David Kim, professor of European languages and transcultural studies, is writing a book about the concept of solidarity in the writings of philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, whose work is also the subject of the graduate seminar he is teaching this quarter.
“There is no way around thinking about solidarity nowadays. We live in a polarized society where opposing parties don’t know how to talk to each other, come to an agreement or have any kind of a meaningful negotiation,” Kim said. “How can we interrogate the assumptions that we make in order to understand the perspective of others, so that we don’t demonize those who think differently?”
That’s the key question he aims to answer. Arendt focused on the sense of shame some human beings felt as human beings in the Holocaust’s aftermath, he says, while others may have felt ashamed as members of a specific nation. “She thought … that one had to feel as a member of humanity in order to to prevent something like the Holocaust from happening again,” Kim said.
Kim, who joined the UCLA faculty in 2014, was named associate vice provost of the UCLA International Institute in July. He teaches courses on Arendt’s political philosophy, cosmopolitanism, Kafka, literary theory and transatlantic European studies with community engagement. He was honored with the UCLA Academic Senate’s Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award in 2020.
Read the full story about Kim’s research on the International Institute’s website.