Hannah Arendt Center presents:
JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times
A Common Inquiry hosted by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College
Thursday, October 16, 2025 – Friday, October 17, 2025
Olin Hall
Schedule
The schedule is forthcoming.
Thursday, October 16th
Friday, October 17th
Speakers
These are the confirmed speakers as of now. New speakers will be added as they confirm. Please check back often for updates!Thomas Bartscherer
![[Thomas Bartscherer]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/unnamed (7).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 has published widely in the fields of education, music, and history and culture and is the author of several books including Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture, and editor of The Compleat Brahms and The Musical Quarterly. He is the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and The Orchestra Now (TŌN), and conductor laureate and principal guest conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, where he served as music director. He is the founder and artistic co-director of the Bard Music Festival. His work has been acknowledged with awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Harvard University, government of Austria, and Carnegie Foundation. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2011.
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.
Matthew Crawford
![[Matthew Crawford]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/IMG_0334 (3).jpg)
Simon Critchley
![[Simon Critchley]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Image 4-23-25 at 9.46 AM.jpeg)
moderator of ‘The Stone’, a philosophy column in The New York Times and co-editor of three volumes connected to the series, most recently Question Everything (2022). He is 50% of an obscure musical combo called Critchley & Simmons, whose album, Gone Forever, was released in 2024. Mysticism – The Experience of Ecstasy was published by The New York Review of Books (USA) and Profile (UK) in November 2024. A short book on tragedy called I Want To Die, I Hate My Life will be published in 2025 with ERIS.
Katie Farris
![[Katie Farris]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Farris Author Photo 2025.jpeg)
Robert Harrison
![[Robert Harrison]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/R Harrison photo.jpg)
Bill T. Jones
![[Bill T. Jones]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Bill_T_Jones-2537-Color.jpg)
Mr. Jones choreographed and performed worldwide with his late partner, Arnie Zane, before forming the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in 1982. He has created more than 140 works for his company. Mr. Jones is the Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, an organization that strives to create a robust framework in support of the nation’s dance and movement-based artists through new approaches to producing, presenting and educating. For more information visit www.newyorklivearts.org.
Ilya Kaminsky
![[Photo by Cybele Knowles]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Ilya Kaminsky_credit Cybele Knowles.jpeg)
Photo by Cybele Knowles
Anthony Kronman
![[Anthony Kronman]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Kronman-1a-PREFERRED.jpg)
Professor Kronman is the author or co-author of many books and articles on various scholarly and other subjects. His most recent book, “After Disbelief” (2022) explores the meaning of God in an age of disenchantment. “The Assault on American Excellence” (2019) decries the ways in which the consuming passion for diversity and the erosion of free speech undermine educational values and threatens the standing of our colleges and universities in the country at large. His 2016 book, “Confessions of a Born Again Pagan,” offers a sweeping account of the history of Western thought and an original diagnosis of our current spiritual predicament. In 2007, Professor Kronman published “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life,” and in 1993, “The Lost Lawyer,” which deals with the contemporary state of the American legal profession and the movement away from what he calls the lawyer-statesman ideal of responsible law practice. VIEW MORE >>
Professor Kronman was born in Los Angeles on May 12, 1945 and attended public schools there before going to Williams College in 1963. He graduated from Williams in 1968 with highest honors in political science. Following college, he studied philosophy at Yale and received his Ph.D. in that field in 1972. During his four years as a graduate student, Professor Kronman was a Danforth Fellow. In 1972, he began the study of law at the Yale Law School and received his J.D. in 1975. While at the Law School, he served as a senior editor on the Yale Law Journal.
Professor Kronman is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations. In June 2004, he was named Commander of the French National Order of Merit. In 2018, he received the Kellogg Award from his alma mater Williams College for extraordinary career achievement.
Professor Kronman has served on the board of various non-profit organizations including the Foote School in New Haven, Yale University Press, and the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. From 2002 to 2006, Professor Kronman served as a Director of Adelphia Communications Corporation. He was the Lead Director of the company for three of these years. Professor Kronman was Of Counsel to the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner from 2008 to 2019.
Professor Kronman’s father, Harry Kronman, was a television screenwriter and his mother, Rosella, was a film actress and homemaker. He is married to Nancy Greenberg and has four children, Matthew, Emma, Hope, and Alexander.
Professor Kronman is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations. In June 2004, he was named Commander of the French National Order of Merit. In 2018, he received the Kellogg Award from his alma mater Williams College for extraordinary career achievement.
Professor Kronman has served on the board of various non-profit organizations including the Foote School in New Haven, Yale University Press, and the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. From 2002 to 2006, Professor Kronman served as a Director of Adelphia Communications Corporation. He was the Lead Director of the company for three of these years. Professor Kronman was Of Counsel to the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner from 2008 to 2019.
