Amor Mundi

Leviathan Wakes

Roger Berkowitz
The pseudonymous N.S. Lyons provides 20 reasons why the woke revolution, for want of a better term, has a long way to run.

Tik Tok and the Online Panopticon

Tobias Hess
In January the internet was set ablaze with stories of a man nicknamed "West Elm Caleb." Sasha Sloat writes for Wired about the ways that Tik Tok and algorithmic social media facilitates a state of group-play that can quickly devolve from creative collaborative exchange into events of mass social obsession with severe implications.

Judgment and the Public world
 

Roger Berkowitz
Seyla Benhabib reviews a series of new books on Hannah Arendt and in the process offers a strong interpretation of Arendt’s thinking about Judgment. As we prepare to read Hannah Arendt’s writings on judgment in the Virtual Reading Group, Benhabib’s account rightly sees judgment as an essential political activity of building a shared world.
 

Artificial Intelligence and Total Domination

Roger Berkowitz
George Soros asks why it is that the chances for war between the United States and China have increased so markedly in recent decades. His answer is the rise of technology and specifically artificial intelligence.

Consequences for Private Speech

Roger Berkowitz
The Academic Freedom Alliance has written a letter protesting the suspension and investigation of Professor Ilya Shapiro by the Georgetown University Law Center. Shapiro tweeted: “Because Biden said he’s only consider black women for SCOTUS, his nominee will always have an asterisk attached. Fitting that the Court takes up affirmative action next term."

The HAC Dialogue Project: 
Exercising Plurality and Good Will

Susan Oberman and Christine Gonzalez Stanton

Who could have predicted that in 2021, in the midst of a pandemic, the Virtual Reading Group would become a centerpiece in the lives of Arendt readers around the world? Lifelong connections and friendships have been forged through the Arendt Center's efforts to bring people together to think about the most pressing issues in our political world. A brief history of the VRG.

Does Harvard Discriminate Against Asians?

Roger Berkowitz
Jay Caspian Kang believes in affirmative action and racial preferences. But when he dives into the Harvard case coming to the Supreme Court, Kang argues that Harvard’s approach to affirmative action reveals “a profoundly broken system that relies on obfuscation and misdirection, especially when it comes to the treatment of Asian applicants.”

The 2020 Election

Roger Berkowitz
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) has issued what the Wall Street Journal calls the best report on what really happened in the 2020 elections.

Socrates and the Culture Wars

Roger Berkowitz
Peter Minowitz writes about how teaching Socrates’ Apology can push us past the binaries of our culture wars.