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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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Amor Mundi Podcast Special Series, Thinking the Plague: Thinking in Dark Times
This is episode 6,”Thinking in Dark Times.” It features the Arendt Center's Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz and Samantha Hill, Assistant Director of the Hannah Arendt Center, in a wide-ranging conversation about thinking during the time of the plague.04-16-2020
Amor Mundi Podcast Special Series,Thinking the Plague: Looking in the Mirror
This is episode 5,” Looking In the Mirror.” It features the Arendt Center's Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz in conversation with Jerome Kohn, a political thinker, the literary executor for Hannah Arendt, and the editor of many volumes of Arendt’s posthumous works including “Thinking Without a Bannister,” “The Jewish Writings,” “Essays in Understanding,” and Responsibility and Judgment.”04-14-2020
Podcast: Living with Honor, part of our special series: Thinking the Plague
Roger Berkowitz speaks with Uday Mehta, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York.04-09-2020
Isolation and Loneliness
Dhruv Khullar writes about the loneliness and solidarity of treating the coronavirus in New York for the New Yorker magazine. Looking at patient’s experiences of the ICU and feelings of isolation, Khullar talks about how doctors are managing the pandemic.04-09-2020
The Threat to the Republic
By Roger BerkowitzIn March, 2017, I published an essay “Why Arendt Matters” about the newly inaugurated President Trump. I wrote that, “Common sense insists that we not abandon reality and imagine that the United States is experiencing totalitarianism.” I argued that while the President was leading a mass movement, and that while mass movements are at the core of totalitarian domination, it is also the case that not all mass movements are totalitarian.
04-09-2020
The Loss of the Spoken Word and Distinction in the age of COVID-19
Hannah Arendt Center member Scott McLain writes this week's member submission.04-09-2020
In Memoriam: Dora Amelan
We at the Hannah Arendt Center mourn the death of Dora Amelan (1920-2020). Dora was a remarkable French Jewish woman who worked with the Children’s Aid Society in the French internment camps during WWII, saving many children and adults. Dora was the mother of Bjorn Amelan and mother-in-law to his partner Bill T. Jones, who has long collaborated with the Hannah Arendt Center and Bard College. Dora passed away this week in Paris, from complications associated with Covid-19.04-03-2020
Arendt’s Eichmann: Murderer, Idealist, Clown
By Jerome KohnAdolf Eichmann was a Nazi Higher SS officer and member of the Gestapo during the Second World War. When the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem was adopted as German policy at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, it became Eichmann’s job to organize the destruction of millions of Jews.
04-02-2020
The Erosion of the Common World
Roger BerkowitzIt has become common sense that President Trump lies. Once again there are countless articles and Twitter feeds and video compilations showing that the President has lied, stated falsehoods, and denied having said what he said. And yet through it all, the President’s popularity rating is soaring.
04-02-2020