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We Refugees

This morning’s New York Times carried a report from United Nations refugee agency. António Guterres, head of the agency, noted with alarm that “the number of people displaced by violent conflict hit the highest level since World War II at..

  • Posted by Kathy J.
  • Posted in comity of nations,displaced persons,education,evil,Hannah Arendt,human rights,international community,NEH Summer Scholars,Politics,public life,public space,refugees,The Origins of Totalitarianism,thinking

Education and Ethics: Agency and Love of the World

The question of character and education emerge in the course of our seminar on Arendt exploring the concept of judgment and Arendt’s argument that those who failed to “think for themselves” often became supporters of totalitarianism. In ..

  • Posted by Kathy J.
  • Posted in character,education,ethics,Hannah Arendt,human rights,Life of the Mind,NEH,NEH Summer Scholars,personal responsibility,public life,teachers,thinking

NEH 2016!!

I learned last week that the NEH seminar on Arendt, which I direct, will be funded for summer of 2016. The dates of the seminar are June 26 2016-July 29 2016. The location will be the beautiful Hudson Valley campus of Bard College, which house..

  • Posted by Kathy J.
  • Posted in education,Eichmann Trial,ethics,Hannah Arendt,Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities,Hudson Valley,Life of the Mind,NEH Summer Scholars,public life,public space,summer scholars,teachers,The Human Condition,The Origins of Totalitarianism,thinking

NEH Seminar: The Movie

It’s been less than a week since I was notified that the NEH seminar for schoolteachers on the political theory of Hannah Arendt will be funded for summer 2016, but I already am at work getting plans in place for next summer’s seminar ..

  • Posted by Kathy J.
  • Posted in character,education,Hannah Arendt,Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities,Hudson Valley,Life of the Mind,NEH,NEH Summer Scholars,personal responsibility,public life,public space,summer scholars,teachers,thinking

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 ..

  • Posted by arendt
  • Posted in Ada Ushpiz,arts,banality of evil,documentary,Eichmann in Jerusalem,Eichmann Trial,ethics,evil,film,Hannah Arendt,NEH Summer Scholars

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..

  • Posted by arendt
  • Posted in comity of nations,displaced persons,ethics,Hannah Arendt,human rights,Politics,refugees,The Origins of Totalitarianism

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..

  • Posted by arendt
  • Posted in arts,banality of evil,comity of nations,crimes against humanity,displaced persons,genocide,Hannah Arendt,Hersh Lauterpacht,human rights,NEH Summer Scholars,Politics,Rahael Lemkin

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..

  • Posted by arendt
  • 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

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 ..

  • Posted by arendt
  • 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

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..

  • Posted by arendt
  • Posted in bureaucracy,crimes against humanity,genocide,Germany,Hannah Arendt,Namibia,NEH Summer Scholars,racism,The Origins of Totalitarianism