OSUN, Hannah Arendt Center, and Center for Civic Engagement present:
Friendship and Politics
Thursday, October 12, 2023 – Friday, October 13, 2023
Olin Hall
Registration
$150 Flat Fee.
FREE for the entire Bard Community and current members of the Hannah Arendt Center!
Please read all the directions below
Members
Members receive complimentary admission for yourself and one (1) guest. If you would like to become a member, or renew a membership, please click HERE before completing a registration. If you are unsure if your membership is current, please contact Executive Director, Christine Stanton, at [email protected]. Memberships are valid for one year.Bard Students
Bard students attend for free! Simply select "Bard College Student" when registering here.Live Streaming
The full conference will be available to stream live online. During registration, you will be asked to choose between attending in-person or virtually via Youtube. In-Person attendees will also receive the link to the live webcast. Register below.Lunch (Optional)
Pre-ordered lunches are OPTIONAL. During registration, you'll see lunch options, $14/ea, and must be Pre-ordered. Otherwise, here's a list of alternative food options located very close to the conference hall.Local Eateries
Kline Commons Dining Hall -- MAP: 3 minute walk from Olin Hall
Down the Road Cafe, Campus Center -- MAP: 7-8 minute walk from Olin Hall
Kline Commons Dining Hall -- MAP: 3 minute walk from Olin Hall
Down the Road Cafe, Campus Center -- MAP: 7-8 minute walk from Olin Hall
Register here
If you have read the above instructions please Register here
Schedule
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE. All activities take place in Olin Auditorium unless otherwise listed.Thursday, October 12th
10:00am
Introduction
Deirdre d'Albertis
10:10am
Friendship and Politics
Roger Berkowitz
10:30am
THE CRISIS OF FRIENDSHIPS: ITS ROOTS, CONSEQUENCES, AND SOLUTIONS
Niobe Way
Moderator: Thomas Chatterton Williams
12:00 pm
Why Friendship Matters
Uday Mehta
Anne Norton
Discussant: Lucas Guimaraes Pinheiro
1:00 pm
Lunch
Breakout Sessions [OPTIONAL]
1:00-1:45 pm
THE CRISIS OF FRIENDSHIPS: ITS ROOTS, CONSEQUENCES, AND SOLUTIONS
Niobe Way, moderated by Nick Dunn
Olin TBD
1:00-1:45 pm
IS READING A POEM AN ACT OF FRIENDSHIP?
Ann Lauterbach and Jana Mader
Olin 203
2:30pmTHE CRISIS OF FRIENDSHIPS: ITS ROOTS, CONSEQUENCES, AND SOLUTIONS
Niobe Way, moderated by Nick Dunn
Olin TBD
1:00-1:45 pm
IS READING A POEM AN ACT OF FRIENDSHIP?
Ann Lauterbach and Jana Mader
Olin 203
Philia and Democracy as Tragedy (TBC)
Daniel Mendelsohn
Moderator: Anne Norton
4:00pm
Civic Friendship and Social Thought: A Necessary Conversation
Angel Parham
Discussant: Roger Berkowitz
4:45pm
Break
5:15pm
CONVERSATIONS - HANNAH ARENDT, RALPH WALDO ELLISON, JAMES BALDWIN UND W.E.B. DU BOIS
Marie Luise Knott
Moderator: Jana Schmidt
6:00pm
Wine & Cheese Reception
Friday, October 13th
9:30:am
Introduction
Leon Botstein
10:00am
Talking to Strangers, Two Strangers Talking
Talking To Strangers I: Wyatt Mason
Talking to Strangers II: Daniel Mason
Strangers Talking: Wyatt Mason and Daniel Mason
Talking to Strangers II: Daniel Mason
Strangers Talking: Wyatt Mason and Daniel Mason
11:15
Platonic Friendships: How to Make--and Keep--Friends
Marissa Franco
Moderator: Esther Perel
12:30 pm
Lunch
Breakout Sessions [OPTIONAL]
1:00- 1:45 pm
CIVIC FRIENDSHIP FOR FRACTURED TIMES: CROSSING SEEMINGLY UNBRIDGEABLE DIVIDES
Angel Adams Parham, moderated by Jana Bacevic
Olin 202
1:00-1:45 pm
FRIENDSHIP: THE FUTURE OF AN ANCIENT GIFT BY CLAUDIA BARACCHI: A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR
Claudia Baracchi and Michael Weinman
Olin 201
1:00-1:45 pm
FRIENDSHIPS AND FEDERATIONS OF CARE: FORMS, ALLIANCES AND MULTIVERSES
Nelly Ben Hayoun - Stépanian
Olin 205
2 pm
The Risks of Correspondence
Thomas Wild, Jana Schmidt, Ann Lauterbach, Thomas Bartscherer
3:30 pm
Arendt’s Friends: Heinrich Blücher, Karl Jaspers and a Microworld
Barbara V. Bechtolsheim, Marion Detjen, and Alex Cain in Conversation with Roger Berkowitz
4:30pm
Wine & Cheese Reception at the Hessel Museum
Speakers
Jana Bacevic
![[Jana Bacevic]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/unnamed (8).jpg)
VIEW MORE >>
