Amor Mundi

When State Schools Emphasize the State

Roger Berkowitz
It has been a busy month for the Academic Freedom Alliance. This time it is not a professor falling afoul of a group think from the left, but three professors being censored from expressing their professional opinions because those opinions run afoul of the Florida Governor.

When Society is Not a Relation Among Persons

Roger Berkowitz
It is craziness to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory, as many states have done. But it is also bad pedagogy to make children feel guilty about the color of their skin or their religion. David Bromwich on how the parents of all races are rebelling against essentialist antiracist discourse in schools.

Racism and The Great Replacement

Roger Berkowitz

At the 2019 Arendt Center Conference, Ian Buruma moderated a panel on The Great Replacement, a popular right-wing theory in France that immigrants and other minorities are replacing the Catholic French. Now, one of the leading French presidential candidates, Eric Zemmour is embracing the theory.

Who is Guilty?

Roger Berkowitz and Philip Lindsay
Wen Stephenson embraces Hannah Arendt’s rejection of collective guilt in order to argue that in thinking about climate change we should resist the idea that we are all equally guilty.

The Dawn of Freedom

Roger Berkowitz
David Graeber’s books have become an increasingly important part of my intellectual life. His searching and restless exploration of what it means to live in freedom is at the forefront of his last and posthumously published book The Dawn of Everything, co-written with David Wengrow. Review by William Deresiewicz.

Thinking Less

Roger Berkowitz
In writing about one of the many recent efforts to de-platform a speaker because of that speaker’s political views, John McWhorter rightly emphasizes the anti-intellectual and simplistic arguments of those who justify such acts. 

 

What we are watching: The Closer

Roger Berkowitz
This week I screened Dave Chappelle’s The Closer for some of my students. It was optional. But I was heartened that they were eager to see the Netflix special that has generated so much controversy.

What we will be watching: Speer Goes to Hollywood

Join us for a live screening of the documentary Speer Goes to Hollywood, on Friday, October 29th at 7 pm. Roger Berkowitz will be leading a Q&A session with Vanessa Lapa and Tomer Eliav about the documentary about "Hitler's Architect" 

On the Removal of Bright Sheng

Roger Berkowitz
Professor Bright Sheng showed a movie of Othello in his music composition class at the University of Michigan. Because Laurence Olivier appears in blackface in the movie, students called for his removal and colleagues denounced him.