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Symbolic Beliefs
I was recently in Mechelen, a small and lively city in Belgium, to speak to a group of mayors from the European Union about diversity and polarization. My address to the European mayors in Mechelen made three points. First, Polarization is not necessarily something to be feared and derided. Second, while polarization can be dangerous, it only becomes dangerous when our politics fails. And, finally, politics is based on talking with one another in ways that nurture a common sense.All Categories
The Humanities, Science, and the Soul
Roger BerkowitzSara Cederberg looks at the now perennial “crisis of the humanities” and writes that one reason for the crisis is “the fact that there is no longer a case to be made for the cultivation of the soul.” If the humanities emerged as a project of national storytelling so that humanists were engaged in the “preservation and cultivation of the nation’s soul,” the turn to science as the dominant cultural force has left the humanities adrift.
Arendt, Camus, and Comte
David Langwallner writes about Hannah Arendt as a public intellectual and highlights her connections with Albert Camus and their joint worry about the rising power of scientists in public life.Without Vision, the People Perish
Elisa Gonzalez writes about Marilynne Robinson’s novels with a particular attention to her account of race, the Church, and the vision of what America might be.The New Left and Ideological Politics
Roger BerkowitzLouis Menand writes a long and important account of the “New Left” as it emerged in the cultural politics of the 1960s. Pace Menand, the core tenets of the “New Left” are a fight against “the system” and an understanding of politics as an existential struggle in self-actualization.
Anti-Black Antiracists
John McWhorter is publishing excerpts from his new book, The Elect: The Threat to A Progressive America from Anti-Black Antiracists. In the fifth excerpt, he argues that antiracism is a religion that harms black Americans.Is a Civil War Coming?
Elliot Ackerman asks if the polarization in the United States presages a new Civil War. "A recent poll conducted by Ipsos showed that only 12 percent of Americans consider the country “unified” and concluded that “political party identification has become the chief dividing line in this new American ethos.”Both-Sides-Ism
Roger BerkowitzIt is well known that we are suffering a crisis in truth alongside hyper-partisanship and a massive loss of trust in public institutions. As part of that hyper partisan atmosphere, however, it is usually the case that everyone thinks it is only the “other” side that spreads lies and misinformation.
HAC Student Fellow Isis Pinheiro Awarded Watson Fellowship
Selected from a nationwide finalist pool of over 150, Pinheiro was one of 42 college seniors to receive a Watson Fellowship for the 2021–22 academic year. She will spend the year traveling to England, Japan, China, Italy, and Guyana, where she will examine “the intersection of fashion and Black American culture through streetwear [and] explore how streetwear, and Black culture more broadly, have been globalized.”Power is Everywhere and Nowhere
Roger BerkowitzNadav Eyal writes that our time will be remembered for what it lacks and for what it destroys. It is a period of negation and nihilism consumed by a rage against the machine and a distrust of the system. Writing in the 1960s, Hannah Arendt saw that the glorification of violence witnessed in both theory and practice was in large part driven by a global sense of powerlesseness...