Amor Mundi

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.

Power is Everywhere and Nowhere

Roger Berkowitz
Nadav 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...
 

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 Berkowitz
It 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.”

The Academic Freedom Alliance

Roger Berkowitz
I have joined The Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) as a founding member. The AFA “is a non-profit organization whose members are dedicated to protecting the rights of faculty members at colleges and universities to speak, instruct, and publish without fear of sanction or punishment. We uphold the principles that are required if scholars are to fulfill their vocation as truth-seekers..."

Masha Gessen on Language, Loneliness, and the American Story

The central object of (Arendt’s) study is what happens to society when there’s too much distance, or not enough distance. . . . It is so important in her thinking that people think with one another. In order to think with one another, they have to feel their separateness from one another. You have to be an individual capable of forming an opinion, and expressing it, and exchanging it, and seeing the reflection of your ideas in the eyes of others.

Perpetual War Cultivates Militarism

Brad Evans interviews Vincent Brown about violence, white privilege, and police brutality. Brown begins with an account of the violent foundation of American life. 

Real Risk Analysis

Roger Berkowitz
Hong Kong democracy was always a project rather than a reality. But the movement for democracy in Hong Kong had been gaining steam for a decade. With the unanimous vote by the Chinese National People’s Congress this week, the hope for democracy in Hong Kong has gone up in smoke. The increasingly totalitarian Chinese Communist Party is solidifying rule at home and mobilizing its people for a long-term confrontation with the West, especially with the United States.