An End-of-Year Letter from our Founder, Roger Berkowitz
Dear Friends,
In a world of intense polarization, amidst the perils of ideological fantasies, and the failure of politics, we need Hannah Arendt’s imagination of a politics based on talking and thinking with others whom we disagree with and yet can respect. Arendt is the political thinker of the moment because she offers a path forward to the re-constitution of a pluralist and federated democracy, one not committed to centralized power or one national, ethnic, or racial identity. The Hannah Arendt Center is dedicated to the bold, open, vigorous, provocative, and honest discourse that can and will help reimagine our world.
At Friendship and Politics, our most recent Fall Conference, Esther Perel asked us to open ourselves to being present with our friends and lovers. Wyatt Mason told us of the fear of getting close to strangers. Angel Parham talked about making friends with those whose politics one abhors. And Niobe Way spoke about the challenge of male intimate friendships. We thought for two days about how deeply friendship matters for a meaningful human life, and also how friendship prepares us for the human activity of living together in a common world with others different from ourselves — the very activity of politics.
You can find all the conference session recordings here and read more about the conference here.
Hannah Arendt called her group of closest friends her “tribe.” She also deeply understood the importance of living amidst one’s people. At the same time, Arendt saw the dangers of what she called pseudo-mystical tribalism, the effort to build political communities on racial or ethnic identities. The rise of tribalist and populist political movements today is in part a response to the failure of cosmopolitan rule by elites around the world. As appealing as tribalism may be, the challenge today is to think of new political possibilities that allow for the meaningful commitments of tribalism while also respecting the fact of plurality.
I’m thrilled to announce that our next Annual Conference is: “Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism: How Can We Imagine a Meaningful Pluralist Politics?” Save the Date: October 17th & 18th, 2024.
Become a member and you and a friend can attend for free!
Our Virtual Reading Group (VRG) is currently reading Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism. We resume in January and will be finishing the book in February. Then in March, we will read Eichmann in Jerusalem. The VRG has grown to include between 80–100 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 and watch past sessions here.
We’ve launched a new Podcast: “Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.” Check it out here.
Earlier this year, Jana Mader joined our team as the new Director of Academic Programs, working to build the community and profile of the Arendt Center in collaboration with students, faculty, and our members. She organizes the undergraduate common course series “Courage To Be” and facilitates engagement with Arendt scholarship through programs like the Virtual Reading Group, the HA Journal, and works with our student fellows on the student-led program Autonomies. Together with Thomas Wild, HAC’s Director of Research, and Bard College Archivist Helene Tieger, she is working to transfer the digital collection of Hannah Arendt’s Personal Library to a new platform that is more user-friendly and easier for researchers to navigate. It will be launched next year. Jana’s latest book was published in March of this year under the title “Natur und Nation. Landschaft als Ausdruck nationaler Identität — der Rhein and der Hudson.” It comparatively analyzes national narratives in the context of representations of the two river landscapes in 19th century literary texts.
Jana was instrumental in launching the new Arendt Center podcast this past year, Reading Hannah Arendt. Listen to our first season by subscribing so that you don’t miss an episode. The new podcast season on Eichmann in Jerusalem will launch in March.
Hillary Harvey joined our team earlier this year as the Program Manager for our Hannah Arendt Humanities Network (HAHN). A longtime admirer and champion of the Arendt Center’s annual conferences when she was a local journalist, she was thrilled to contribute behind the scenes as staff for this year’s conference on Friendship & Politics, where she was responsible for shepherding an expanded OSUN Ambassadors program, which brought scholars, including 3 student fellows, from around the globe to meaningfully engage with the conference. In 2024, she is looking forward to using her experience in program implementation and communications to enhance the visibility and social impact of HAHN programming.
The Hannah Arendt Humanities Network (HAHN), established to nurture humanities projects across OSUN, has made significant strides in fostering a vibrant and engaged network of OSUN faculty and students dedicated to exploring the foundations of an open society. Our fourth year of programming includes rigorous interrogations of race thinking, including a text seminar on Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, and the development of a new volume of essays which will consider Arendt’s writings on race. Our Ideas Forum will center Africa in the discourse on the US-China rivalry, and our annual Democracy Innovations workshop will benefit from the expertise of our Colombian hosts, whose combined efforts have been instrumental in establishing Bogotá as one of eight globally-recognized examples of successfully institutionalized deliberative democracy. HAHN also presides over one of OSUN’s biggest prizes, the Yehuda Elkana Fellowship, which will be awarded this year at the University of Belgrade to an African scholar whose work contends with issues of democratization. This collaborative approach to programming is central to HAHN’s mission of fostering a humanities network within the global network, and building capacity for real world response to the challenges of our times.
The Arendt Center’s Democracy Innovation Hub, led by Philip Lindsay, held its second annual convening, this time in NYC. The event brought together over 120 participants, including a) international experts and participants from throughout the OSUN network b) U.S. based organizations that run, advocate or research deliberative processes, and c) a local NYC ecosystem of elected officials, public servants and facilitators who are invested in experimenting with participatory and collaborative governance. The NYC Civic Engagement Commission presented on their innovative approaches inspired by the Hub’s workshops. The NYC Mayor’s Office of Engagement, also in collaboration with the hub, presented their plans for a civic assembly on migration for the city, which would be the first of its kind for any major city in the United States.
Nicholas Dunn continued in his second year as the Klemens von Klemperer Post-Doctoral Fellow. This year, Nick initiated the annual De Gruyter-Arendt Center Lecture in Political Thinking–part of a broader partnership between HAC and Walter de Gruyter publishing. In the spring, Nick organized a conferenceon the importance of thinking with others, which featured the inaugural De Gruyter lecture by Linda Zerilli. This summer, Nick hosted a workshop on Arendt’s Kant Lectures that featured a conversation with Ronald Beiner, as well as a one-day conference on Arendt at Bard College Berlin. This coming spring, Nick is organizing a conference on the relevance of Arendt’s constitutional and legal thought for contemporary Supreme Court politics. It will feature the second De Gruyter lecture, delivered by Peg Birmingham.
Your donations help us hire our amazing team of fellows, who keep the Arendt center buzzing with ideas and initiatives. Read our students’ bios & learn more about them here. We can’t do it without you! A large part of our annual budget, including our annual journal and conference, is supported by contributions from members like yourself. Your support is necessary and deeply appreciated.
Renew or gift a membership today, here!
Sincerely,
Roger Berkowitz
Founder and Academic Director
Hannah Arendt Center, Bard College
