It's Time for Our Winter Membership Drive

"Politics," Hannah Arendt tells us, "is based on the fact of human plurality." What this means is that politics deals with factual coexistence and the association of different people, people who disagree about fundamental questions of social, economic, moral, and political life. Amidst these differences, politics is the activity in which a plurality of persons works—by persuasion, compromise, speech, and action—to discover or create "essential commonalities" within the absolute chaos of our differences. Through much of human history, there is widespread agreement on what we share; on the traditions and common sense that gird our essential commonness. And yet, at times, the authority of that tradition splinters and we are left amidst the rubble of a broken world. 

The partisanship, factual dissonance, and brokenness of our world are not going away. President elect Joe Biden speaks of healing, but what would it take to reconstitute the trust and commonality on which a new shared world might emerge? 

Lectures and sermons will not heal us. Simply pointing out "facts" does not convince people of facts they do not want to believe. Study after study shows that we human beings will defend false beliefs even when confronted by facts; social science calls this "motivated reasoning." Because the benefits of membership in a group outweigh the benefits of acknowledging reality, it is rational for us to hold on to those beliefs that grant us meaningful membership in a group or movement. 

One approach that does seem to work according to studies is to teach people from all political perspectives that misinformation is out there and to empower them to recognize misinformation from all directions. Showing that certain facts and policies are supported by people from different political or tribal groups is one of the most effective ways of nurturing independence. Such an approach seeks to empower people to be critical thinkers rather than to shame them for believing false information. 

Hannah Arendt fundamentally believed that amidst the shattering of our common world, the only way to reconstitute a shared world is through thinking and talking with others. She writes: "We become more just and more pious by thinking and talking about justice and piety." In talking about the world, we make the world visible in its complexity. 

But even amidst discord, the act of speaking with one another about the crises of our times will, "eventually lay the groundwork for new agreements between ourselves as well as between the nations of the earth, which then might become customs, rules, [and] standards that again will be frozen into what is called morality." In talking with one another we create the kinds of shared experiences and common points of connections that might, over time, become the building blocks of a new shared world that can give birth to new traditions and thus a new moral order.  

The Hannah Arendt Center is dedicated to the open, vigorous, and honest discourse that can and will help reimagine our world. Our last conference on Racism and Antisemitism included talks from Ibram X. Kendi, Eric Ward, Reverend Jacqui Lewis, John McWhorter, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and others. Many of the talks from that conference have been published in Volume 8 of HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center.    

Last month we held a webinar dedicated to the practice of Citizen Assemblies, which bring together randomly chosen citizens to talk and think about how to solve intransigent and highly contentious political issues. The premise of a citizen assembly is that not only will inviting everyday people into policy decision-making improve our policies, but also that by empowering people to engage in self-government we will nurture better citizens. Our speakers—David Van Reybrouck, Helene Landemore, Peter MacLeod, and Selena Thompson—will also be keynote speakers at our rescheduled annual conference on Revitalizing Democracy: Sortition, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom.

Save the Date!

The 13th Annual Hannah Arendt Center Conference

"Revitalizing Democracy: From Sortition to Federalism"

April 29-30, 2021 at Bard College, Annandale, New York

We at the Arendt Center are working with our friends at the Future Worlds Center in Cyprus to develop Structured Democratic Dialogues using the Center's cutting-edge methodologies and technologies on a virtual deliberative conferencing platform to promote consensus and trust amongst people of widely divergent backgrounds. Our first dialogue in February, 2021, will ask students and faculty how to decolonize the curriculum, aiming to move beyond the slogans and think what would it mean to really incorporate all sorts of underrepresented viewpoints—including minority conservative thinkers, perspectives from other countries, and a true plurality of viewpoints. 

As part of the Arendt Center's efforts to deepen our conversation about race and racism, we have sponsored a series of talks and dialogues on "Race and Revolution." Speakers in the series include Bill T. Jones, Juliana Huxtable (Bard 2010), Kimberly Foster, Coleman Hughes, Reverend Jacqui Lewis and Kenyon Adams. You can watch the lectures in this series here.

The Arendt Center's Virtual Reading Group is currently reading the collection The Promise of Politics and will start re-reading The Human Condition in February. The VRG has grown to include between 80-120 dedicated readers every week and our discussions are a mix of real textual exegesis alongside broadminded efforts to think with Arendt about our present world. Learn more here. 

In 2021, the Arendt Center will partner with the Richard Saltoun Gallery in London. The Gallery is sponsoring a year-long exhibition in which artists have been asked to respond to the Preface and then the eight essays in Hannah Arendt's collection Between Past and Future. In conjunction with this show, the Arendt Center and the Richard Saltoun Gallery will host a series of reading groups, dinners, artist talks, and related events to highlight the way Arendt's work inspires and speaks to artists in the 21st century. 

Last, we are excited to announce The Global Humanities Network (GHN) at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities (HAC). The GHN has been established to nurture a culture that values and strengthens the humanities as the foundation of an open society. The Network will support the integration and accessibility of humanities study across Open Society University Network (OSUN) institutions. The GHN projects include; 1. Yehuda Elkana Fellowship in the Engaged Humanities: An annual event hosted by the Hannah Arendt Center In collaboration with the Institütfürdie Wissenschaftder Menschen (IWM) in Vienna. 2. Text Seminar for Scholars and Students: The Global Humanities Network, along with HAC and IWM will hold weeklong close readings of classic works in political or democratic thinking. 3. Biannual Writing Retreat: Coordinated by Central European University and the Hannah Arendt Center, for a group of scholars and authors addressing similar issues, to meet, work, and write together. 4. Artificial Intelligence Working Group: Enabling OSUN scholars to gain expertise in, and to explore the possibilities and consequences of, the rise of artificial intelligence for human life. 5. Network Faculty Seminars: On the model of recent seminars at Al Quds Bard, we will leverage well-known network faculty who would co-teach courses with local faculty at Bard Al Quds and AUCA as distinguished visitors. 

The Arendt Center is an intellectual space for passionate, uncensored, and non-partisan thinking that reframes and deepens the fundamental questions facing our world. We aim to nurture bold and provocative thinking that seeks, in the spirit of Hannah Arendt, to "think what we are doing."

We cannot do it without you! We are grateful for your continued support of the Hannah Arendt Center. Please do help by renewing your membership, or making a year-end contribution to the Center today!  

Our dedicated team at the center continues to grow. We are excited to announce Jacob Rivers joined the Hannah Arendt Center Team this Fall as the new Program Coordinator for the Hannah Arendt Center Global Humanities Network. Additionally, we welcome National Endowment for the Humanities/Hannah Arendt Center Distinguished Fellow David van Reybrouck; and Chiara Ricciardone returns as the Klemens von Klemperer Post-Doctoral Fellow.

This year we added another stellar team of student fellows to our center: Valentina Flores, Sage Saccomanno, and Stecy Mbemba [Courage to Be], Rosie Levi and Max Kleweno [Campus Plurality Forum], and Charlotte Geissler, Angela Woodack, and Isis Pinheiro [Program Fellows].

A large part of our annual budget, including our annual conference, is supported by contributions from members like yourself. Your support is necessary and deeply appreciated. We wish you a very thoughtful and provocative holiday season, and hope to see you at Arendt Center events in 2021!

Please help by renewing your membership, or by making a year-end contribution to the Center today!

OR

A large part of our annual budget, including our annual conference, is supported by contributions from members like yourself. Your support is necessary and deeply appreciated. We wish you a very thoughtful and provocative holiday season, and hope to see you at Arendt Center events in 2021!

Sincerely,



Roger Berkowitz

Academic Director

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College