Amor Mundi

Totalitarianism and Loneliness

By Roger Berkowitz
Martha Minow recently spoke accepted the Leo Baeck Medal  at the Leo Baeck Institute on November 19, 2019. Minow describes what she calls “upstanders,” those who stand up to dehumanizing and oppressive systems and have the courage to act against bureaucratized evil. “To be an upstander,” Minow writes, “may seem daunting especially if it implies solo, heroic action.

Episode 2 - Seyla Benhabib

Join Roger Berkowitz as he talks with Seyla Benhabib, the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University. Her new book, Exile, Statelessness, and Migration explores the intertwined lives, careers, and writings of a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals during the mid-twentieth century, including Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Isaiah Berlin, and many others.

What Goebbels Could Do With Facebook

By Roger Berkowitz
The Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen [who became famous playing the character Borat in movies] gave the Keynote Address to the Anti-Defamation League last week. His speech was deadly serious about the real danger of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and social media. I wrote recently about the “increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale” of information and misinformation on social media.”

Dreams Under Dictatorship 

By Samantha Hill
Mireille Juchau revisits a book published by Charlotte Beradt in 1985 on The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation. Beradt was an acquaintance of Hannah Arendt’s and translated five her essays. Beradt’s work echoes Arendt’s work in the The Origins of Totalitarianism,and challenges readers to think about spaces of freedom in thinking, beyond the public and private realm:   

What Does It Mean to Educate Citizens?

Leon Botstein, Bard College President, discusses education and the public sphere in this talk from our 2013 Annual Conference

How Race Appears

By Thomas Chatterton Williams
In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt laid out her concept of the polis — literally, an ancient Greek city state, but defined more broadly in Webster’s as “a state or society especially when characterized by a sense of community” — as a departure from the ancient understanding of the term...

What We're Reading: The Firing Line

By Roger Berkowitz
John McWhorter comments on the firing of Steven Wilson, formerly CEO of a group of charter schools in New York that serve primarily students of color. Wilson was fired after a petition circulated titled,  “Hold the CEO of Ascend Public Charter Schools Accountable for White Supremacist Rhetoric.”  What exactly was the “white supremacist rhetoric” that Wilson was guilty of?

Political Algorithms

By Roger Berkowitz
That politicians lie is hardly news. Politics and truth, Hannah Arendt reminds us, have never been on good terms. "Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician's or the demagogue's but also of the statesman's trade." And yet, Arendt raises the question of "what injury political power is capable of inflicting upon truth."

What We're Reading: Better Angels

Nellie Bowles looks at the organization Better Angels, which hosts conversations for Republicans and Democrats across the country, helping to bridge the political and cultural divide on the ground.