ON AND OFF CAMPUS: RAGE AND REASON AND LECTURES BY LUMINARIES

“Facebook, Twitter, and the Danger to Public Reason” featured Frances Haugen (right) in conversation with Dylan Sparks ’19. Hannah Arendt Center 2022 conference, “Rage and Reason.”

This fall’s Hannah Arendt Center conference tackled “Rage and Reason: Democracy Under the Tyranny of Social Media.” Presented in partnership with the Open Society University Network and the Center for Civic Engagement, the event traced the fraught and sometimes surprising relationships between big tech, free speech, and intense emotion. Attendees considered whether or not anger is compatible with rationality, hearing arguments from Bard professors as well as guest speakers like PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel and Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. In March, the Arendt Center will present a two-day conference, “Judgment, Pluralism, and Democracy: On the Desirability of Speaking with Others.”

John J. Curran ’75 Lectures in Journalism honor the memory of a proud Bardian whose dedication to ethical reporting in journalism informed a trusting readership for over a quarter of a century and promoted a culture of honesty, integrity, and truth.

The Anthony Hecht Lectures in the Humanities featured Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips with faculty hosts Marina van Zuylen, professor of French and comparative literature; Adhaar Noor Desai, assistant professor of literature; and Gideon Lester, Fisher Center artistic director and chief executive. Greenblatt, a Shakespearean scholar, literary historian, and author, is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He won the National Book Award for The Swerve in 2011 and the Pulitzer Prize in 2012.

Psychoanalyst and writer Phillips, formerly principal child psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London, is a visiting professor in the department of English at the University of York, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The November lecture series, Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud, included Greenblatt’s “Shakespeare’s First Chance” and Phillips’s “Freud’s First Chance” and “Second Chances: For and Against” in Annandale, and “Shakespeare’s Second Chances” by Greenblatt at the Morgan Library in New York City. The Hecht Lectures, which honor preeminent poet and former Bard faculty member Anthony Hecht ’44, were established in 2007. Each lecture series is published by Yale University Press.