Kanan Makiya and Jonathan Schell on Hannah Arendt, Iraq, Vietnam, and Totalitarianism

Summary

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we have an excerpt from a two day symposium--“Hannah Arendt Right Now”--which explored the philosopher’s impact on the 21st Century. The 2006 event was held on the hundredth anniversary of Arendt’s birth. In this session, Kanan Makiya discusses Arendt’s influence on his thinking with Jonathan Schell. Makiya was born in Baghdad and educated at MIT. His book, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, was published in 1989. Makiya was a proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Schell, who died in 2014, was a writer for The New Yorker and The Nation. His 1967 book, The Village of Ben Suc, chronicled the devastation of a South Vietnamese village by American forces. He wrote many pieces against the war in the New Yorker.

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