Dear Valued Supporters,
I hope you were able to join us to hear Edward Snowden and others talk about Why Privacy Matters at the Arendt Center's eighth annual fall conference. If you missed it-or if you want to revisit any of the talks, you can watch the conference here. We will also be posting edited footage to our Vimeo account soon.
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| Roger Berkowitz, Academic Director of the HAC, introduces our eighth annual fall conference "Why Privacy Matters" on Thursday, October 15th, 2015. |
We are now preparing our Fall 2016 conference, "
How to Talk About Difficult Questions: Race, Sex, and Religion on Campus
"
.
While college is a safe space for difficult questions, free and collegiate inquiry rests on rules of civility. We raise our hands to speak, listen to those who disagree, and make sacred the space of collective inquiry. Asking difficult questions in a respectful way structures our search for truths and prepares us for the activity of democratic citizenship. The emergence of the seemingly unbridgeable divides separating republican and democratic truths, black and white truths, male and female truths, secular and religious truths is that nearly all of us are increasingly so committed to the absolute truth of our partial story of reality that we find opposing truth and opposing stories existentially threatening. At a moment when difficult questions are evacuated from public spaces, we must strive to maintain the idea of college and university life as a safe space for difficult and contested thinking.
Bringing together academics, business people, artists, and intellectuals, we
ask, how can we do so while honoring our unshakable commitment to justice and equality?
Allow me to thank
you for your continued support of the Hannah Arendt Center! As
the year comes to a close, I'm excited to update you on our work this year as well as our plans for 2016
.
All of these initiatives serve the HAC's central mission: to promote passionate, uncensored, and non-partisan thinking that reframes and deepens the fundamental questions facing our world.
Your support is crucial to our ability to continue to further Hannah Arendt's legacy of bold and provocative thinking. Please consider making a year-end contribution to the Center or renewing your membership here.
A few highlights from 2015:
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| Nathaniel Carlsen, a student at Bard College, asks Edward Snowden a question at our eighth annual fall conference. |
We released our third volume of HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College , featuring essays by George Packer, Charles Murray, Ann Lauterbach, Eyal Press, and more.
- Our membership-based Virtual Reading Group continues to grow with each monthly session. We will complete our reading of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition in early December and will then choose another text to read beginning in 2016.
Here are the events we are planning for 2016:
- We are excited to continue the 'The Courage To Be' seminar series. The Courage to Be program explores the religious and philosophical foundations of political and moral courage in our age.
- We are collaborating with the Music Program and the Language & Literature Program to host "A Taste for Chaos: The Hidden Order in the Art of Improvisation". Special Guests include composer George Lewis and Randy Fertel, author of A Taste for Chaos: The Art Of Literary Improvisation. This event features music by Oliver Lake (Black Artist Group) performing with students of the Contemporary Composers Ensemble. It will take place on Monday, February 15, 2016 at the László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory Building.
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| This was the first year our fall conference was completely sold out. |
The Hannah Arendt Center will engage in a conversation about the work of political theory in memory of Sheldon S. Wolin with Nicholas Xenos. This event is titled "
What is Political Theory?" and will be held on February 18, 2015 in the Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium.
This fall, w
e welcome
d
an incredible group of fellows: Wyatt Mason
, Senior Fellow
;
David Brin,
The National Endowment for the Humanities/Hannah Arendt Center Distinguished Fellow;
Thomas Wild,
Research Associate;
Jana Schmidt,
Klemens von Klemperer Post Doctoral Fellow;
Elsa Natalia Mendoza Rockwell and Samantha Hill, both
Post Doctoral Fellows; Alexander Soros, Aliza Becker, Charles Snyder, Jeffrey Champlin, Jeffrey Jurgens, Jennifer M. Hudson, and N.A.J. Taylor
, our Associate Fellows
;
and finally
Irene Haslund, Jana Lozanoska, Rosanil Nava Lara, and Ulrich v. Bulow
as visiting scholars
.
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| A snapshot of our Courage to Be fellows along with members of the Bard faculty and HAC staff/fellows. |
We are also pleased with
an increase in
student engagement. This yea
r
, we added a team of six
student fellows to our center
.
Anne Burnett, Morgan Evans, Clara Gallagher, Ava Lindenmaier, Milan Miller, and Jason Toney will assist with the
Courage To Be
program
.
They join
Zelda Bas, Marketing Intern, and Jessica Chappe, Photography Intern. Lastly, we are pleased to welcome a new student, Daniel Krakovski, as the center's Media Intern.
The Arendt Center moves into the final year of our $1.5 Million matching grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. With this endowment, we can work to ensure the vibrant future of the Arendt Center as an institutional space for non-partisan thinking that is "smarter than the debate." We are in the final push to secure this funding; your support is deeply appreciated.
As we witness an election in which facts are fabricated and as we experience fundamental debates about what it means to argue with and live with those whose opinions we disagree with or revile, the Arendt Center will continue to bring the best non-partisan humanities thinking that elevates our political discourse.
Your support is crucial to our ability to continue to further Hannah Arendt's legacy of bold and provocative thinking. Please consider making a year-end contribution to the Center or renewing your membership here.
I wish you a very thoughtful and provocative holiday season, and I hope to see you at Arendt Center events in 2016.
Sincerely,
Roger Berkowitz
Academic Director
Hannah Arendt Center
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