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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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Jaspers and Heinrich Blücher’s Common Course
By Roger BerkowitzAs World War II came to an end, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers republished a revised edition of his 1923 book The Idea of the University. Jaspers saw universities as essential to the maintenance of a vibrant democracy. He was worried that the universities in Germany had become overly specialized and technical and that they had lost their true calling as institutions dedicated to communication and truth.
09-19-2019
The New Progressivism
By Roger BerkowitzGeorge Packer has a long and thoughtful essay about culture wars, meritocracy, and our children. The structure of the essay follows Packer and his wife as they navigate the New York City public and private schools. They pull their son out of an expensive private school to send him to a public school that is 38% white, 29% black, 24% Latino, and 7% Asian, closely representative of the city’s population. But the school is less academically rich than the private school...
09-19-2019
What We're Reading: Wendell Berry
Jedediah Britton-Purdy chronicles the life and work of Wendell Berry in The Nation. Berry’s writing, which won him a National Humanities Medal in 2011, has now been gathered in two volumes. The focus of Berry’s writing which reflects his agricultural lifestyle, has always spoken to larger political issues like environmentalism, violence, and economic inequality.09-17-2019
Swift as Thought
By Thomas Bartscherer
[W]hen one thinks of things that Homer used to say, the phrase “swift as thought” may not come immediately to mind. It is well known that Homeric epics are replete with formulas, phrases like “rosy-fingered dawn” or “swift-footed Achilles” that are often repeated. To my knowledge, however, there are only three instances in the Greek texts traditionally ascribed to Homer that approximate the English “swift as a thought”...
[W]hen one thinks of things that Homer used to say, the phrase “swift as thought” may not come immediately to mind. It is well known that Homeric epics are replete with formulas, phrases like “rosy-fingered dawn” or “swift-footed Achilles” that are often repeated. To my knowledge, however, there are only three instances in the Greek texts traditionally ascribed to Homer that approximate the English “swift as a thought”...
09-17-2019
Sunday Listening: An Interview
With Roger Berkowitz
In advance of the Hannah Arendt Center's 12th Annual Fall Conference, titled "Racism and Antisemitism," Hillary Harvey interviews HAC founder and academic director Roger Berkowitz. 09-14-2019
Migration as Avant-Garde
A Book Review
Max FeldmanThey came out in the tens of thousands. In London and Paris, Dublin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, and others, people marched in the streets. They carried signs and banners, urging governments to do something, anything. “Refugees Welcome,” they said, illustrated with a silhouette of a family fleeing for their lives: a father first, then a mother dragging a child, whose foot trails in the air in the rush. “Bring Your Families,” they said.
09-10-2019
The State Courts Fight Back
By Roger BerkowitzIn June the United States Supreme Court in Rucho v. Common Cause refused to intervene in two cases that considered constitutional challenges to political gerrymandering in North Carolina and Maryland. The Court found the Congressional maps to be “highly partisan, by any measure,” and “blatant examples of partisanship driving districting decisions.” And the Court held...
09-09-2019
Literary Prize for Peace
Please join us in congratulating Bard College Professor Nuruddin Farah who has won the 2019 Lee Hochul Literary prize for Peace, awarded in Seoul, South Korea.
09-09-2019
What We're Reading:
Politics and Passions
By Samantha Hill
Hannah Arendt was notoriously wary of thinking about the passions in politics. From her critique of Rousseau’s empathy in On Revolution to her letter criticizing James Baldwin for putting forth a notion of political love, Arendt feared these emotions could not create real solidarity. She believed that such feelings were anti-democratic because they turned our capacity to love the many away from the public realm of political action...
09-09-2019