Name: VRG: The Origins of Totalitarianism, Ep. #1, Introduction & Preface to the First Edition @hannaharendtcenterforpolit8364
Uploaded: 2026-09-28T08:17:00-05:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: VRG: The Origins of Totalitarianism, Ep. #1, Introduction & Preface to the First Edition

VRG: The Origins of Totalitarianism, Ep. #1, Introduction & Preface to the First Edition

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2026-09-28 | VRG: The Origins of Totalitarianism, Ep. #1, Introduction & Preface to the First Edition

Black Skin White Masks: HAHN 2024 Text Seminar at University of the West Indies, Mona

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2024-02-01 | OSUN's Hannah Arendt Humanities Network, in collaboration with the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, hosted the 2024 Text Seminar, a close reading and discussion of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks.

This intensive three-day seminar offers an opportunity for faculty and scholars within OSUN to engage robustly with a classic work of political or democratic thinking while fostering collaboration and critical dialogue in a seminar-style environment with peers.

Origins of Totalitarianism (#12 The Totalitarian Movement)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2024-01-30 | Our Virtual Reading Group (VRG) meets weekly on Fridays at 1 PM EST.

For Fall 2023 and into 2024 we are reading Arendt's classic analysis of the 20th century, The Origins of Totalitarianism. In Origins, Arendt tracks the rise of Fascism and Communism and explores what differentiates these regimes from past authoritarian systems.

Full schedule and more information can be found here: https://hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/

Origins of Totalitarianism (#11 A Classless Society)

A Different Vision: Gandhis Critique of Political Rationality- Uday Mehtas Yehuda Elkana Lecture

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2024-01-08 | OSUN’s Hannah Arendt Humanities Network (HAHN) and OSUN partner Central European University (CEU) awarded the Second Annual Yehuda Elkana Fellowship to Uday Singh Mehta, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Graduate Center, CUNY in New York. In the spirit of Yehuda Elkana, an international scholar and public intellectual who survived Auschwitz and later served as President and Rector of CEU, the fellowship recognizes similar thinkers and teachers who exhibit a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity that bridges the humanities, social sciences, and science. Like Elkana, the fellows also demonstrate a deep commitment to open society, one of the founding principles of OSUN.

Mehta was in residence for one month at CEU, giving two public lectures and participating in a week-long manuscript workshop from June 13th-15th with faculty and students from OSUN institutions. This year’s text seminar focused on a series of essays by Mehta entitled "Different Vision: Gandhi’s Critique of Political Rationality."

Mehta has been recognized as an influential critic of the liberal tradition of political thought. His foundational writings argue that there is a universalist and imperialist drive at the heart of liberalism, which aims to educate and “civilize” all people so that they share the same ideals as liberal citizens. That drive is also accompanied by an equal desire to dominate the world, he argues. Thus, Mehta has been described as a “guide to a subterranean illiberal stream within liberalism.”

For example, in his book Liberalism and Empire, Mehta showed that when confronted with the reality of empire in India, liberal thinkers in England justified imperial rule by arguing that Indians were not yet educated enough to be liberal citizens capable of freedoms. Against such liberal imperialism, Mehta advocates for a more radical willingness to consider the feelings and attachments of non-liberal peoples who aspire to live according to their own customs.

In A Different Vision: Gandhi’s Critique of Political Rationality—the topic of the 2022 Yehuda Elkana Fellowship text seminar––Mehta unearths a non-liberal politics that rejects both imperialism and nationalism. In this forthcoming text, Mehta elevates Gandhi's more “civilizational” political theory that links politics to spiritualism, family, and self-realization, and opposes the power of the state as a mediating institution. Thus, Mehta finds in Gandhi a political theory fundamentally at odds with the liberal-nation-state project.

"In a sense, for Gandhi, courage and fearlessness were portals for a sort of spiritual truancy, which he sought to plant in the very midst of the mundane patterns of everyday life,” writes Mehta.

Origins of Totalitarianism (#10 The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-12-18 | Our Virtual Reading Group (VRG) meets weekly on Fridays at 1 PM EST.

For Fall 2023 and into 2024 we are reading Arendt's classic analysis of the 20th century, The Origins of Totalitarianism. In Origins, Arendt tracks the rise of Fascism and Communism and explores what differentiates these regimes from past authoritarian systems.

Full schedule and more information can be found here: https://hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/

Origins of Totalitarianism (#9 Continental Imperialism: the Pan-Movements)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-12-10 | Our Virtual Reading Group (VRG) meets weekly on Fridays at 1 PM EST.

For Fall 2023 and into 2024 we are reading Arendt's classic analysis of the 20th century, The Origins of Totalitarianism. In Origins, Arendt tracks the rise of Fascism and Communism and explores what differentiates these regimes from past authoritarian systems.

