Category: Government
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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January 23, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Peter Brook’s version of Lord of the Flies opens to church bells and a stream of photos from and English boys’ school. The photos and audio include math lessons and angelic sounding chorale arrangements, which are quickly replaced by drums and a cricket match interspersed with missiles, airplanes behind Big Ben, and a chalkboard list of evacuation plans.
December 12, 2025
Thanks to Ibrahim Nureni, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
In Margo Natalie Crawford’s Black Post-Blackness, tidalectics is characterized by “nonlinear” or “back-and-forth” black radical tradition of continuity in that the experiences of black people from the era of slavery to the contemporary days do not follow a parallel path but adopt a circular schema (3). English, in How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness,
» Read more about: Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”: A Serial and Tide of Black Voices »
August 29, 2025
Thanks to Estella Achinko, a 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.
I have always been fascinated by the way nations rise and fall. Whether it’s the brutal rule of totalitarian regimes in Europe, the iron-fisted dictatorships of Africa, or the complex democracy of the United States, governance has remained a delicate, often unpredictable experiment. History does not provide a single blueprint for a successful state—only cautionary tales and fleeting moments of prosperity.
» Read more about: The Success of a Nation: Rethinking the Ideal State »
November 3, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The October Quarterly Discussion merged two chapters from The Prince by Machiavelli with a chapter from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Of prime interest was the focus on the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Machiavelli presents him as a champion of the princely cause since he successfully tricked and killed his opponents,
March 12, 2021
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The Federal Artists’ Project was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) which started during the Depression. This program allowed artists, writers, musicians, and actors the ability to earn money at a time when jobs and money were scarce. Writers, for example, collected oral histories from across America in an attempt to understand the country, document hardships and successes,
January 22, 2021
Thanks to Turkay Gasimova, a 2020 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
In his book, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, Timothy Mitchell challenges traditional knowledge of the history of the Middle East, energy sources, and environmental politics.
Mitchell who had previously written a remarkable book on the colonization of Egypt, for some years spent time in the Middle East,
» Read more about: BOOK REVIEW: Carbon Democracy by Timothy Mitchell »
November 6, 2020
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The Social Contract has been on my mind a lot lately. Of course, elections and coronavirus and all of the current stresses on society have been on my mind, and they often circle me back into what it means to exist in a community at all. What is the sort of contract that I have with fellow citizens?
July 24, 2020
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton defends the idea that the United States must have a strong federal government. In Federalist #6, he reminds readers that:
“A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies,
» Read more about: Quarterly Discussion Review: Federalist Papers »
July 17, 2020
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I would like to go back to July 11, 1804 and tell Hamilton not to engage, that Burr is not worth it. Of course, the famous duel between Burr and Hamilton is now a piece of America’s folklore. It is a story that I heard as a child, that lodged itself into the periphery of my mind and education.
July 3, 2020
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The authors of the Federalist Papers often cite Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. I, too, am amazed in Plutarch’s broad, holistic analysis of ancient peoples and places. When I first read Plutarch’s works, their current applicability surprised me. I am no longer surprised by this. Rather, I return to his words again and again as a way of understanding contemporary issues.