May 16-17: Judgment in Extremis - A Conference Inspired by the Fiftieth Anniversary of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem
ECLA of Bard’s Annual Conference, in cooperation with the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, and the Hannah Arendt Center, Bard College
On 16 and 17 May 2013, ECLA of Bard held its annual conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt’s essay Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The conference was a cooperation between ECLA and the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, where the event was held, and the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, New York.
The conference was an occasion for speakers from Germany and around the world to consider the legacy of Arendt’s controversial work, which is an account of the trial and execution in Jerusalem in 1961 of one of the perpetrators of the Nazi Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann. The book is most famous for its formulation concerning the “banality of evil,” and for its conclusions regarding the appropriate responses to crimes against humanity.
Speakers at the ECLA of Bard Annual Conference 2013
Roger Berkowitz
Academic Director, Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities, Bard College
Jay Bernstein
University Distinguished Professor at the New School for Social Research, New York
2013 Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin
Seyla Benhabib
Eugene Mayer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University
Barbara Hahn
Distinguished Professor of German, Vanderbilt University
Gerd Hankel
Research Associate, Hamburg Institute for Social Research
Wolfgang Heuer
Associate Professor, Otto-Suhr-Institute of Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin
Editor-in-chief of the international Hannah Arendt Newsletter
David Kishik
Fellow 11/12/13, ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry
Christoph Menke
Professor of Practical Philosophy at Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main
Andreas Nachama
Director of the Topography of Terror Foundation
Dean, Graduate Program in Holocaust Communication and Tolerance, Touro College, Berlin
Gaby Weber
Journalist
Annette Weinke
Research Associate, Modern History, Friedrich Schiller University Jena
A series of seminars for students were held at ECLA preparatory to the conference. The event continued the tradition of yearly public conferences with invited guests on topics of pressing real-world political importance related to the key questions of ECLA’s liberal arts programs in Value Studies. Previous themes have included: EU Enlargement: Cultural Issues and Implications (2005); New Forms of War (2006); Social Entrepreneurship (2007); Water (2008); The Politics of Cultural Ownership
(2009); The Translator (2010); What Shall We Eat? (2011); Censorship (2012).
Read more details on the conference dedicated website conference.ecla.de.
