present is both new and old. 

An Aesthetic Find

Roger Berkowitz
Of all of Hegel’s great works, only the Aesthetics has not yet existed in a complete form. That may change.

A Cultural Breakdown

Roger Berkowitz
Political violence is on the rise. The attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband this week is only the latest example. 

Regrets

Roger Berkowitz
In June 2020, The New York Times published an op-ed in which Senator Tom Cotton argued in favor of using federal troops in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. In an essay published over two years after the controversy, the Washington Post's Erik Wemple writes that he and others should have defended the decision by the times.