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A Constitutional Crisis?
Is the U.S. facing a constitutional crisis, or is it all political theater? This analysis breaks down the escalating tensions between the executive branch and the courts—separating fact from fiction and exploring what’s really at stake for American democracy.02-16-2025
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Looking Critically at DEI Curricula in K-12 Education
Roger BerkowitzThe Editors of the Journal of Free Black thought have published an abridged version of their report on “Six Unsettling Features of DEI in K-12.” It is hardly a demonization of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion syllabi. But the Journal’s report does raise serious questions about the potential harms associated with some but certainly not all DEI practices.
10-02-2022
The End of Reality
Roger BerkowitzEwa Płonowska Ziarek turns to Hannah Arendt to argue that digital disinformation is threatening reality itself.
10-02-2022
There Are No Holes of Oblivion
Roger BerkowitzNo matter how fully a regime might seek to make people, facts, or inconvenient truths disappear, “there are no holes of oblivion.” Hannah Arendt found in the downfall of the Nazis and the Bolsheviks some hope, namely that totalitarian regimes will always fail when confronted with human freedom and the claim of reality. Aaron Sarin writes about the efforts in China to perfect the surveillance state–and why it is fated to fail.
10-02-2022
Is Alt-Right the New Black?
Roger BerkowitzN.S. Lyons argues that if the youth of today rebel, "they’re likely to rebel in the only direction they now can: by becoming more traditionalist and conservative.”
09-25-2022
Hannah Arendt at Documenta 15
Roger BerkowitzThis was the 15th Documenta, and the most controversial. It was marred by charges of antisemitism which were returned with accusations of racism. I am not an artist and had never been to a Documenta. But I was particularly interested because I would be participating in Documenta 15 as part of the final installation by the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera and her Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR). The Arendt Center sponsored three talks throughout the week.
09-25-2022
Rage and Reason: The Absurdity of Reality
Roger BerkowitzA few weeks ago I wrote about Wyatt Mason’s reflections on the Afghan American writer Jamil Jan Kochai and his new book The Haunting of Hajji Hotak. I’m thrilled now that Jamil Jan Kochai will be joining us to speak at the Hannah Arendt Center’s Rage and Reason conference on October 13 and 14th.
09-11-2022
Nervous States
Roger BerkowitzWilliam Davies’ Nervous States is one of my favorite books published in recent years. In it, Davies argues that we are past the point of no return at which emotion has overwhelmed reason as the foundation of our public life.
09-11-2022
Rage and Reason: The Case for Rage
Roger BerkowitzMyisha Cherry argues that anger and rage are, in certain circumstances, and for some people, appropriate responses to injustice. "Anger makes us attentive to wrongdoing and motivates us to pursue justice." Cherry, a philosopher at University of California at Riverside, turns to the thinker Audre Lorde who herself embraced rage that aims at change. For Cherry and Lorde, this "anti-racist rage can be used to engage in action that brings about such a change."
09-04-2022
Actuality Has Become Stupid
Roger BerkowitzWyatt Mason writes about the new book by the Afghan American writer Jamil Jan Kochai’s, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak. The absurd incursions of the real into the intelligent life of the imagination are central to the Afghan American writer Jamil Jan Kochai’s fiction, a small body of work that has been charting a path not merely to how one might write about his native country, but also to how fiction might perform a reckoning with the idiotic now.
09-04-2022