Jana has a PhD in sociology (Cambridge, 2019) and a PhD in social anthropology (University of Belgrade, 2008). In the intervening period she was lecturer at the Central European University, Marie Curie Fellow at Aarhus University, and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge; she also worked as consultant and advisor for a range of governments and international organizations in the field of education policy and minority rights. More about Jana's work is available at www.janabacevic.net
Claudia Baracchi
![[Claudia Baracchi]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Claudia Baracchi Pianosofia.jpg)
Barbara v. Bechtolsheim
![[Barbara v. Bechtolsheim]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/PhotographBvB.jpeg)
Nelly Ben Hayoun
![[Nelly Ben Hayoun]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Nelly Ben Hayoun at the Hollywood Bowl_Picture by Aaron Wojack.jpg (1).jpg)
Roger Berkowitz
![[Roger Berkowitz]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/berk.jpeg)
His essay "Reconciling Oneself to the Impossibility of Reconciliation: Judgment and Worldliness in Hannah Arendt's Politics," has helped bring attention to the centrality of reconciliation in Hannah Arendt's work. The Arendt Center organizes an annual conference every October. Professor Berkowitz edits the Hannah Arendt Center's weekly newsletter, Amor Mundi. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Bookforum, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Paris Review Online, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, The American Interest, and many other publications. Berkowitz is the 2019 recipient of the Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought given by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in Bremen, Germany.
Leon Botstein
![[Leon Botstein]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/botstein.png)
He is also music director and principal conductor of The Orchestra Now (TŌN) and the American Symphony Orchestra, artistic co-director of the Bard Music Festival. Botstein is editor of The Musical Quarterly and writes on music and culture. VIEW MORE >>
Leon Botstein has been the President of Bard College since 1975, where he is also the Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities. He is chairperson of the board of the Central European University and chancellor of the Open Society University Network (OSUN), as well as a member of the Global Board of the Open Society Foundation.
He is also music director and principal conductor of The Orchestra Now (TŌN) and the American Symphony Orchestra, artistic co-director of the Bard Music Festival. Botstein is editor of The Musical Quarterly and writes on music and culture.
He is also music director and principal conductor of The Orchestra Now (TŌN) and the American Symphony Orchestra, artistic co-director of the Bard Music Festival. Botstein is editor of The Musical Quarterly and writes on music and culture.
Thomas Bartscherer
![[Thomas Bartscherer]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/unnamed (7).jpg)
Nick Dunn
![[Nick Dunn]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/NDHeadshot_.jpg)
Marion Detjen
![[Marion Detjen]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/marion.jpeg)
Marion Detjen teaches migration history and global history at Bard College Berlin and works for Bard College Berlin’s scholarship program for displaced students. She studied European history and German literature and linguistics in Berlin and Munich, where she received her MA and passed her first state exam. She worked for several years as a freelance curator, teacher, writer, and activist, before receiving her PhD from Freie Universität Berlin with a dissertation on rescue helpers after the building of the Berlin Wall. 2009 - 2014 Marion worked and taught at Humboldt University Berlin, 2015 - 2017 at the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam. She is currently writing a book on the German-American publisher in exile Helen Wolff and her most favorite author Uwe Johnson. She is a regular contributor to the column „10nach8“ at ZEIT-Online as part of its editorial team, and a co-founder and board member of "Wir machen das," a coalition of action focused on the migration crisis, where she recently co-initiated the “Helen Wolff grants” to support female writers at risk in Afghanistan and other regions of crisis.