Full schedule and more information can be found here: https://hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/

ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM

Friday, Oct. 27
Chapter Five: The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie

Friday, Nov. 3
Chapter 6: Race-Thinking Before Racism

Friday, Nov. 10
No VRG

Friday, Nov. 17
Chapter 7: Race and Bureaucracy

Friday, Nov. 24
No Meeting: Thanksgiving Break

Friday, Dec. 1
No Meeting

Friday, Dec. 8
Chapter 8: Continental Imperialism: the Pan-Movements

Friday, Dec. 15
Chapter 9: The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man

Origins of Totalitarianism (#8 Race and Bureaucracy)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-21 | Our Virtual Reading Group (VRG) meets weekly on Fridays at 1 PM EST.

For Fall 2023 and into 2024 we are reading Arendt's classic analysis of the 20th century, The Origins of Totalitarianism. In Origins, Arendt tracks the rise of Fascism and Communism and explores what differentiates these regimes from past authoritarian systems.

Full schedule and more information can be found here: https://hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/

ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM

Friday, Oct. 27
Chapter Five: The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie

Friday, Nov. 3
Chapter 6: Race-Thinking Before Racism

Friday, Nov. 10
No VRG

Friday, Nov. 17
Chapter 7: Race and Bureaucracy

Friday, Nov. 24
No Meeting: Thanksgiving Break

Friday, Dec. 1
No Meeting

Friday, Dec. 8
Chapter 8: Continental Imperialism: the Pan-Movements

Friday, Dec. 15
Chapter 9: The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man

Critical Perspectives on the War: Is There a Common Ground?

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-14 | Ghaith Al-Omari and Fred Hof sat across from each other in 2000 and 2001 as the negotiators trying to agree on a common account of the how the second intifada began. Now, as war rages in Israel and Gaza, Al-Omani and Hof will speak together at Bard College to ask if there is any way to come to common understanding of the origins and impact of the current war.

Ghaith al-Omari, the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Senior Fellow in The Washington Institute's Irwin Levy Family Program on the U.S.-Israel Strategic Relationship, is the former executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine. He served as advisor to the negotiating team during the 1999–2001 permanent-status talks in addition to holding various other positions within the Palestinian Authority.

Frederic C. Hof, Bard College’s diplomat in residence, was chief-of-staff of the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee, which sought to end Palestinian-Israeli violence and return the two sides to negotiations. He was the principal drafter of the Committee’s report. From 2009–11 he attempted to mediate Syria-Israel peace as a State Department diplomat. He served as ambassador and special adviser for transition in Syria under President Obama and as special coordinator for regional affairs in the US Department of State’s Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, where he conducted a back-channel peace mediation between Israel and Syria.

Elmira Bayrasli is the author of From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places, a book that looks at the rise of entrepreneurship globally. She is also the CEO and co-founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted and a professor at Bard College’s Global and International Affairs program and teaches at the City College of New York’s Newmark School of Journalism. She has lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where she was the chief spokesperson for the OSCE Mission. From 1994–2000 she was presidential appointee at the US State Department, working for Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke, respectively. Elmira is a regular contributor on global entrepreneurship for Techcrunch. She also provides analysis on foreign policy, particularly on Turkey. Her work has appeared in Reuters, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, Quartz, the New Republic, Fortune, Forbes, CNN, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. Elmira sits on several boards, including Invest2Innovate, Our Secure Future, Turkish Philanthropy Funds, and Turkish Women’s International Network.

The Crisis of Friendships: Its Roots, Consequences, and Solutions: Niobe Way

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-08 | Dr. Niobe Way is Professor of Developmental Psychology and the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity at New York University (PACH). She is also past President of the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) and co-director of the Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education at NYU. 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). 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.

Discussant: Thomas Chatterton Williams

Thomas Chatterton Williams is the author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Prior to that he was a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a columnist at Harper’s. He is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow and a visiting fellow at AEI. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, Le Monde and many other places, and has been collected in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing. He has received support from Yaddo, MacDowell and The American Academy in Berlin, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. He is a visiting professor of the humanities and senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College and his next book, Nothing Was the Same: The Pandemic Summer of George Floyd and the Shift in Western Consciousness, will be published by Knopf.

This talk was part of Day 1 of our conference: Friendship and Politics
https://hac.bard.edu/friendship-and-politics

Not So Black and White w/ Kenan Malik

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-07 | We live in an age in which in most societies, there is a moral abhorrence of racism, albeit that in most, bigotry and discrimination still disfigure the lives of many. We also live in an age obsessed with the placing of people into racial and ethnic boxes. The more we despise racial thinking, the more we seem to cling to it. That is the paradox that I address in my talk.

I will retell the history both of the idea of race and of the struggles to confront racism and to transcend racial categorization, how those two histories intersect, and how that history helps us makes sense contemporary discussions about race and racism, from identity politics to cultural appropriation, from the rise of the far right to the significance of Black Lives Matter.

Bio:

Kenan Malik is a London-based writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and a columnist for the Observer. After studying neurobiology, and then history and philosophy of science, he has, over the past 30 years, combined academic research with popular writing and journalism. His main areas of interest are the history of ideas, political and moral philosophy, and the history and sociology of race and immigration.

