Between Past and Future

“Arendt … has an extraordinary talent for giving fresh meanings to everyday experiences and for revealing the staleness and faculty of much that passes for novelty and innovation.” —Foreign Affairs

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was University Professor of political philosophy in the graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, a visiting professor at several universities including California, Princeton, Columbia, and Chicago, a research director of the Conference on Jewish Relations, the chief editor of Schocken Books, and the executive director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction in New York City. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952, and an Arts and Letters Grant of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954. She is also the author of On Revolution and Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Jerome Kohn, who was Hannah Arendt’s last teaching and research assistant, is the director of the Hannah Arendt Center at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research and the trustee of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust. His editions of Hannah Arendt’s unpublished and uncollected writings include Essays in Understanding 1930-1954, Responsibility and Judgment, The Promise of Politics, and, with Ron Feldman, The Jewish Writings of Hannah Arendt.