Thinking in Dark Times: The Legacy of Hannah Arendt - Hannah Arendt was a true scholar, but her writing reached far beyond the walls of the academy. She was a correspondent for the New Yorker and wrote widely in Jewish and emigré journals. To honor Arendt's unique combination of scholarship and relevance, Bard College hosted a conference bringing together philosophers, political theorists, and public intellectuals to think together about specific questions that Arendt's work raises for our time. "Is evil banal?"; "Is totalitarianism a present danger?"; "What is the activity of democratic citizenship?"; "What is the importantce of Arendt's Jewish identity?"; "What does it mean to think about politics?"; and "How does one think in dark times?". These questions go to the root of Arendt's thinking about the nature, possibility, and activity of freedom. Freedom, for Arendt, is not an abstract philosophical concept. Rather, freedom demands political action
in public, and politics, in turn, demands freedom. Listen to the following audio samples from the conference concerning these questions.

George Kateb
(Princeton University, Professor Emeritus, Political Science) from panel
What Does It Mean to Think about Politics?

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
(Columbia University, Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research) from panel
What Is the Importance of Arendt's Jewish Identity?

Leon Botstein
(Bard College, President) from panel
What Is the Importance of Arendt's Jewish Identity?

Peter Baehr
(Lingnan University in Hong Kong, Professor and Head, Department of Politics and Sociology)
Keynote Address

Yaron Ezrahi
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Gersten Family Professor of Political Science)
Keynote Address

Jay Bernstein
(The New School, University Distinguished Professor, Chair, Department of Philosophy)
from panel What Is the Activity of Democratic Citizenship?

Patchen Markell
(University of Chicago, Professor of Political Science) from panel
What Is the Activity of Democratic Citizenship?

Pictures from the conference (photographer Karl Rabe):