The Enduring Question of Hatred in Human Civilization - Retreat

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Is hatred morally evil? Or is it a sign of humanity to hate those who are evil and those things that bring tragedy? Hatred has been around as long as human beings, but many do insist that being hated is violation of one's human rights.  How is the purely personal hatred -- that toward a bad boss for example -- related to hatred toward whole groups? What's the difference between full-throttled, fully-voiced hatred and hatred which is so normalized that it is frequently unobserved? Undoubtedly, hatred—especially ideological hatreds such as racism and anti-Semitism—have enabled enormous evil in the last century. Hate, however, may be too complicated and to integral to human thought to simply be hated. We need, in other words, to think humanistically about hatred. 

As part of a new initiative to think about the power and meaning of hatred in human civilization, the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College along with the Human Rights Program and the Center for Civic Engagement sponsored a syllabus competition to craft new liberal arts courses on human hatred. Four courses were selected from Bard affiliated faculty from Al Quds Bard Honors College, The American University of Central Asia, Bard College in Berlin, and Bard College. Courses include:

•Great Hatred, Little Room: Contested Ireland/Island 

Deirdre d'Albertis and Peter Gatsby, Bard College 

•Hate and Revolution 

Ewa Attanassow, Bard College in Berlin

•Man as Monster: An Exploration of the Causes and Manifestations of Hate 

Stephanie Saldana, Rebecca Granato, Al Quds Bard Honors College

•The Nature of Human Hate: An Interdisciplinary Perspective 

Bermet Tursunkulova, Elena Kim, and Galina Gorborukova, American University of Central Asia.

The four courses will be taught in the Fall, 2014 Semester and students at all four universities will participate in joint discussions and lectures. In addition, the Hannah Arendt Center, the Center for Civic Engagement, and the Human Rights Project are sponsoring a two-day retreat on Feb. 1-2 at Bard College's Annandale Campus with the professors and other invited guests. Each professor will present texts from the course they are going to teach and the ensuing discussion will seek to develop a common project on Hate and Human Civilization that will be carried forward. The project is supported by a grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies.