Susan Neiman: Let's Call It Evil

Book Presentation & Discussion with Susan Neiman, Berlin | As part of the "On the Ropes: Midterms in America" series

It is not uncommon for the sharpest weapon against the rampant unscrupulousness of our time to be a single, blunt word. Master thinker Susan Neiman—once a celebrated philosopher at Yale and Tel Aviv and director of the Einstein Forum until 2026—has watched long enough as the abuse of power and greed masquerade as mere “consequences of difficult times.” In her groundbreaking book on the concept of morality in the Trump era, *Let’s Call It Evil*, she sets the record straight with her characteristic clarity: For those who fail to name political misconduct make themselves complicit in its normalization. With the cool head of a student of Kant and the fervor of someone who has had enough, Neiman dissects how democracies have forgotten how to be outraged by the obvious evil in society—and have thus become all the more ripe for radicalism.

In cooperation with the Department of English at the University campus Freiburg, the Freiburg-Madison Society, and the State Agency for Political Education