Professor Kronman’s father, Harry Kronman, was a television screenwriter and his mother, Rosella, was a film actress and homemaker. He is married to Nancy Greenberg and has four children, Matthew, Emma, Hope, and Alexander.
Jana Mader
![[Jana Mader]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/mader.jpeg)
Wyatt Mason
![[Wyatt Mason]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/wyatt2.jpeg)
Shane McCrae
![[Shane McCrae]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Shane's face.jpg)
Uday Mehta
![[Uday Mehta]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Image 4-7-25 at 1.12 PM.jpeg)
Marilyn Simon
Allison Stanger
![[Allison Stanger]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Stanger3.jpg)
Stanger’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Wired. She is the author of Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump (Yale University Press, 2019) and One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, 2009). She is a contributing writer for The Atlantic. Stanger is the co-editor (with Hannes Werthner et. al.) of Introduction to Digital Humanism: A Textbook (Springer, 2024), which is open access, and co-editor (with W. Brian Arthur and Eric Beinhocker) of Complexity Economics (SFI Press, 2020).
Stanger has been called to testify before Congress on six occasions (by both Republicans and Democrats). She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. She majored in Mathematics as an undergraduate and also has graduate degrees in Soviet Studies and Economics.
Robin Wang
![[Robin Wang]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/rwang head shot.jpg)
Niobe Way
![[Niobe Way]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/niobe.jpeg)
Her work focuses on the intersections of culture, context, and human development, with a particular focus on social and emotional development and how cultural ideologies influence developmental trajectories. The Listening Project, her current project with Joseph Nelson, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, David Kirkland, and Alisha Ali, aims to foster curiosity and connection in and outside of middle school classrooms across New York City.
In addition, she created and teaches a core course for undergraduates at NYU called The Science of Human Connection. The course describes her theoretical and empirical framework developed over three decades and discussed in her latest co-edited book The Crisis of Connection: Its Roots, Consequences, and Solution (NYU Press). VIEW MORE >>
Dr. Way has also authored nearly a hundred journal articles and books, including Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Harvard University Press) and Everyday Courage: The Lives and Stories of Urban Teenagers (NYU Press). Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and numerous foundations including The National Science Foundation, The William T. Grant Foundation, The Einhorn Family Charitable Trust Foundation, and The Spencer Foundation. She is a contributor to Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and her research is regularly featured in mainstream media outlets (e.g., New York Times, NPR, Today Show, NBC). Examples include Two Cheers for Feminism! and Guys, We Have A Problem: How American Masculinity Creates Lonely Men.
Thomas Chatterton Williams
![[Thomas Chatterton Williams]](http://www.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/TCW 2025.jpg)
Readings
Get ready for our stimulating conference, JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times. To make the most of this event, we've curated a suggested reading list. These readings will provide you with a rich background and deeper understanding of the themes we'll be exploring during the conference. Plus, they're a great way to get your intellectual juices flowing before the big event!Suggested Reading List 2025
- Arendt, Hannah (1968). Men in Dark Times. Harcourt, Brace & World.
- Berkowitz, Roger (2010). Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics. Fordham University Press.
- Crawford, Matthew B. Gratitude and the Modern Condition.
- Critchley, Simon (2024). On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy. Penguin Books.
- Eichler, Jeremy (2023). Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance. Knopf.
- Farris, Katie (2023). Standing in the Forest of Being Alive. Alice James Books.
- Jones, Bill T. (2014). Story/Time: The Life of an Idea. Princeton University Press.
- Kaminsky, Ilya (2019). Deaf Republic. Graywolf Press.
- Kronman, Anthony T. (2020). After Disbelief: On Disenchantment, Disappointment, Eternity, and Joy. Yale University Press.
- McCrae, Shane (2016). The Animal Too Big to Kill. Persea Books.
- Simon, Marilyn (2024). On Kneeling, Towards a Philosophy of Fellatio.
- Wang, Robin R. (2012). Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture. Cambridge University Press.
- Way, Niobe (2018). The Crisis of Connection: Its Roots, Consequences, and Solutions. NYU Press.
- Williams, Thomas Chatterton (2025). Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse. Knopf.
Location
How to Get to Bard
*NOTE: The full conference will be available via Live Webcast.By Car:
The Taconic State Parkway and the New York State Thruway provide the most direct routes to our campus. Click the Google link above or get directions by entering the following address into your GPS: 51 Ravine Road, Red Hook, NY 12571.
From the East: If you are traveling from east of the Hudson River in New York State, take the Taconic State Parkway to the Red Hook / Route 199 exit, drive west on Route 199 through the village of Red Hook to Route 9G, turn right onto Route 9G, drive north 1.6 miles, turn left at the traffic light and continue on Annandale Road through our campus.
