Roger Berkowitz Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

The Revolution Against Legitimacy

To the new revolutionary class, legitimacy itself is an unjust claim of power

August 26, 2025 • by Roger Berkowitz

“[Stalin] changed the old political and especially revolutionary belief expressed popularly in the proverb “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” into a veritable dogma: “You can’t break eggs without making an omelette.”—Hannah Arendt We are living through a revolution, though not the kind we are used to. Most today ...

No-Platforming, “Unite the Right,” and New Free Speech Debate

Reexamining the Hannah Arendt Center’s invitation to Marc Jongen

December 26, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

As a Professor of Philosophy at Bard College Berlin honored to collaborate with Berkowitz and the Hannah Arendt Center on events both in New York and here in Berlin, I’d like to reopen this debate to touch upon Berkowitz’s invitation to Jongen itself and examine what light it sheds on the ...

Stand Against Torture

Political Scientists Refuse to Legitimate Torture

September 20, 2017 • by Paul A. Passavant and Jodi Dean

Upon hearing that John Yoo was scheduled to appear at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), held August 31 -- September 3, 2017, a number of Political Scientists organized a response. The theme of the annual meeting was “The Quest for Legitimacy: Actors, Audiences and Aspirations." ...