Ari Gandsman

Oct 22, 2024 | tabletmag.com | Ari Gandsman

My doctoral adviser was a brilliant and intimidating scholar. Stern but often playful and mischievous, he emphasized an open-ended curiosity about the strangeness of our world. He was also a radical social constructivist who believed our academic mission was to interrogate our own taken-for-granted truths about the world and to show how our knowledge was a product of cultural and historical understandings.

Oct 7, 2024 | quillette.com | John Aziz |Iona Italia |Benny Morris |Ari Gandsman

A sad memory from the evening of 6 October 2023 is stuck in the back of my mind, and often trickles back into the forefront of my thoughts when I think about the ongoing spasms of war between Israel and Hamas and the resulting death and destruction in Gaza.

Oct 7, 2024 | quillette.com | Iona Italia |Benny Morris |Ari Gandsman |Meghan Murphy

Editor’s Note: The following piece was first published in my Substack, The Second Swim on 18 November 2023 and is reprinted here in commemoration of the women who died on that day and lest we forget those who continue to suffer.—Iona ItaliaI can’t stop thinking about them: the women and girls of the Israeli kibbutzim, who were raped on 7 October, less than 8 weeks ago. Raped so brutally and so repeatedly that in some cases their pelvises broke from the weight of so many men.

Oct 5, 2024 | quillette.com | Benny Morris |Ari Gandsman |Meghan Murphy |Charles Murray

Vladimir Ilych Lenin reportedly once said that “there are decades in which nothing happens and there are weeks in which decades happen.”  We are now in the midst of such weeks.

Oct 4, 2024 | quillette.com | Zoe Booth |Ari Gandsman |Meghan Murphy |Charles Murray

In this conversation, Roger Berkowitz unpacks the lasting relevance of Hannah Arendt’s thought, emphasising her practical approach to politics. Arendt, known for her scepticism of intellectuals and bureaucracy, was less interested in abstract philosophy and more focused on how we navigate power and truth in the real world. Berkowitz also explores Arendt’s complex stance on Zionism and antisemitism—supporting a Jewish homeland while critiquing ethnonationalism.