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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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Fear of Fascism
By Samantha HillJacob Mikanowski profiles Timothy Snyder for The Chronicle Review. Snyder is a historian of the Holocaust and professor at Yale University. His new work, The Road to Unfreedom, chronicles the rise of authoritarianism today.
04-14-2019
The Microbiome
By Roger BerkowitzMatt Richtel and Andrew Jacobs report on one of the greatest threats to our way of life, the rise of bacteria and fungi that are impervious to medications. The culprit, as with so much in our modern health and environmental crises, is the overuse of antibiotics and antifungal medications in farming.
04-14-2019
Secrets and Sins
By Roger BerkowitzThe New York Times is running a series of articles on privacy called the Privacy Project. James Martin has an excellent essay on the double way that privacy is addressed in the Bible.
04-14-2019
Spotlight on The Campus Plurality Project
“Only in the freedom of our speaking with one another does the world, as that about which we speak, emerge in its objectivity and visibility from all sides.” —Hannah Arendt04-12-2019
Should Activists Use Violence to Create Social Change?
By Micah WhiteIn a 1967, Hannah Arendt had a discussion with Noam Chomsky and other prominent antiwar movement intellectuals on “The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act?” Their chat was recorded and published in an obscure volume on “Dissent, Power, and Confrontation.”
04-11-2019
Courage to Be Student Essay: Livy Marie Donahue on Deogratias Niyizonkiza
By Livy Marie DonahueDeogratias Niyizonkiza visited Bard College on March 4th, as the second speaker of the 2019
Courage to Be lecture series.
04-11-2019
No Crisis, But a Danger
By Roger BerkowitzThe folks at PEN ask, is there a crisis of free speech on college campuses. And once again, they answer “no.”
04-07-2019
Hate Inc.
By Roger BerkowitzMatt Taibbi is publishing his new book Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another alongside a series of emails. (The emails are available by subscription.) In his inaugural post, Taibbi describes why the cover of his book includes Rachel Maddow alongside Sean Hannity. Taibbi argues that Maddow is the poster-person for the rise of hate-filled journalism on the left, but he offers some praise for Maddow and argues that almost all of those journalists now criticizing her are guilty of much of the same excesses, irresponsibility, and hate mongering that she practiced.
04-07-2019
The Words We Live By: Poetry and Philosophy in Conversation
Fred Moten and Robert Gooding-Williams in a discussion moderated by Ann Lauterbach04-05-2019