Amor Mundi

The Academic Freedom Alliance

Roger Berkowitz
I have joined The Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) as a founding member. The AFA “is a non-profit organization whose members are dedicated to protecting the rights of faculty members at colleges and universities to speak, instruct, and publish without fear of sanction or punishment. We uphold the principles that are required if scholars are to fulfill their vocation as truth-seekers..."

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.

Accepted Falsities

Roger Berkowitz
There 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.”

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.

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 Saccomanno
 

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.”

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.

How To Fight Illiberal Democratic Movements?

Roger Berkowitz
There 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.

Rethinking Liberalism and the Enlightenment

Roger Berkowitz

Hannah 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.