Recent Commentaries on Arendt
In the months since the election of Donald Trump, references to Hannah Arendt’s work have sky-rocketed, as have sales of The Origins of Totalitarianism. As a result, I’ve been approached by various news outlets to write commentary on the r..
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- Posted in Ada Ushpiz, banality of evil, Eichmann in Jerusalem, ethics, Hannah Arendt, NEH, NEH Summer Scholars, The Origins of Totalitarianism, thinking
Guest Lecturer Ada Ushpiz’s Film, Vita Activa
Summer scholars who will attend the 2017 NEH seminar on Arendt should already be reading Eichmann in Jerusalem in preparation for the first discussions we will have. A controversial book that continues to spark heated discussion, the book moti..
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- Posted in Ada Ushpiz, arts, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Eichmann Trial, film, Hannah Arendt, NEH, NEH Summer Scholars, refugees, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Welcome 2017 Hannah Arendt Summer Scholars
For the last few weeks, my assistants and I have been coordinating paperwork for all the new Arendt scholars who will join me at UC-Davis this summer to study key works of the political theorist, Hannah Arendt. I have now posted all the short ..
Teaching Tolerance
In Men in Dark Times, published in 1968, Hannah Arendt gathered a set of essays and articles she’d written over the course of a dozen years. These works were “concerned with persons–how they lived their lives, how they move..
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- Posted in education, ethics, Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times, personal responsibility
Holocaust Precursor: German Colonialism in Namibia
A few days ago, the New York Times reported about efforts on the part of the German government to acknowledge the attempted extermination of Nama and Herero ethnic tribes in Namibia, who were resisting German domination and land grabs in Namib..
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- Posted in bureaucracy, crimes against humanity, genocide, Germany, Hannah Arendt, Namibia, NEH Summer Scholars, racism, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Considering Totalitarianism
The response around the globe to the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States has ranged across a spectrum. Applause came, of course, from Trump supporters who voted for him. The majority of these were white voters, men ..
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- Posted in banality of evil, character, displaced persons, education, ethics, evil, Hannah Arendt, personal responsibility, Politics, public life, public space, teachers, The Origins of Totalitarianism, thinking
Controversy in Eichmann in Jerusalem
Among the many controversial aspects of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, which originally appeared as a multi-part series in The New Yorker, the most incendiary points she made appeared in chapter VII. In that section of the book, enti..
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- Posted in banality of evil, Barbara Demming, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Eichmann Trial, ethics, evil, genocide, Hannah Arendt, Jewish Councils, Judenrat, NEH Summer Scholars, personal responsibility, Raul Hilberg
More Books for Your Bibliography
A recent NYTimes Book Review carried reviews of three new books with relevance for the themes of the Arendt seminar. Phillippe Sands’ East West Street: On the Origins of ‘Genocide’ and “Crimes Against Humanity,’” explores the devel..
Possibility and Despair
(This posting is a reprint from my original blog entry on the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College’s web site, published on September 20, 2015) “The calamity of the rightless is not that they are deprived of life, liberty, and the purs..
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- Posted in comity of nations, displaced persons, ethics, Hannah Arendt, human rights, Politics, refugees, The Origins of Totalitarianism
The Banality of Evil, in prose and film
Preparing for the NEH summer seminar for schoolteachers on the political theory of Hannah Arendt, I urge the summer scholars who will soon be in residence at UC-Davis to read Eichmann in Jerusalem in advance. Although this book is more easily ..
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- Posted in Ada Ushpiz, arts, banality of evil, documentary, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Eichmann Trial, ethics, evil, film, Hannah Arendt, NEH Summer Scholars