His latest book, Not So Black and White, is a history of ideas of race and identity. Previous books include From Fatwa to Jihad, The Search for a Moral Compass, Multiculturalism and its Discontents, Strange Fruit, Man, Beast and Zombie, and The Meaning of Race. From Fatwa to Jihad was shortlisted for the Orwell Book Prize, and Strange Fruit nominated for the Royal Society Science Book Prize.

He has written and presented numerous radio and TV documentaries and lectured at universities in Britain, Europe, Australia, USA and Canada.

Origins of Totalitarianism (#6 The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-04 | ...

Origins of Totalitarianism (#7 Race-Thinking Before Racism)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-04 | Our Virtual Reading Group (VRG), which meets weekly on Fridays at 1 PM EST. For Fall 2023 and into 2024 we are reading Arendt's classic analysis of the 20th century, The Origins of Totalitarianism. In Origins, Arendt tracks the rise of Fascism and Communism and explores what differentiates these regimes from past authoritarian systems.

Full schedule and more information can be found here: https://hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/

Friendship and Politics: Roger Berkowitz/ Student Poetry Reading: Zarina Dawlat

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-03 | Introduction: Deirdre d’Albertis

Poem: Friends by Hafez Shirazi

Roger Berkowitz is Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. A Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights, Berkowitz writes and speaks about how justice is made present in the world. He is author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition, co-editor of Artifacts of Thinking: Reading Hannah Arendt's Denktagebuch (2017), Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (2010), The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis (2012), and editor of the annual journal HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center.

This talk was part of Day 1 of our conference: Friendship and Politics
https://hac.bard.edu/friendship-and-politics

Talking to Strangers, Two Strangers Talking: Wyatt Mason and Daniel Mason

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-02 | Daniel Mason is the author of The Piano Tuner, A Far Country, The Winter Soldier, and A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, adapted for opera and the stage, and awarded, among others, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a California Book Award, an O. Henry Prize, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is an assistant professor in the Stanford University department of psychiatry.

Wyatt Mason is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a Writer in Residence at Bard, where he is a Senior Fellow of the Hannah Arendt Center.

Introduction: Leon Botstein

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.

This talk was part of Day 2 of our conference: Friendship and Politics
https://hac.bard.edu/friendship-and-politics

The Risks of Correspondence: Thomas Wild, Jana Schmidt, Ann Lauterbach, and Thomas Bartscherer

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-02 | Thomas Bartscherer is the Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at Bard College. He writes on the intersection of literature and philosophy, with a particular focus on tragic drama, aesthetics, and performance. He also writes on contemporary art, new media technology, and the history and practice of liberal education, and is co-editor of the critical edition Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind (forthcoming, 2023).

Ann Lauterbach is a poet and essayist. Her eleventh collection of poetry, Door, was bublished by Penguin Random House in March 2023. She writes at the intersection of poetics, politics and the visual arts. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1986) and a MacArthur Fellowship (1993), she is Ruth and David Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature (Written Arts) at Bard College.

Jana Schmidt, assistant professor of German Studies, writes about German and American transatlantic literatures and theory. After completing her PhD in comparative literature at SUNY Buffalo, she first came to Bard as a postdoctoral fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center, where she also served as director of academic programs in 2022–23. She has held fellowships at the German Literature Archive Marbach, German Historical Institute Washington, and at Fordham University and the New York Public Library. Her first book, Hannah Arendt und die Folgen (2018), traces the influence of Hannah Arendt’s thought on the work of a variety of postwar thinkers, artists, and activists. She has written essays for publications such as Philosophy Today, Los Angeles Review of Books, Journal of Narrative Theory, and German Quarterly. Her current writing project deals with the encounter of German-speaking refugees with African American thinkers and politics from the 1940s onward.

Dr. Wild is Professor of German Studies and Literature at Bard, where he works on modern European and German literature and culture. In his research as well as in his teaching he’s particularly interested in the intersections between literature and history, politics, and philosophy. A current focus of his work addresses the poetics and ethics of multilingualism. Thomas Wild has published an introductory book on Hannah Arendt’s life, work, and reception and a monograph on Hannah Arendt’s intellectual relationships with post-war writers. His most recent book on the distinguished poet Ilse Aichinger discusses a contemporary poetics of hospitality. Several editions of letters emerged from Thomas Wild’s ongoing intrigue for correspondences and intellectual networks, including prominent writers such as Uwe Johnson, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, and Joachim Fest. Poetry is an interlocutor in most of his courses and in many of his publications, among the latter are a collection of poems by Thomas Brasch and translations of contemporary American poets. Thomas Wild serves as general editor on the distinguished international team preparing the first scholarly edition of Hannah Arendt’s Complete Works, which appears in print and digitally, presenting all published and unpublished writings of this eminent thinker in the original English and in the original German – a project providing the foundation for future research on Hannah Arendt, digital humanities, and what it means to think in a plurality of languages.