Marie Luise Knott
![[Marie Luise Knott]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Portrait0.jpg)
Science and Roman Literature (1978, University of Konstanz) she worked as an editor for 10
years. Later she worked as a literary translator from French and English and as a journalist
for various publishing houses, newspapers and radio stations. From 1995 to 2006 she was
the founder and editor in chief of the German Le Monde diplomatique. In 2010 she
completed her Ph.D. at Humboldt University: Denken im Dialog mit der Dichtung: Über
Produktionsbedingungen theoretischer Texte im 20. Jahrhundert am Beispiel Hannah
Arendts.
Since 2006 she works as curator, editor, translator and author. She has diverse teaching
experiences at Universities (FU Berlin, Universität Greifswald) and other German institutions.
Her publications include Unlearning with Hannah Arendt (2011/2015) and Exhaustion of
Modernity in 1930 (2017). She edited the letters of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem
(2010), co-edited a book on John Cage (Empty Mind, 2012) and translated several works by
Anne Carson. Her long essay 370 Riverside Drive, 730 Riverside Drive: Hannah Arendt and
Ralph Waldo Ellison (2022), won her the renowned Tractatus Prize for Philisophical Essais at
the Philosophicum Lech.
Marisa Franco
![[Marisa Franco]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Marisa Franco author photo credit Dr. Darren Agboh, Ph.D., Photographer and Social Psychologist (1).jpg)
For tips on friendship, you can follow her on Instagram (DrMarisaGFranco), or go to her website, www.DrMarisaGFranco.com, where you can take a quiz to assess your strengths and weaknesses as a friend & reach out for speaking engagements.
Daniel Mason
![[Daniel Mason]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Author photo IMG_2682.jpg)
Wyatt Mason
![[Wyatt Mason]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/wyatt2.jpeg)
Ann Lauterbach
![[Ann Lauterbach]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/unnamed (6).png)
Daniel Mendelsohn
![[Daniel Mendelsohn]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/mendel.png)
Uday Mehta
![[Uday Mehta]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Mehta.png)
Esther Perel
![[Esther Perel]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/esther.png)
Lucas G. Pinheiro
![[Lucas G. Pinheiro]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Lucas G. Pinheiro - Bio Photo (4).png)
Angel Adams Parham
![[Angel Adams Parham]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Angel Parham Headshot.jpg)
Anne Norton
![[Anne Norton]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/anne.jpeg)
Jana Schmidt
![[Jana Schmidt]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/jana.jpeg)
Jana Mader
![[Jana Mader]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/mader.jpeg)
Thomas Chatterton Williams
![[Thomas Chatterton Williams]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/chat.png)
Thomas Wild
![[Thomas Wild]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/thomas.jpeg)
Niobe Way
![[Niobe Way]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/niobe.jpeg)
Michael Weinman
![[Michael Weinman ]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/weinman.jpeg)
Readings and Videos
Readings from Speakers- Niobe Way, Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Harvard, 2013)
- Angel Adams Parham, “Civic Friendship in Polarized Times,” The Upwords Podcast (2022)
- Marisa Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help you Make - and Keep - Friends (Penguin, 2022)
- Marie Luise Knott, 370 Riverside Drive, 730 Riverside Drive: Hannah Arendt and Ralph Ellison––– Unlearning with Hannah Arendt (Other Press, 2014)
- Esther Perel, The Question that Comes Up in All Adult Friendships
- Claudia Baracchi, Friendship: The Future of an Ancient Gift
- Thomas Chatterton Williams, Losing My Cool: Love, Literature and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd (Penguin, 2010)
- Alex Cain, Friendship and Hannah Arendt (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation)
From our Virtual Reading Group (VRG):
- Session #1 Arendt & Lessing
Reading: Excerpts from the Lessing Essay “On Humanity in Dark Times," Men In Dark Times, pgs. 17-31 - Video Recording of the VRG: Watch “Arendt on Friendship: Lessing”
- Session #2 Arendt and Socrates
Reading: Excerpts from “Socrates" in The Promise of Politics pgs. 6-24 - Video Recording of VRG: Watch “Arendt on Friendship: Socrates” here
- Session #3 Arendt & Jaspers
Reading: Jaspers: Laudatio and Citizen of the World (found in Men in Dark Times)
“Some Questions of Moral Responsibility ” in Responsibility and Judgment, 97-122. - Video Recording of VRG: Watch “Arendt on Friendship: Jaspers: Laudatio and Citizen of the World” here
- Session #4 Arendt's & Gershom Scholem
Readings:
Hannah Arendt’s letter to Scholem
Arendt's Letter to Baldwin
Watch ”Arendt on Friendship: Gershom Scholem” here
Additional Resources:
- Mary McCarthy, “Saying Goodbye to Hannah Arendt”, Occasional Prose, 1985, 35-42.
