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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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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
What We Are Reading:
The Plague And the Literary Cure
Roger BerkowitzJill Lepore writes about the literature of epidemics, looking back at great works about plagues by Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London, Stephen King, Albert Camus, and Jose Saramago. What all plague literature shares is, first, the knowledge that the plague threatens the human world, that is “cuts away the higher realms, the loftiest capacities of humanity, and leaves only the animal.”
04-02-2020
Hannah Arendt and the 20th Century
By Roger BerkowitzThe German Museum of History prepared a wonderful new exhibition on Hannah Arendt that was supposed to have its opening this week.
03-28-2020
Corona Loneliness
By Samantha HillBefore the Corona pandemic we were already facing a loneliness epidemic. And now, with mandatory self-isolation, many are worried about what kind of impact this enforced aloneness will have for individuals. Hannah Arendt draws an important distinction between solitude and loneliness.
03-25-2020
Dialogue with One’s Self
Roger BerkowitzKate Bracht turns to Hannah Arendt to find a silver lining to our need to be by ourselves during the Corona Virus pandemic. We are all increasingly spending more time by ourselves. One answer is to reach out for companionship through on-line dinner parties and courses.
03-25-2020
Grimm Lecture 2020: Thinking Itself is Dangerous
Acting Assistant Director and Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Studies Samantha Rose Hill gave the annual Grimm Lecture, the premiere event of the Waterloo Centre for German Studies, a research institute at the University of Waterloo. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, Dr. Hill livestreamed her lecture, entitled “Thinking Itself is Dangerous. Reading Hannah Arendt Now.”03-24-2020
A Time For Reading and Falling in Love With Hannah Arendt
By Roger BerkowitzIn the recent podcast on Arendt, Freedom, and Protest on the Political Theory Podcast, host Toby Buckle asks Roger Berkowitz why Hannah Arendt is so loved today. One answer comes from Jeremy Clarke who writes about his love affair with Hannah Arendt’s thinking, which he first encountered on a BBC radio show In Our Time.
03-24-2020
Arendt, Freedom, and Protest
Arendt Center Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz speaks with Toby Buckle in the Political Theory Podcast on Arendt’s idea of freedom and protest. The conversation includes discussions of constitutionalism, lottery-based citizen assemblies, the revitalization of democracy, and the basic question of “What we are fighting for?”
03-21-2020