This talk was part of Day 2 of our conference: Friendship and Politics
https://hac.bard.edu/friendship-and-politics

The Power of Friendship Marisa Franco Discussant Esther Perel

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-02 | An enlightening psychologist, TED speaker, and New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Marisa G Franco is known for digesting and communicating science in ways that resonate deeply enough with people to change their lives. She works as a professor at The University of Maryland and authored the New York Times bestseller Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends. She writes about friendship for Psychology Today and has been a featured connection expert for major publications like The New York Times, The Telegraph, and Vice. She speaks on belonging at corporations, government agencies, non-profits, and universities.

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.

Discussant: Esther Perel
Psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author Esther Perel is recognized as one of today’s most insightful and original voices on modern relationships. Fluent in nine languages, she helms a therapy practice in New York City and serves as an organizational consultant for Fortune 500 companies around the world. Her celebrated TED talks have garnered more than 40 million views and her international bestseller Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence became a global phenomenon translated into more than 30 languages. Her newest book is the New York Times bestseller The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity (HarperCollins). Esther is also the host of the hit podcast Where Should We Begin? which is available on Apple Podcasts. Her latest project is Where Should We Begin - A Game of Stories with Esther Perel. Learn more at EstherPerel.com or by following @EstherPerelOfficial on Instagram.

This talk was part of Day 2 of our conference: Friendship and Politics
https://hac.bard.edu/friendship-and-politics

Arendt’s Friends: Barbara von Bechtolsheim, Marion Detjen, Alex Cain, and Roger Berkowitz

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-11-02 | Since January 2022, Barbara von Bechtolsheim has been an Associate Research Scholar at Yale's Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. Her research focus is on German and American creative couples of the 20th century, currently Hannah Arendt and her husband, Heinrich Blücher. She also works on the poetic reception of classical music. She is most recently the author of Hannah Arendt und Heinrich Blücher Biografie eines Paares, Berlin (Insel 2023) and Paare.Von Beziehungskünstlern und ihrer Liebe (Insel 2022)

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.

Roger Berkowitz is Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. A Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights, Berkowitz writes and speaks about how justice is made present in the world. He is author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition, co-editor of Artifacts of Thinking: Reading Hannah Arendt's Denktagebuch (2017), Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (2010), The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis (2012), and editor of the annual journal HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center.

This talk was part of Day 2 of our conference: Friendship and Politics
https://hac.bard.edu/friendship-and-politics

Philia and Democracy as Tragedy: Daniel Mendelsohn

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-10-31 | Daniel Mendelsohn is the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College. An internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator, Mendelsohn's notable works include "An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic" (2017), named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus; and "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million" (2006), winner of the National Books Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award. His translation of Homer’s Odyssey will be published next year.

Discussant: Anne Norton
Anne Norton is the inaugural Stacey and Henry Jackson President’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science. A scholar of political theory, Norton is the author of seven books, including On the Muslim Question and 95 Theses on Politics, Culture and Method. She is Co-Founding Editor of the journal Theory and Event and on the executive board of the journal Political Theory. She also serves on the board of the Bridge Initiative of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Her present work concerns problems of property and democracy. Norton taught at Notre Dame, Princeton, and the University of Texas before coming to Penn in 1993.

This talk was part of Day 1 of our conference: Friendship and Politics
https://hac.bard.edu/friendship-and-politics

Civic Friendship and Social Thought: A Necessary Conversation Angel Adams Parham

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-10-31 | Angel Adams Parham is Associate Professor of Sociology and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (IASC) at the University of Virginia. She works in the area of historical sociology, engaging in research and writing that examine the past in order to better understand how to live well in the present and envision wisely for the future. She is the author of American Routes: Racial Palimpsests and the Transformation of Race (Oxford, 2017), which was co-winner of the Social Science History Association’s Allan Sharlin Memorial book award (2018) and co-winner of the American Sociological Association’s Barrington Moore award in comparative-historical sociology (2018). In addition to this research, she is active in public-facing teaching and scholarship where she provides resources and training for K-12 educators who are looking to better integrate Black writers and Black history into their teaching. A book related to this work came out in the summer of 2022 and is entitled The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature. Parham’s public-facing work has also led her to become the co-founder and executive director of Nyansa Classical Community, an educational organization which provides history and humanities curricula and programming designed to connect with students from diverse backgrounds. She has been a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, as well as the recipient of a Fulbright grant. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and completed her doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Discussant: Roger Berkowitz
Roger Berkowitz is Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. A Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights, Berkowitz writes and speaks about how justice is made present in the world. He is author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition, co-editor of Artifacts of Thinking: Reading Hannah Arendt's Denktagebuch (2017), Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (2010), The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis (2012), and editor of the annual journal HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center.

This talk was part of Day 1 of our conference: Friendship and Politics
https://hac.bard.edu/friendship-and-politics

“I simply did not understand” Hannah Arendt and Ralph Waldo Ellison: Marie Luise Knott

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-10-31 | Marie Luise Knott was born in Cologne. After completing her Master Degree in Political 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: ÜberProduktionsbedingungen theoretischer Texte im 20. Jahrhundert am Beispiel Hannah Arendts.

