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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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The Eichmann Tapes are Discovered (Again)
Roger BerkowitzFew books have defined an entire world-historical event as Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Not only has Arendt’s book dominated the reception of Adolf Eichmann and his trial, but also her account of the banality of evil has become a cultural, moral, and legal touchstone, an insight perennially invoked (rightly or wrongly) to explain how and why everyday people engage in genocidal and other evil acts.
Now Yariv Mozer, an Israeli filmmaker, has created and directed a new documentary series The Devils Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes that played recently in Israel. Transcripts of the tapes have existed since before the Eichmann trial, and Arendt read many of them. But the actual tapes had long been thought lost. Mozer uses excerpts from these tapes to argue that Eichmann was in fact an ideological Nazi and was hardly banal.
07-17-2022
Richard Bernstein in Memoriam
Roger BerkowitzRichard Bernstein died this week. He is the author of Praxis and Action, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question, and Why Read Hannah Arendt Now? amongst many other books. He arrived at the New School for Social Research in 1989, where he taught courses on Hannah Arendt, amongst other interests. His obituaries are here, here and in German here. Dick spoke at the first Hannah Arendt Center Conference Thinking in Dark Times in 2006. At that conference, I asked Dick to respond to the question, “Is Evil Banal?” In typical fashion, his response was to challenge the question. His talk is transcribed and published in the volume Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics.
07-10-2022
Repeated Defeat On Election Day
Roger BerkowitzA few weeks ago I linked to an article by Ryan Grim arguing that political organizations on the left are spending more time on internal politics than they are on actually organizing to achieve their political goals. Grim’s essay has drawn a lot of attention, positive and negative. Thomas Edsall has surveyed a dozen leaders of leftwing organizations as well as leftist organizers to solicit their views. Edsall makes clear how radically divided the Democratic left is in the United States and tries to make sense of those divisions.
07-03-2022
Arendt and Big Data
Roger BerkowitzDaniel Brennan has a new paper on Hannah Arendt’s thinking as it relates to Big Data and Artificial intelligence.
07-03-2022
The Future of Security
Roger BerkowitzLiberalism is the political system that claims to balance the competing claims of freedom and order on the side of freedom. The demands of order and security are strong everywhere. For that reason, it is important to take stock of the way China is using technology to preserve public order; China’s innovations will be seductive in Hobbesian liberal democracies as well. Paul Mozur, Muyi Xiao, and John Liu write about the efforts in China to employ big data and technology in surveillance and prevention of crimes. Increasingly, China is at the world leader in promoting technology as a way forward towards a secure society. The elevation of security over freedom, however, raises profound questions for a free society.
07-03-2022
Progressive Workplace Problems
Roger BerkowitzRyan Grim takes on the elephant in the room of progressive politics, the fact that political organizations on the left are spending more time on internal politics than they are on actually organizing to achieve their political goals.
06-19-2022
Everything Is Still Falling Apart
Roger BerkowitzMars Hill was an evangelical church founded by a charismatic figure Mark Driscoll that was based in Seattle. Driscoll proved a controversial figure, at once a brilliant evangelical leader and a bullying leader also accused of plagiarism and fraud. Mike Cosper tells this story in his podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. The podcast speaks to our present moment, whether or not one is interested in Christianity or in megachurches. It is an extraordinary example of how to tell a story of our time through an in-depth exploration of one exemplary cultural catastrophe. I had the pleasure of speaking with Cosper and Yuval Levin- who will also be speaking at our Fall Conference -on the most recent episode of Cosper's podcast.
06-19-2022
Reason in Politics: Lawrence Lessig interviews John Gastil
On his podcast Another Way, Larry Lessig spoke with John Gastil of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. They discussed the polarized media landscape and specific steps we can take to improve deliberation, understanding, and the use of reason. Gastil's book, Hope for Democracy, tells the story of the Citizens' Initiative Review in Oregon.06-19-2022
On Recognition
Peter Gordon reviews Axel Honneth’s new book on recognition and argues that recognition is the cornerstone of who we are as well as our claims for justice and inclusion. 06-12-2022