Featured Article
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
All Categories
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
Views on the working class, from the left and the right
In his interviews with Reihan Salam of the Manhattan Institute, and then subsequently with Bhashkar Sunkara of Jacobin and The Nation, Ezra Klein helps contextualize different approaches to imagining and approaching workers and working-class voters. A common critique of elite discourse runs through the two interviews.06-12-2022
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