- Alfred Kazin, “You Will Fetch Me: Friendship with Hannah Arendt”, from his autobiography New York Jew, 195-200.
- Jerome Kohn, “Hannah Arendt” the remembrance that first appeared Offener Horizont: Jahrbuch der Karl Jaspers-Gesellschaft 4/2017 174-178.
- Jason Scorza: Civic Friendship
- Kathleen B. Jones, “Hannah Arendt’s Female Friends” in LARB
- Brian C. J. Singer, Thinking Friendship With and Against Hannah Arendt Pages 93-118 | Published online: 10 Apr 2017
- Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship (Verso, 2020)
- Hans Jonas, “Friendships and Encounters in New York” in Memoirs (Brandeis, 2008)
Location
Getting Here
![[Getting Here]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/OLIN2.jpeg)
Accomodations
![[Accomodations]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/hotel3.jpeg)
Local hotel offering a Bard Rate during the conference:
The Best Western Plus in Kingston, NY. To make reservations using the Bard discount, you must call the hotel direct at 845-338-0400 and ask for the “Bard College Discount.” (20% off) We recommend booking your accommodations as early as possible.
Parking is Free
![[Parking is Free]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/OlinParking3.jpeg)
Facebook Group
![[Facebook Group]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/facebook.png)
Contest
Thinking Challenge: Student Writing Contest
“I have never in my life ‘loved’ any people or collective... I indeed love ‘only’ my friends.”
The Hannah Arendt Center is hosting a Student Writing Contest in conjunction with our annual fall conference and this year’s theme of "Friendship and Politics." The author of the winning response will receive $500 and have the response featured on the Hannah Arendt Center blog. If appropriate, the response will also be printed in HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center.
To participate attend any part of the conference and write a short piece of reflective writing in answer to one of the following questions. We particularly encourage answers that engage with the conference panels and presenters!
The Questions: (answer one of the following)
1. What is friendship? What differentiates friendship from romantic love and kinship? Is it different today than it was at other moments in time?
2. Is friendship political and, if it is, how so? In what sense does it model political relation?
3. What does it take to be a friend to someone?
Requirements:
1. All participants in this year's Thinking Challenge must currently be enrolled in a two- or four-year higher education institution (not open to graduate students). Entries may be submitted individually, or in groups of two [max].
2. Responses can be in the form of an essay (maximum 1,500 words), multimedia blog (maximum 1,500 words), or video essay.
3. Essays must incorporate quotations, video, or reactions from at least one talk or panel at the Hannah Arendt Center’s 2023 Conference “Friendship and Politics.” Students may attend the conference live at Bard College or view the talks via live webcast from the Arendt Center website. The Conference will be held on Thursday and Friday, October 12-13, 2023.
4. Please email your completed entries to [email protected] by no later than noon on Monday, October 30th, 2023. Responses will be judged blindly by a panel of judges from the Arendt Center, including Roger Berkowitz. Winning responses should be bold, creative, and persuasive.
Pre-Conference Events
Close Film ScreeningWednesday, October 4th @ 7PM, Weis Cinema
Join us to watch the film inspired by the research of keynote speaker Niobe Way!
Read more here
Art of Friendship Exhibit and Community Dinner
October 11th @ 5:30 PM, Campus Center
Art Submission Deadline: October 1
Starting the night before our conference, explore a diverse collection of student artworks, all inspired by the spirit of friendship. Submit your artwork here! And learn more here.
To kickoff the exhibit we are holding a special community dinner party at MPR, Campus Center at 5:30 pm RSVP to join us here.
This event occurs on:
Thu. October 12 – Fri. October 13
Conference takes place in Olin Hall.
“I have never in my life ‘loved’ any people or collective... I indeed love ‘only’ my friends.”
