In Spring 2022, Prof. Dubnov will be offering a seminar entitled “Émigré Intellectuals & The Making of Post-1945 Politics,” Below is the course description:
The rise of National Socialism to power prompted an unprecedented large-scale exodus of Central European scholars who have had an enormous impact on American cultural life in particular and the post-World War II world of politics in general. The course’s primary aim is to introduce students to the key ideas and classical writings of these figures and examine their responses to and analysis of the age of extremes. We will begin our journey with the writings of Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Erich Fromm – the founders of the Frankfurt School – and will continue with the analyses of totalitarianism and “political Messianism” offered by Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, Jacob L. Talmon, and Karl Popper, which we will then compare and contrast with the evaluation of liberalism one finds in the writings of Emmanuel Lévinas, Leo Strauss, Isaiah Berlin, and Arthur Koestler.
We shall examine these thinkers’ analyses of enlightenment, nationalism, socialism, and totalitarianism, their life stories, and their direct and indirect role in creating a transatlantic political discourse in the postwar years. We will try to ask ourselves to what extent were their political and philosophical writings designed as a response to the maladies of the twentieth century, and to what extent did their Jewishness notify their writings, if at all. By doing so, we shall be able to contextualize historically the fundamental features of Jewish intellectual activity after 1945.
*No prior knowledge of political science, philosophy, and/or Jewish studies is required.
*Please note the class is cross-listed between the history department (HIST2001.80), the Judaic Studies Program (JSTD2002.82), and Honors Program (HONR2047.83, Self and Society Seminar)