Discussant: Jana Schmidt
Jana Schmidt, assistant professor of German Studies, writes about German and American transatlantic literatures and theory. After completing her PhD in comparative literature at SUNY Buffalo, she first came to Bard as a postdoctoral fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center, where she also served as director of academic programs in 2022–23. She has held fellowships at the German Literature Archive Marbach, German Historical Institute Washington, and at Fordham University and the New York Public Library. Her first book, Hannah Arendt und die Folgen (2018), traces the influence of Hannah Arendt’s thought on the work of a variety of postwar thinkers, artists, and activists. She has written essays for publications such as Philosophy Today, Los Angeles Review of Books, Journal of Narrative Theory, and German Quarterly. Her current writing project deals with the encounter of German-speaking refugees with African American thinkers and politics from the 1940s onward.

This talk was part of Day 1 of our conference: Friendship and Politics
https://hac.bard.edu/friendship-and-politics

Why Friendship Matters: Anne Norton

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-10-31 | Anne Norton is the inaugural Stacey and Henry Jackson President’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science. A scholar of political theory, Norton is the author of seven books, including On the Muslim Question and 95 Theses on Politics, Culture and Method. She is Co-Founding Editor of the journal Theory and Event and on the executive board of the journal Political Theory. She also serves on the board of the Bridge Initiative of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Her present work concerns problems of property and democracy. Norton taught at Notre Dame, Princeton, and the University of Texas before coming to Penn in 1993.

Discussant: Lucas Guimarães Pinheiro
Lucas G. Pinheiro is a political theorist and Assistant Professor of Politics at Bard College. He works on the development of global capitalism, empire, and racial slavery in the Atlantic world since the seventeenth century. His current book project is titled Factories of Modernity: Political Thought in the Capitalist Epoch, and his articles, essays, and reviews have been published or are forthcoming in Modern Intellectual History, Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, Contemporary Political Theory, and Disability and Political Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

This talk was part of Day 1 of our conference: Friendship and Politics
https://hac.bard.edu/friendship-and-politics

Hannah Arendt on What Went Wrong with the Zionist Project (Jonathan Graubart)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-10-28 | Arendt’s extraordinary insights on nationalism, federalism, political rebirth, imperialism, and racism originated in her writings on the modern Jewish experience in Europe and on the Zionist project. This talk reviews Arendt’s highly personal and intellectually rich reflections on the promises and perils of Zionism. She took pride in Palestine’s pre-state Yishuv for developing a new Jewish cultural center and socially just institutions, like the kibbutzim. Arendt saw the potential of Zionism to advance Jewish emancipation and contribute to global struggles for a more egalitarian, democratic and peaceful world. Ultimately, however, Arendt lamented the Zionist movement’s embrace of the two dynamics that had proved so deadly to Jews and to the world at large: the nation-state system and imperialism. To realize the promise of Zionism, argued Arendt, the movement would need to overcome two crippling pathologies: a belief in an eternal antisemitism and an attraction to a “tribal” nationalism. Her Zionist writings remain essential for both reflecting upon the grave contemporary crisis of Zionism and inspiring contemporary Jewish pariahs.

Biography of Jonathan Graubart:

Jonathan Graubart is a professor of political science at San Diego State University who specializes in the areas of international relations, international law, Zionism and Jewish dissent, Israel-Palestine, the UN, normative theory, and resistance politics. He received his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002 and his JD from UC Berkeley Law School in 1989.
Graubart’s recent book is Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and other Pariahs (Temple University Press 2023). Richard Falk describes it as “An exciting, profound, and humane critical rethinking of Zionism as the ideological foundation of the Israeli state, Graubart’s alternative vision reinforces what Zionism might have become if its leaders had not opted for an exclusivist Jewish state necessitating the continuous repression, exploitation, and discrimination of the Palestinian people in their own homeland. The recent surge to the Israeli far right gives this fine book a timely urgency, especially for liberal Jews, who should be deeply disturbed by what has happened in Israel beneath the banner of Zionism.”

His other publications include “Reimagining Zionism and Coexistence after Oslo’s Death: Lessons from Hannah Arendt” (Arendt Studies Quarterly, 2019), “David in Goliath’s Citadel: Mobilizing the Security Council’s Normative Power for Palestine” (European Journal of International Relations 2016, co-authored with Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi), and “War is Not the Answer: R2P and Military Intervention,” (part of an edited volume by Cambridge University Press on Responsibility to Protect, 2015). In 2008, Graubart published Legalizing Transnational Activism: The Struggle to Gain Social Change from NAFTA’s Citizen Petitions with Penn State University Press.

