Amor Mundi

The 500 State Project

Roger Berkowitz
The United States of America was created not as a democratic state but as a federal constitutional republic with democratically elected representatives. As Alexis de Tocqueville saw, the spirit of American democracy came out of the townships in New England. And Hannah Arendt argues that the greatest innovation and central idea of the United States Constitutions was the dispersion and expansion of federated powers alongside a rejection of central government and sovereignty.

A Failure of Leadership

Nikole Hannah-Jones has published a letter explaining her decision to first fight to get tenure as the Knight Chair Professor at the University of North Carolina and then her decision to decline the offer and take a new chair at Howard University. 

The Imagination Police

Barbara J. Zitwer writes about the importance of imagination, something she argues is threatened by an “imagination police” rules against cultural appropriation. 

On Selbstdenken

Roger Berkowitz
The incredible popularity of Hannah Arendt in recent years is likely traceable to her reflections on themes such as  totalitarianism, loneliness, and lying in politics. Her work is thought to be relevant to our modern political and cultural situation. And it is. But Arendt’s importance today goes beyond her substantive insights into our political condition.

Friendliness

Roger Berkowitz
A new study from the Survey Center on American Life confirms what studies have been showing for decades, that Americans increasingly have fewer friends. The number of American men who say they have “no close friends” has increased from 3% in 1990 to 15% in 2021. To live without friends is terrifying; it is to risk being adrift, without support and love.

The Problem is Not the Virus; The Problem is Society.

Roger Berkowitz
Sarah Schulman’s book Conflict Is Not Abuse is one of the better arguments, from a progressive perspective, against de-platforming and in favor of having difficult conversations. Schulman makes an essential argument, that we too often confuse the feeling of conflict or being uncomfortable with the experience of abuse or serious medical trauma.

Laughter as a Kind of Common Sense

In The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt revisits Plato’s Thracian servant girl, suggesting that her laughter is the laughter of innocence. There is no hint, here, that the Thracian girl’s response involves the hostility of ridicule. Of course, Arendt’s project can be thought in terms of a kind of identification with the Thracian girl’s worldly perspective, and writers such as Jacques Taminiaux have explored this association and its important implications...

Revitalising Democracy: Citizen Juries as a Response to the Failure of Expert Rule

Roger Berkowitz

I was in Ljubljana in early June to speak at a conference, “What Kind of Government?” You can watch recordings of the talks including my own talk “Revitalising Democracy: Citizen Juries as a Response to the Failure of Expert Rule.”

Why Do People Care About Critical Race Theory?

Roger Berkowitz
When I was in law school in the 1990s, Critical Race Theory was emerging from the legal academy. In my own personal history, it began with Patricia Williams’ book The Alchemy of Race and Rights: A Diary of a Law Professor. Later in law school I encountered Critical Race Theory through the works of Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Critical Race Theory was radical and exciting.