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Temptations of Tyranny
Rod Dreher’s conflicted support for President Trump illustrates a broader crisis among intellectual conservatives who fear the "soft totalitarianism" of liberal institutions yet embrace the hard authoritarianism of executive overreach. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political thought, the essay contends that true freedom is preserved not through charismatic leaders but through the multiplication and decentralization of citizen power. Revitalizing democracy, it argues, requires stubborn, local acts of collective governance rather than the dangerous temptation to concentrate authority in a single figure.04-27-2025
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Get Back to Laboring
Roger BerkowitzGovernments and businesses are telling people to get back to work. Lyndsey Stonebridge notes that what what they really are saying is to get back to the business of laboring. The distinction between work and labor is central to Hannah Arendt’s thinking about the human condition.
05-16-2020
Amor Mundi Podcast, Episode 1: Martin Gurri
The Hannah Arendt Center presents the Amor Mundi Podcast. This episode, Roger Berkowitz talks with Martin Gurri, author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.05-15-2020
Federalism
Roger BerkowitzAs the President vacillates between claiming absolute powers and empowering the states, there is a renewed interest in the American principle of federalism. The appeal to the principle of federalism and the multiplication of powers throughout the United States Constitutional system is precisely the kind of thinking Hannah Arendt celebrated as the true innovation of the United States Constitution.
05-14-2020
Communities of Trust
Roger BerkowitzIn a Senate hearing this week, Senator Rand Paul called for humility and warned that Dr. Anthony Fauci was not the “end all” in predicting the course of the Coronavirus. In response, Dr. Fauci reminded Senator Paul—who is also a doctor—that he had never made himself to be an “end all.” “I am a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence...
05-14-2020
Podcast in Print: Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies
A transcript of the open remarks from the Amor Mundi Podcast episode 10: “Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies.” It features the Arendt Center’s founder and director, Roger Berkowitz, and Jonas Kunz, cofounder of the Bard Institute for the Revival of Democracy through Sortition giving a talk and leading a discussion over Zoom.05-14-2020
Loneliness and the Loss of the Common World
Roger BerkowitzUntil recently, I had not left my apartment for 33 days. I did not touch another human being—not even the members of my family with whom I live—for even longer. The virus has been mild in my case. It is nearly gone. Physically, I am fine. I am one of the lucky ones; I never had to make a decision whether to go to a hospital, alone, not knowing whether I would see family and friends ever again.
05-07-2020
What We Are Reading:
Viral Extremities
Roger BerkowitzKristian Blickle of the Federal Reserve Board of New York has published a working paper, “Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany, 1918-1933.” As described by Quint Forgey, Blickle’s paper “concludes that deaths caused by the 1918 influenza pandemic “profoundly shaped German society” in subsequent years and contributed to the strengthening of the Nazi Party.”
05-07-2020
Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies
This is episode 10, “Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies.” It features the Arendt Center's Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz and Jonas Kunz, co-founder of the Bard Institute for the Revival of Democracy Through Sortition, giving a talk and leading a discussion over Zoom. The talk was organized by Lawrence Davis-Hollander and the Scoville Memorial Library and took place on Saturday, April 18, 2020.05-06-2020
Radical Racial Imaginations
Roger BerkowitzA bit over a year ago I attended a symposium on “Black Intellectuals & The Condition of the Culture” at Skidmore College, featuring Margo Jefferson, Darryl Pinckney, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Orlando Patterson and John McWhorter. The conversations were free and provocative and at times brilliant. Now the transcripts of the symposium have been published by SALMAGUNDI.
05-02-2020