Origins of Totalitarianism (#5, 2023) The Dreyfus Affair

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-10-21 | More about our VRG here: https://hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/

Friday, Oct. 20
Chapter Four: The Dreyfus Affair

Friday, Oct. 27
Chapter Five: The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie

Friday, Nov. 3
Chapter 6: Race-Thinking Before Racism

Friday, Nov. 10
No VRG

Friday, Nov. 17
Chapter 7: Race and Bureaucracy

Friday, Nov. 24
No Meeting: Thanksgiving Break

Friday, Dec. 1
No Meeting

Friday, Dec. 8
Chapter 8: Continental Imperialism: the Pan-Movements

Friday, Dec. 15
Chapter 9: The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man

Winter Break

Friday, Jan. 12
Chapter 10: A Classless Society

Origins of Totalitarianism (#4, 2023) The Jews and Society

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-10-18 | ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM

Friday, Sept. 8
The Three Prefaces to the Origins of Totalitarianism

Friday, Sept. 15
No Meeting: Rosh Hashanah

Friday Sept. 22
Chapter One: Antisemitism as an Outrage to Common Sense

Friday, Sept. 29
Chapter Two: The Jews, the Nation-State, and the Birth of Antisemitism

Friday, Oct. 6
Chapter Three: The Jews and Society

Friday, Oct. 13
No Meeting: Annual Conference

Friday, Oct. 20
Chapter Four: The Dreyfus Affair

Friday, Oct. 27
Chapter Five: The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie

Friday, Nov. 3
Chapter 6: Race-Thinking Before Racism

Friday, Nov. 10
No VRG

Friday, Nov. 17
Chapter 7: Race and Bureaucracy

Friday, Nov. 24
No Meeting: Thanksgiving Break

Friday, Dec. 1
No Meeting

Friday, Dec. 8
Chapter 8: Continental Imperialism: the Pan-Movements

Friday, Dec. 15
Chapter 9: The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man

Winter Break

Friday, Jan. 12
Chapter 10: A Classless Society

Friday, Jan. 19
Chapter 11: The Totalitarian Movement

Friday, Jan. 26
Chapter 12: Totalitarianism in Power

Friday, Feb. 2
Chapter 13: Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government Bibliography

Friday, Feb. 9
The Alternative Epilogues

Friendship and Politics (Day 2)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-10-13 | FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13

9:30 am Student Poetry Reading
Jonathan Asiedu
Poem: Two Quarters by Jonathan

9:35 am Introduction
Leon Botstein

10:00 am 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

11:30 am The Power of Friendship
Marisa Franco
Discussant: Esther Perel

12:40 pm Student Poetry Reading
Hannah Park-Kaufmann
Poem: Hymne an die Freundschaft by Friedrich Hölderlin

12:45 pm Lunch

1:00–1:45 pm Breakout Session 1: Friendship: The Future of an Ancient Gift by Claudia Baracchi
A Conversation with the Author Claudia Baracchi and Michael Weinman
Olin 201 (optional)

1:00–1:45 pm Breakout Session 2: Civic Friendship for Fractured Times: Crossing Seemingly Unbridgeable Divides
Angel Adams Parham
Moderator: Jana Bacevic
Olin 202 (optional)

1:00–1:45 pm Breakout Session 3: Friendships and Federations of Care: Forms, Alliances, and Multiverses
Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian
Olin 205 (optional)

2:00 pm The Risks of Correspondence
Thomas Wild, Jana Schmidt, Ann Lauterbach, and Thomas Bartscherer

3:30 pm Arendt’s Friends: Heinrich Blücher, Karl Jaspers, and a Microworld
Barbara von Bechtolsheim, Marion Detjen, and Alex Cain in conversation with Roger Berkowitz

4:30 pm Wine and Cheese Reception at the Bard CCS Hessel Museum
Featuring: ‘Arendt and Her Friends’
An exhibit with items from the archive and special collections
Curated by Nicholas Dunn and Helene Tieger

Origins of Totalitarianism (#3, 2023) The Jews, the Nation-State, and the Birth of Antisemitism

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-10-06 | ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM

Friday, Sept. 8
The Three Prefaces to the Origins of Totalitarianism

Friday, Sept. 15
No Meeting: Rosh Hashanah

Friday Sept. 22
Chapter One: Antisemitism as an Outrage to Common Sense

Friday, Sept. 29
Chapter Two: The Jews, the Nation-State, and the Birth of Antisemitism

Friday, Oct. 6
Chapter Three: The Jews and Society

Friday, Oct. 13
No Meeting: Annual Conference

Friday, Oct. 20
Chapter Four: The Dreyfus Affair

Friday, Oct. 27
Chapter Five: The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie

Friday, Nov. 3
Chapter 6: Race-Thinking Before Racism

Friday, Nov. 10
No VRG

Friday, Nov. 17
Chapter 7: Race and Bureaucracy

Friday, Nov. 24
No Meeting: Thanksgiving Break

Friday, Dec. 1
No Meeting

Friday, Dec. 8
Chapter 8: Continental Imperialism: the Pan-Movements

Friday, Dec. 15
Chapter 9: The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man