—Hannah Arendt To Gershom Scholem, 1963
Hannah Arendt, whose thinking is at the heart of our center, was said to have a “genius for friendship.” Known as a political thinker, Arendt wrote to her friend Gershom Scholem that she could never love a state or a political people, but only her friends. For Arendt, “only in misfortune do we find out who our true friends are.” It is our true friends, she wrote, “to whom we unhesitatingly reveal happiness and whom we count on to share our rejoicing.” Arendt prized the humanity of intimate friendships where “friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands.”
As much as she believed in the power of intimate friendship, Arendt also understood what she called “the political relevance of friendship.” The world is not humane simply because it is made by human beings. Rather, the things of this world only become human “when we can discuss them with our fellows.” For Arendt, it follows that in public life, “friendship is not intimately personal but makes political demands and preserves reference to the world.” The common world is thus held together by friendship.
Politics and friendship both are based in the act of talking with others. There are no absolutes in either friendship or politics, where everything emerges from the act of speaking and acting in concert with others. Thus, Arendt insists there is no truth in politics. In politics it is opinion and not truth that matters. Absent truth, what holds the political world together is friendships, our sober and rational love for our fellow citizens.That friendship emerges in conversation and that conversation, and not the revelation of truths from on high, is the source of political consensus. That is why Arendt can say, with Cicero, “I prefer before heaven to go astray with Plato than hold true views with his opponents.” She means that friendship more so than truth is the foundation of a meaningful political world.
Both intimate and political friendships are in crisis today. Studies show that Americans have fewer and fewer friends with whom they can share their joys and sorrows. The crisis of friendship means the loss of a place in the world. And the crisis of political friendship means the loss of spaces and institutions where one can talk honestly and directly with those whom one shares a world amidst disagreements. Such institutions are threatened by echo chambers and algorithms that surround us only with like-minded acolytes.
The Arendt Center conference on Friendship and Politics brings together writers, thinkers, activists, and artists to collectively think about the importance of friendship in our world. We will ask:
Conference takes place in Olin Hall.
“I have never in my life ‘loved’ any people or collective... I indeed love ‘only’ my friends.”
—Hannah Arendt To Gershom Scholem, 1963
Hannah Arendt, whose thinking is at the heart of our center, was said to have a “genius for friendship.” Known as a political thinker, Arendt wrote to her friend Gershom Scholem that she could never love a state or a political people, but only her friends. For Arendt, “only in misfortune do we find out who our true friends are.” It is our true friends, she wrote, “to whom we unhesitatingly reveal happiness and whom we count on to share our rejoicing.” Arendt prized the humanity of intimate friendships where “friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands.”
As much as she believed in the power of intimate friendship, Arendt also understood what she called “the political relevance of friendship.” The world is not humane simply because it is made by human beings. Rather, the things of this world only become human “when we can discuss them with our fellows.” For Arendt, it follows that in public life, “friendship is not intimately personal but makes political demands and preserves reference to the world.” The common world is thus held together by friendship.
Politics and friendship both are based in the act of talking with others. There are no absolutes in either friendship or politics, where everything emerges from the act of speaking and acting in concert with others. Thus, Arendt insists there is no truth in politics. In politics it is opinion and not truth that matters. Absent truth, what holds the political world together is friendships, our sober and rational love for our fellow citizens.That friendship emerges in conversation and that conversation, and not the revelation of truths from on high, is the source of political consensus. That is why Arendt can say, with Cicero, “I prefer before heaven to go astray with Plato than hold true views with his opponents.” She means that friendship more so than truth is the foundation of a meaningful political world.
Both intimate and political friendships are in crisis today. Studies show that Americans have fewer and fewer friends with whom they can share their joys and sorrows. The crisis of friendship means the loss of a place in the world. And the crisis of political friendship means the loss of spaces and institutions where one can talk honestly and directly with those whom one shares a world amidst disagreements. Such institutions are threatened by echo chambers and algorithms that surround us only with like-minded acolytes.
The Arendt Center conference on Friendship and Politics brings together writers, thinkers, activists, and artists to collectively think about the importance of friendship in our world. We will ask:
- What is friendship? And why is it so meaningful?
- Is there a crisis of friendship today? And if so, why?
- Do identity politics and the culture of individualism stand in the way of friendship?
- How can we nurture the intimate and public friendships that allow us to flourish?
- Epistolary friendships are an old tradition. What is the possibility of long-distance epistolary friendships in the internet age?
- Does social media make possible new types of friendships?