The Politics of Evil

This course examines how individual leaders have shaped history through acts of political evil. Over three weeks, students will explore how thinkers such as Augustine, Machiavelli, Arendt, Freud, Buber, and others have grappled with questions of morality, power, and responsibility. We will analyze how figures from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries embodied or resisted these ideas, and what their choices reveal about human nature and the political imagination. Readings, films, and case studies will ground discussions of leadership, ideology, and the capacity for harm within systems of power. Visits to the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the Tenement Museum will bring these questions into real-world context, connecting theory to lived history.