Education and national identity; A politics of belonging
An essay by Brooke A. Holmes; an event with Avram Alpert
Dear all,
Sometimes essays we publish in a print issue wait a while to get published online. In the case of Brooke A. Holmes’ “Learning We”, the period was about four and a half years! However, as it opens with a discussion of President Trump’s announcement in September 2020 that he was creating a federal commission to promote “patriotic education”, the questions that Brooke addresses in her essay remain as relevant as ever.
I am very grateful to Jana Bacevic for putting together a powerful workshop on “Cruelty and Politics” that happened earlier this week and was attended by people from all over the place. Texts Jana discussed included Judith Shklar’s “Putting Cruelty First”, Judith Butler’s “Torture and the Ethics of Photography”, Avishai Margalit’s The Decent Society, and Erich Fromm’s The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.
I am delighted to welcome back the delightful and wise Avram Alpert who will be discussing his new research on the politics of belonging with Alexis Papazoglou. You can read an essay Avram wrote for us a couple of years back on “The Good Enough Life” here.
Your Sunday Read
“Learning We”
An essay by Brooke A. Holmes
What defines the human on which the “we” of a nation is (truly) founded? In this essay, Brooke A. Holmes situates classrooms as “places of unlearning one story of what we’re fighting for and remaking new ones together”. She looks to the history of classical and humanist education to explore important contemporary questions related to national identity and the building of new communities of citizens. You can read Brooke’s essay here.
Monday Event: 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK/8pm CET
“A Politics of Belonging”
Avram Alpert in conversation with Alexis Papazoglou
We all yearn for connection and community, but we live in complex societies where we need to learn to live with people we disagree with. Failing to do so can result in social division and violence. But living with people who doubt our very right to exist threatens our own integrity. How are we to handle these contrasting needs? In this event, Avram Alpert will argue that we need a conception of belonging that is as complex as the lives we lead – one that both meets our needs for community and can make sense of the inevitable difficulties we face. You can find out more and register here.
Event Recording
He may have arrived 58 minutes late, but world-renowned social theorist Hartmut Rosa certainly delivered the goods in the final event of Nicholas Halmi’s “Historical Anxiety” series! You can watch the recording here:
Ending
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Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Anthony Morgan
Managing Editor