From the West: If you are traveling from west of the Hudson River, take the New York State Thruway (I-87) to exit 19 (Kingston), take Route 209 (changes to Route 199 at the Hudson River) over the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge to Route 9G, turn left onto Route 9G, drive north 3.5 miles, turn left at the traffic light and continue on Annandale Road through our campus.
From the East: If you are traveling from east of the Hudson River in New York State, take the Taconic State Parkway to the Red Hook / Route 199 exit, drive west on Route 199 through the village of Red Hook to Route 9G, turn right onto Route 9G, drive north 1.6 miles, turn left at the traffic light and continue on Annandale Road through our campus.
From the West: If you are traveling from west of the Hudson River, take the New York State Thruway (I-87) to exit 19 (Kingston), take Route 209 (changes to Route 199 at the Hudson River) over the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge to Route 9G, turn left onto Route 9G, drive north 3.5 miles, turn left at the traffic light and continue on Annandale Road through our campus.
By Train:
There are two train stations close to Bard College: one in Poughkeepsie (Metro North), New York, and the other in Rhinecliff (Amtrak), New York. Taxi service is available from either station to bring you to campus.
Amtrak provides service from Albany and from Pennsylvania Station in New York City to Rhinecliff, about 9 miles south of Annandale. Taxi service is available at the station. Travel Time: Approximately two hours (one hour and 40 minutes by train and 15–20 minutes by taxi). Contact Information: Rhinecliff station can be reached at 845-876-3364. Reservations and schedule information at wwe.Amtrak.com
Metro-North commuter railroad provides service from Grand Central Station in New York City to Poughkeepsie, about 26 miles south of campus. Taxi service is available at the station. Travel Time: Approximately one hour and 30 minutes (40–50 minutes by train and 40 minutes by taxi).
Amtrak provides service from Albany and from Pennsylvania Station in New York City to Rhinecliff, about 9 miles south of Annandale. Taxi service is available at the station. Travel Time: Approximately two hours (one hour and 40 minutes by train and 15–20 minutes by taxi). Contact Information: Rhinecliff station can be reached at 845-876-3364. Reservations and schedule information at wwe.Amtrak.com
Metro-North commuter railroad provides service from Grand Central Station in New York City to Poughkeepsie, about 26 miles south of campus. Taxi service is available at the station. Travel Time: Approximately one hour and 30 minutes (40–50 minutes by train and 40 minutes by taxi).
See here for more directions to Bard College.
Olin Hall
![[Olin Hall]](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)
This event occurs on:
Thu. October 16 – Fri. October 17
OCTOBER 16-17, 2025
The Hannah Arendt Center's 17th annual fall conference on JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times will offer a crucial lens for finding meaning and connection amidst today's fractured world. Bringing together notable speakers with diverse narratives and insights at Bard College in Annandale, the conference will be a timely exploration of joy as a powerful force, and a vital conversation around fostering resilience.
Joy is at once more visceral and more risky than happiness. What brings you joy? Joy can emerge in a lover's gaze, in the transcendence of Beethoven's late sonatas, in the embrace of a once-wayward child. Joy is not mere happiness; nor is it satisfied contentment. Joy is the lasting delight we feel when touched deeply by what matters most.
What distinguishes joy is that in its effervescent grip, we are tied not simply to the moment but to a higher vision or meaning. Spinoza understood joy as the power to move closer to an end that is ultimately unreachable. In joy, we come closer to our dream of being one with the cosmos. We will fail, but joy is the feeling of closeness to the whole. There is no joy without belief in something meaningful beyond ourselves, be that the faith in a religion, a belief in progress, our being touched by love, or when we are inspired by the muses. Joy elevates us, rockets us out of the mundane.
It was Bertolt Brecht who asked whether it was wrong to feel joy in dark times. In his poem “To Posterity,” Brecht worries that “A conversation about trees is almost a crime/ For in doing so we maintain our silence about so much wrongdoing!” As democracies falter, the planet burns, and AI reshapes our world, Brecht's question lingers: “He who laughs/ Has not yet received/ The terrible news." Is joy in dark times a betrayal, or a necessary act of defiance?
On one level, the question of joy in dark times asks: Can we truly love a world filled with evil, pain, and injustice? Hannah Arendt, whose thinking is at the heart of the center I run, knew well the horrors of totalitarianism and genocide. And yet, Arendt insisted that we must still find ways to love the world. After being arrested, exiled, imprisoned in a concentration camp, and made stateless for 18 years, Hannah Arendt asked in her thinking diary: “Why is it so hard to love the world?” And in a letter written to Karl Jaspers in 1955, while she is writing the book that will become the Human Condition, Arendt writes: “I’ve begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world that I shall be able to do that now. Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theory ‘Amor Mundi.’”
