Technology, Pluralism, and Cosmopolitanism amidst the Return of Tribalism

This panel with Zoe Hitzig and Ann Lauterbach and discussant Allison Stanger took place Friday, October 18th, at the Hannah Arendt Center's 16th annual fall conference on Tribalism + Cosmopolitanism at Bard College. Zoë Hitzig, an economist and writer, is currently a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Her research centers on social tradeoffs in the design of computational and economic systems. She is the author of two books of poetry, Mezzanine (2020) and Not Us Now (2024), winner of the Changes Prize. She currently serves as poetry editor of The Drift, and her work has appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Artforum, WIRED and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in economics from Harvard. Ann Lauterbach is a poet and essayist. Her eleventh collection of poetry, Door, was bublished by Penguin Random House in March 2023. She writes at the intersection of poetics, politics and the visual arts. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1986) and a MacArthur Fellowship (1993), she is Ruth and David Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature (Written Arts) at Bard College. Allison Stanger is Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College; 2021-22 Research Affiliate (co-lead, Theory of AI Practice Initiative) at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University; an External Professor and Science Board member at the Santa Fe Institute; and a Senior Advisor to the OSUN Hannah Arendt Humanities Network. In 2020-21, she held the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Library of Congress. She is the author of Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump (Chinese edition to appear in September 2022) and One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy, both with Yale University Press. She is the co-editor (with W. Brian Arthur and Eric Beinhocker) of Complexity Economics, and the co-editor and co-translator (with Michael Kraus) of Irreconcilable Differences? Explaining Czechoslovakia's Dissolution (Foreword by Václav Havel). Stanger’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post. She has been called to testify before Congress on five occasions and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Stanger received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. This video contains an introduction by Allison Stanger, a presentation by Zoe Hitzig, a presentation by Ann Lauterbach, a discussion among the three, and Q&A with the audience.