Featured Article
When We Choose Knaves
The Alien and Enemies Act gives the President nearly unfettered power to expel non-citizens in times of war and the Supreme Court has given the President great leeway to determine what is and what is not a war. What we are witnessing is less a constitutional crisis than a cold and cruel manipulation of existing laws to stoke fear that is shocking to our humanist sensibilities. 03-23-2025
All Categories
The Amor Mundi Podcast Episode 11: Masha Gessen
In the latest Amor Mundi Podcast, Roger Berkowitz and Masha Gessen talk about how even amidst the rise of subjectivism and the internalization of the world—what Hannah Arendt calls world alienation—there has remained a commitment to a common or shared world. Yet, it is precisely that common world that today seems endangered, and Gessen asks how language is used in anti-political ways to undermine the world we share.03-08-2021
Model of Courage: Adolph L. Reed Jr.
On Wednesday, February 17th, the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College welcomed Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Adolph L. Reed Jr. as keynote speaker for its first “Courage to Be” Lecture of the Spring 2021 semester. Written by 2020/21 Student Fellow Sage Saccomanno03-04-2021
Is There a Crisis of Academic Freedom?
Eric Kauffmann, who spoke at the Arendt Center’s last conference, has published a study on “Partisanship and Ideology” in the academy. In an op-ed summarizing his study, Kauffmann argues that while academics frequently brush aside worries about partisanship and disciplining of faculty for their opinions, “Academic freedom is in crisis on American campuses.”03-04-2021
Accepted Falsities
Roger BerkowitzThere are simply too many accepted truths that are not true. Two recent essays make the case that the Press needs to do better at avoiding making false claims, claims that then come to be accepted as verities. Holman Jenkins Jr. writes that Musicologist Ted Gioia “may be on to something when he says that after 9/11, the long reign of cool had ended, the reign of hot had begun.”
03-04-2021
Peter Kennard on Arendt and Art
As part of Hannah Arendt Center’s collaboration with the Richard Saltoun Gallery and its year-long exhibition “On Hannah Arendt,” Roger Berkowitz interviews Peter Kennard, one of the artists featured in the show. The interview touches on Kennard’s art, Arendt’s essay “The Concept of History,” and the importance of political art.03-04-2021
Race and Class At Smith
Jodi Shaw resigned from her staff position at Smith College where she earned about $40,000 annually. Michael Powell has a long post-mortem of the controversy in The New York Times. Shaw wrote an open letter to Smith’s President Kathleen McCartney.02-25-2021
How To Fight Illiberal Democratic Movements?
Roger BerkowitzThere is a widespread misconception that we are seeing a threat to democracy. More rightly, we are witnessing a democratic revolt against liberal-constitutional-limited government. The question, then, is how liberal-constitutional republics should react to threats from populist democratic movements. The general view at least in the United States is that constitutional democracies allow its critics—even its existential critics—the benefit of freedom of speech.
02-25-2021
Rethinking Liberalism and the Enlightenment
Roger BerkowitzHannah Arendt was a decidedly anti-metaphysical and anti-universalist thinker. For Arendt, “particular questions must receive particular answers.” There are, she writes, “no general standards to determine our judgments unfailingly, no general rules.” Amidst what Arendt calls the “break in the tradition,” it is a fact that “traditional verities seem no longer to apply” and the “loss of general standards and rules--cannot be undone.” There is no going backwards to some past golden era.
02-25-2021
On the Contradictions of Nikki Haley: Republican
Roger BerkowitzI am not a prognosticator. Take what I am going to say with a large dose of skepticism. It is very likely that in four years the United States will elect a minority woman as its President. The question may be, will that woman be Vice President Kamala Harris or former South Carolin Governor Nikki Haley?
02-18-2021