Winter Break

Friday, Jan. 12
Chapter 10: A Classless Society

Friday, Jan. 19
Chapter 11: The Totalitarian Movement

Friday, Jan. 26
Chapter 12: Totalitarianism in Power

Friday, Feb. 2
Chapter 13: Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government Bibliography

Friday, Feb. 9
The Alternative Epilogues

The Origins of Totalitarianism (#2, 2023 Antisemitism as an Outrage to Common Sense)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-09-24 | Origins of Totalitarianism

Friday, Sept. 8
The Three Prefaces to the Origins of Totalitarianism

Friday, Sept. 15
No Meeting: Rosh Hashanah

Friday Sept. 22
Chapter One: Antisemitism as an Outrage to Common Sense

Friday, Sept. 29
Chapter Two: The Jews, the Nation-State, and the Birth of Antisemitism

Friday, Oct. 6
Chapter Three: The Jews and Society

Friday, Oct. 13
No Meeting: Annual Conference

Friday, Oct. 20
Chapter Four: The Dreyfus Affair

Friday, Oct. 27
Chapter Five: The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie

Friday, Nov. 3
Chapter 6: Race-Thinking Before Racism

Friday, Nov. 10
Chapter 7: Race and Bureaucracy

Friday, Nov. 17
Chapter 8: Continental Imperialism: the Pan-Movements

Friday, Nov. 24
No Meeting: Thanksgiving Break

Friday, Dec. 1
No Meeting

Friday, Dec. 8
Chapter 9: The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man

Friday, Dec. 15
Chapter 10: A Classless Society

Winter Break

Friday, Jan. 12
Chapter 11: The Totalitarian Movement

Friday, Jan. 19
Chapter 12: Totalitarianism in Power

Friday, Jan. 26
Chapter 13: Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government Bibliography

Friday, Feb. 2
The Alternative Epilogues

The Origins of Totalitarianism (#1, 2023: The Prefaces)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-09-10 | Join us for a thoughtful and spirited exploration of the works of Hannah Arendt. Sessions are led by the Founder & Academic Director Roger Berkowitz. See below for an updated schedule and description of what the group is currently reading!

https://hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/

OSUN Humanities for the People Writing Retreat

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-09-07 | From July 6-16, 2023, OSUN's Hannah Arendt Humanities Network in partnership with Universidad de los Andes hosted a writing retreat at the Gladstone Library, Wales, UK for scholars interested in advancing the relevance and reach of social and cultural study.

The goal of “Humanities for the People:" is to provide time and space for a group of writers to engage in focused and sustained writing on topics that are relevant to humans beyond those currently interested in the humanities. Writers should, therefore, be working on topics of universal relevance.

Arendt and Council Democracy

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

America as a Project

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

How to Become a Demos

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

Institutionalizing Sortition

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

The Preferendum When Sortition Hits the Masses

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

Why & How to Organize Climate Citizens Assemblies

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

Revitalizing American Democracy

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

Lessons from the Irish Citizen Assemblies

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

The Story of Sortition

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

Representing the Future Through Sortition

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

Greek Democracy

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

What is Sortition?

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-25 | ...

Arendt on Friendship #4 (Gershom Scholem)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-20 | ARENDT ON FRIENDSHIP

July 21st
Arendt on Friendship: Humanity in Dark Times
Found in: Men in Dark Times

July 28th
Arendt on Friendship: Socrates
Found in: The Promise of Politics

Friday Aug. 4
Arendt on Friendship: Jaspers: Laudatio and Citizen of the World
Found in: Men in Dark Times

Friday Aug. 18
Arendt on Friendship: Gershom Scholem
Found in: The Jewish Writings

Arendt on Friendship #3: Jaspers: Laudatio and Citizen of the World (Found in: Men in Dark Times)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-08-18 | ARENDT ON FRIENDSHIP

July 21st
Arendt on Friendship: Humanity in Dark Times
Found in: Men in Dark Times

July 28th
Arendt on Friendship: Socrates
Found in: The Promise of Politics

Friday Aug. 4
Arendt on Friendship: Jaspers: Laudatio and Citizen of the World
Found in: Men in Dark Times

Friday Aug. 18
Arendt on Friendship: Gershom Scholem
Found in: The Jewish Writings

Arendt on Friendship #2 (Socrates)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-07-29 | ARENDT ON FRIENDSHIP

July 21st
Arendt on Friendship: Humanity in Dark Times
Found in: Men in Dark Times

July 28th
Arendt on Friendship: Socrates
Found in: The Promise of Politics

Friday Aug. 4
Arendt on Friendship: Jaspers: Laudatio and Citizen of the World
Found in: Men in Dark Times

Friday Aug. 18
Arendt on Friendship: Gershom Scholem
Found in: The Jewish Writings

Digital Humanism Summit on A.I. & Democracy (Vienna, July 2023)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-07-28 | The release of ChatGPT has stirred worldwide enthusiasm as well as anxieties. It has triggered popular awareness of the far-reaching impact of the latest generative AI, which ranges from numerous beneficial uses to worrisome concerns for open democratic societies and the lives of their citizens. We are concerned about the enormous concentration of power, resources, and prioritization of future AI R&D directions in the hands of Big Tech as well as under the control of government bureaucracies.

