Associate Fellows

Hans Kern

Hans is a writer, illustrator, and self-publisher of ecological manuals, as well as an advocate of deliberative democratic processes. Originally from Munich, Germany, Hans attended Bard from 2010 to 2014, where he posited and investigated critiques of representative democracy. In 2017, Jonas Kunz and Hans co-founded the Bard Institute for the Revival of Democracy through Sortition (BIRDS), under the auspices of the Hannah Arendt Center. Sortition is the academic term for randomness, the process by which citizens’ assemblies, aka citizen panels, are picked. Hans now seeks to apply insights gained from this research to develop curricula and apply deliberative practices in edifying ways, through board games and community-scale engagements.

Susan Oberman

Susan Oberman has been a member of the Hannah Arendt Center and the Virtual Reading Group since 2016. In 2021 she initiated the Hannah Arendt Center Dialogue Project which offers HAC members the opportunity to engage in dialogue with other Arendt readers. In 2023 she became an Associate Fellow of HAC. She is a proponent of dialogue as a way to provide space for everyone to be seen and heard, and as a model for addressing conflict. Susan has been practicing mediation since 1987 and established Common Ground Negotiation Services in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1999. She developed the Sustainable Knowledge Model of Norm-Educating Mediation which she uses in mediation, group facilitation, and negotiation coaching.  She sees conflict as an opportunity--to clarify differences in issues and values, rather than something to be avoided. Susan lives in Hurley, NY, with her oldest son and his family and is the proud grandmother of 6. She is an avid international folk dancer. For more information see www.commongroundnegotiation.com
 

Michael Weinman

Michael Weinman is Professor of Philosophy at Bard College Berlin (on leave 2022-23). He is the author or editor of six books, most recently, Hannah Arendt and Politics (Edinburgh UP 2022), with Maria Robaszkiewicz. He is also co-editor, with BCB's Boris Vormann, of The Emergence of Illiberalism (Routledge 2020) and co-author, with BCB's Geoff Lehman, of The Parthenon and Liberal Education (SUNY Press, 2018). His research focuses on political philosophy and the history of political thought, especially the contemporary legacies of classical thought and culture.