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Con-solatio, Compassion, and Friendship
I was honored this week to have been chosen by Con-solatio to receive their annual Compassion Award at a ceremony in New York City. Con-solatio sends missionaries around the world to the poorest and most forlorn places on the planet. The goal is not to convert people or to educate them or to build them houses. It is simply to console them, to show them compassion, to be their friends.All Categories
Demagogic Democracy
Roger BerkowitzDemocracy is the rule of the people. Demagoguery is the people being led by a speaker who sparks and appeals to the people’s passions. Charles Sykes writes about a public hearing in Palm Beach, Florida in which citizens scream and yell at public health experts who argue that wearing masks should be required to help control the pandemic.
Loneliness and Solidarity
Barbara Taylor writes about the epidemic of loneliness that preceded the pandemic that has forced so many of us to isolate ourselves. And yet Taylor argues that within the pandemic we have begun to find practices of care and kindness that are actually working to make us less lonely and building a global solidarity.Resistance
From HAC Member Phil BurpeeLiberation is the throwing off of the yoke of tyranny, and liberty its outcome. Freedom is rather the ongoing ability to speak your mind and act openly within the cultural and political life of your community or society. The latter ought to follow the former, and it must be defended in all places, at all times, and in all circumstances. For it is never enough merely to throw off the yoke...
Hannah Arendt’s Politics for Crises
Roger BerkowitzNed O’Gorman argues that what makes Hannah Arendt so meaningful in our divided, highly partisan, and post-truth age is her embrace of politics that avoids claims to truth. While some may recoil from the intensity of politics and seek to restrain political excess, Arendt insists that the only way to protect ourselves from democratic tyranny is by expanding rather than constricting democratic powers.
Racism 3.0
Roger BerkowitzThe linguist John McWhorter discusses debates amongst editors of the Merriam-Webster dictionary about the definition of racism. The classical dictionary definition is that racism is “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”
The Meaning of October 27th
Roger BerkowitzAliza Becker and Noah Schoen present a webinar, “The Synagogue Shooting: Pittsburghers Reflect on Antisemitism and Racism.” This presentation is part of the "Meanings of October 27th" oral history project that explores Jewish and non-Jewish Pittsburghers’ life histories and reflections on the October 27th, 2018 synagogue shooting at the Tree of Life building.
Fascism Today
Samantha HillIn the New York Review of Books, Sarah Churchwell discusses American fascism through a historical lens while reflecting on recent events. Churchwell highlights the fact that fascism in 2020 will not look like fascism in Europe in 1933, but also acknowledges the underlying causes of fascist movements, like racism.
What Are We Fighting For?
The Philosopher asked a wide range of political thinkers to answer the question: What Question Should We Be Asking? Building upon Hannah Arendt, Roger Berkowitz answers that we need to ask: What Are We Fighting For?Racial Diminishment Syndrome
Roger BerkowitzChris Lebron writes that while three medical associations now label racism to be a public health crisis, he has long spoken of “Racial Diminishment syndrome,” a disease that, if often deadly, “more commonly results in discomfort, inconvenience and the sort of pains that eventually go away but the memories of which do not.