Barak Kalir presents the work of Hannah Arendt

At a time when the world takes a sharp turn to the right, and as millions of people escape their state in search of refuge in Europe and elsewhere, revisiting the work of Hannah Arendt could hardly be more timely for an exploration of themes such as: totalitarianism, the human condition, vita activa, and the banality of evil.
In this third edition of the Great Thinkers Seminar Series, Barak Kalir will introduce some of Arendt’s most important insights into political life, the wielding of power, and resistance. He will do so by drawing closely on some of the empirical work that is being conducted within the research project on the Social Life of State Deportation Regimes in Europe and beyond.

About Hannah Arendt
Born in Germany in 1906, Hannah Arendt gained much attention for her writings on totalitarianism and Jewish affairs after World War II. She escaped Europe during the Holocaust, becoming an American citizen. Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) addressed the rise of the totalitarian state out of the collapse of traditional nation-states. Following the war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann, she wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). Her thoughts span totalitarianism, revolution, the nature of freedom and the faculties of thought and judgment. She died in New York City in 1975.

About Barak Kalir
Barak Kalir is associate professor at the department of Anthropology, principal investigator of the ERC funded project The Social Life of State Deportation Regimes, co-director of the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies and programme director of Moving Matters: People, Goods, Power and Ideas. He studies and compares the actual implementation process of deportation regimes.