Visit the full website summit website here: https://hac.bard.edu/programs/hannah-arendt-humanities-network/digital-humanism-summit/

Over 50 experts, regulators, scholars and computer scientists gathered in Vienna to identify possible responses to this global challenge and opportunities for meeting it through collective action such as policy recommendations. This two day invitation-only event was organized by the Digital Humanism Initiative, the OSUN Hannah Arendt Humanities Network at Bard College and the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna.

Music: Night in Tokyo by AVBE uppbeat.io/browse/artist/avbe

Arendt on Friendship #1 (Humanity in Dark Times, Lessing)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-07-25 | ARENDT ON FRIENDSHIP

July 21st
Arendt on Friendship: Humanity in Dark Times
Found in: Men in Dark Times

July 28th
Arendt on Friendship: Socrates
Found in: The Promise of Politics

Friday Aug. 4
Arendt on Friendship: Jaspers: Laudatio and Citizen of the World
Found in: Men in Dark Times

Friday Aug. 18
Arendt on Friendship: Gershom Scholem
Found in: The Jewish Writings

VRG: Responsibility and Judgement Ep.5 (Some Questions of Moral Philosophy 4)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-07-13 | WHO IS HANNAH ARENDT?

Hannah Arendt was a humanist thinker who thought boldly and provocatively about our shared political and ethical world. Inspired by philosophy, she warned against the political dangers of philosophy to abstract and obfuscate the plurality and reality of our shared world. She fiercely defended the importance of the public sphere, but she was also intensely private and defended the importance of privacy and solitude as prerequisites for a life in public. Embraced by liberals and conservatives, she also enraged and engaged interlocutors from all political persuasions.

WHAT IS THE VIRTUAL READING GROUP?

The Virtual Reading Group is an online, scholarly, collaborative exploration of the works of Hannah Arendt. During the coronavirus pandemic, the VRG, as we call it, has grown with new members from around the world. We gather to talk and to listen while closely reading texts on issues like totalitarianism, democracy, privacy, extremism, and the importance of public spaces for debate and resolution.

The VRG is hosted by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, the world's most expansive home for bold and risky humanities thinking about our political world inspired by the spirit of Hannah Arendt, the leading thinker of politics and active citizenship in the modern era.

HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE?

Members of the Hannah Arendt Center and Bard College students are invited to join us for the Virtual Reading Group, held regularly online and led by Director Roger Berkowitz and Assistant Director Samantha Hill.

Learn more about the VRG here: https://hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/
Learn how to join the Hannah Arendt Center here: https://hac.bard.edu/
Become a member of the Hannah Arendt Center here: https://hac.bard.edu/membership/

Find us on Social Media!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hannaharendt...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hannaharend...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Arendt_Center?ref...

Doing Democracy Differently (Bringing Deliberation Into the Classroom)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-07-08 | Citizens' assemblies have addressed complex policy issues around the world and have even become permanent in Paris, Oregon and Belgium. This 10 Credit CTLE (Continuing Teacher and Leader Education) course presented with Democracy Without Elections introduces secondary teachers to the expanding use of lottery (sortition) to bring diverse groups of citizens together to form policy recommendations.

Learn more about the Democracy Innovation Hub here:

https://hac.bard.edu/programs/democracy-innovation-hub/

Music credit to Ivymusic

The Origins and Influence of Arendts Kant Lectures: A Conversation with Ronald Beiner

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-06-26 | ...

2023 Text Seminar: Arendt and/on Race (OSUN Hannah Arendt Humanities Network)

Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 2023-06-16 | A project of the OSUN Hannah Arendt Humanities Network

This Open Society University Network text seminar read Arendt's writings on race, racism, and antisemitism. As an intensive two-day workshop, the seminar’s goal is to pursue the thread of race in Arendt’s thought through her writings and to understand the meaning of race for Arendt. In addition, the seminar asked how the category of race frames and structures her critical project in not always acknowledged ways.

Historical Background:

Hannah Arendt is one of few canonical political thinkers who wrote extensively about race. The Origins of Totalitarianism contains two key chapters on the emergence of racism as a political ideology and the way racism works through bureaucratic as opposed to legal governance. As a Jew who suffered through the rise and reign of Nazism, she analyzed antisemitism as a form of racism. In seeking to understand the ideological power of antisemitism, she came to understand both antisemitism and racism as anti-legal, anti-national, and globalist ideologies based upon quasi-scientific ideas of racial superiority and inferiority. Race, she argued, is "not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man but his unnatural death."

Arendt’s arrival in the United States in 1940 confronted her with new racial and racist dynamics, particularly with the legacy of slavery and anti-Black racism but also with new forms of “minority” activism. In fact, her most prominent conceptual contribution to political theory, the notion of power, may have taken inspiration from what were arguably the most important grassroots political phenomena of her time, Civil Rights and the Black Power movements that followed it.