Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves
In this lecture, Alexandra Hudson scours the human experience, offering a sweeping history of social norms and giving readers insight from hundreds of civility handbooks across history and the globe. She discovers that while the challenges to civility today are dire, they are not new. And the solution is just as timeless as the problem: the principles of civility and human flourishing are remarkably unchanging and have been discovered and rediscovered across time and place.
Hudson harnesses the power of storytelling—sharing gripping and endearing narratives of heroes of civility both familiar and forgotten—to illuminate how civility can help bridge our social, cultural, and political divides.
Drawing from ancient philosophers such as Socrates, Epictetus, and Confucius to more contemporary thinkers such as Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and Henry David Thoreau—as well as her own experience working in the federal government during one of the most politically fraught eras in our nation’s history—Hudson explains why civility is not a luxury: it’s a necessary for the survival and flourishing of our species.
About the Speaker
ALEXANDRA O. HUDSON is a writer, popular speaker, and the founder of Civic Renaissance, a publication and intellectual community dedicated to beauty, goodness and truth. She was named the 2020 Novak Journalism Fellow, and contributes to Fox News, CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, TIME Magazine, POLITICO Magazine, and Newsweek. She earned a master’s degree in public policy at the London School of Economics as a Rotary Scholar, and is an adjunct professor at the Indiana University Lilly School of Philanthropy. She is also the creator of a series for The Teaching Company called Storytelling and The Human Condition. Her first book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, is forthcoming from St. Martin’s press this October. She lives in Indianapolis, IN with her husband and children.