In another sense, the question of joy in dark times asks how, at a time of atomization and mass loneliness, can we find the light in the world that inspires us to love the world as it is. Arendt found in the joyous proclamation of the Christian Bible that “A child has been born unto us,” the affirmation that even in the darkest of times, the roots of a new light can emerge. In this sense, joy is rooted in the deepest vision of faith, the idea that the human world is ultimately good.
To love the world without recourse to consoling ideologies or fanciful stories is to find joy amidst the sorrow. Joy isn’t about denial; it’s a conscious decision to embrace life as it is, to see the full picture without succumbing to despair, to see the present horror of a world torn apart and celebrate with the knowledge that the mended world will be even more glorious. At a moment when there is so much pessimism and flight from reality into fantasy, it is time to ask: How can we experience joy in these dark times?
Our collective inquiry into Joy: Loving the World in Dark Times, will ask:
• What is Joy?
• Is Joy possible without a belief in God or some higher power?
• Are the humanities and the arts a meaningful pathway to joy?
• Is the cultivation of joyfulness in dark times an abdication of responsibility?
• Does joy offer an antidote to the loneliness and purposelessness of modern life?
Above all, we ask, where does joy touch us today and how can we nurture it?
The full conference will be available via Live Webcast.
OCTOBER 16-17, 2025
The Hannah Arendt Center's 17th annual fall conference on JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times will offer a crucial lens for finding meaning and connection amidst today's fractured world. Bringing together notable speakers with diverse narratives and insights at Bard College in Annandale, the conference will be a timely exploration of joy as a powerful force, and a vital conversation around fostering resilience.
Joy is at once more visceral and more risky than happiness. What brings you joy? Joy can emerge in a lover's gaze, in the transcendence of Beethoven's late sonatas, in the embrace of a once-wayward child. Joy is not mere happiness; nor is it satisfied contentment. Joy is the lasting delight we feel when touched deeply by what matters most.
What distinguishes joy is that in its effervescent grip, we are tied not simply to the moment but to a higher vision or meaning. Spinoza understood joy as the power to move closer to an end that is ultimately unreachable. In joy, we come closer to our dream of being one with the cosmos. We will fail, but joy is the feeling of closeness to the whole. There is no joy without belief in something meaningful beyond ourselves, be that the faith in a religion, a belief in progress, our being touched by love, or when we are inspired by the muses. Joy elevates us, rockets us out of the mundane.
It was Bertolt Brecht who asked whether it was wrong to feel joy in dark times. In his poem “To Posterity,” Brecht worries that “A conversation about trees is almost a crime/ For in doing so we maintain our silence about so much wrongdoing!” As democracies falter, the planet burns, and AI reshapes our world, Brecht's question lingers: “He who laughs/ Has not yet received/ The terrible news." Is joy in dark times a betrayal, or a necessary act of defiance?
On one level, the question of joy in dark times asks: Can we truly love a world filled with evil, pain, and injustice? Hannah Arendt, whose thinking is at the heart of the center I run, knew well the horrors of totalitarianism and genocide. And yet, Arendt insisted that we must still find ways to love the world. After being arrested, exiled, imprisoned in a concentration camp, and made stateless for 18 years, Hannah Arendt asked in her thinking diary: “Why is it so hard to love the world?” And in a letter written to Karl Jaspers in 1955, while she is writing the book that will become the Human Condition, Arendt writes: “I’ve begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world that I shall be able to do that now. Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theory ‘Amor Mundi.’”
In another sense, the question of joy in dark times asks how, at a time of atomization and mass loneliness, can we find the light in the world that inspires us to love the world as it is. Arendt found in the joyous proclamation of the Christian Bible that “A child has been born unto us,” the affirmation that even in the darkest of times, the roots of a new light can emerge. In this sense, joy is rooted in the deepest vision of faith, the idea that the human world is ultimately good.
To love the world without recourse to consoling ideologies or fanciful stories is to find joy amidst the sorrow. Joy isn’t about denial; it’s a conscious decision to embrace life as it is, to see the full picture without succumbing to despair, to see the present horror of a world torn apart and celebrate with the knowledge that the mended world will be even more glorious. At a moment when there is so much pessimism and flight from reality into fantasy, it is time to ask: How can we experience joy in these dark times?
Our collective inquiry into Joy: Loving the World in Dark Times, will ask:
• What is Joy?
• Is Joy possible without a belief in God or some higher power?
• Are the humanities and the arts a meaningful pathway to joy?
• Is the cultivation of joyfulness in dark times an abdication of responsibility?
• Does joy offer an antidote to the loneliness and purposelessness of modern life?
Above all, we ask, where does joy touch us today and how can we nurture it?
The full conference will be available via Live Webcast.