Are We a Tribe? with Ayishat Akanbi and Thomas Chatterton Williams, moderated by Roger Berkowitz

This conversation took place on Thursday, October 17th, at the Hannah Arendt Center's 16th annual fall conference on Tribalism + Cosmopolitanism at Bard College. Ayishat Akanbi is a fashion stylist and writer based in London. With over a decade of experience working with clients such as Rod Stewart, Labrinth, and Naomi Campbell, in the last five years she turned her focus to observing cultural trends. It’s widely accepted that everything is political, but its Ayishat view that much of the personal becoming politicised is helping to fuel tensions. Through her talks, interviews, and online posts, Ayishat challenges popular ideas by championing understanding, curiosity, and independent thought. Her belief that self-knowledge and honest reflection can resolve divisions has led her to speak at Google Headquarters, The Sydney Opera House, Tate Modern & The Victoria & Albert Museum. Thomas Chatterton Williams is the author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Prior to that he was a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a columnist at Harper’s. He is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow and a visiting fellow at AEI. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, Le Monde and many other places, and has been collected in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing. He has received support from Yaddo, MacDowell and The American Academy in Berlin, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. He is a visiting professor of the humanities and senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College and his next book, Nothing Was the Same will be published by Knopf. This video contains their discussion, moderated by conference organizer, Roger Berkowitz, followed by Q&A with the audience.