Author: Alexandra Hudson

Infusing goodness, beauty, and truth into our public discourse Issue No. 10 Gracious Reader, We find ourselves in a dark moment. The protests against the grave racial injustices in our ...
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Infusing goodness, beauty, and truth into our public discourse Issue No. 11 Gracious Readers, Apologies for the summer hiatus of this monthly missive! Despite the lockdown, the summer was full, ...
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Infusing goodness, beauty, and truth into our public discourse Issue No. 9 Gracious Reader, In a matter of weeks, the COVID 19 crisis has upended life as we know it ...
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Infusing goodness, beauty, and truth into our public discourse Issue No. 8 Gracious Reader, On Tuesday morning, January 21st, my grandmother passed away after a months-long battle with cancer. She ...
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As part of Some Books Make us Free—our rare books and art exhibit on American citizenship deep cultural divisions create din partnership with the Sagamore Institute, the Harrison Center, and ...
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Two decades ago, Robert Putnam published a book that provoked a small cottage industry's worth of responses from pundits and scholars alike. Bowling Alone, based on an essay of the ...
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The widespread protests over the last week began as a response to a grave wrong in modern America. The death of George Floyd is a tragedy. Racial injustice is real ...
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This weekend, Americans celebrate the independence of a nation founded on the ideals of equality, liberty and life. Yet, we're also a nation roiled by racial injustice and weeks of ...
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Even without a pandemic, suicide rates are difficult to track with precision. But early indicators suggest that the problem has worsened — especially among the elderly — as we struggle ...
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The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 1.1 million people worldwide, including more than 223,000 in the United States. It's wrecked the American economy and led to spikes in suicides ...
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It doesn’t matter how much you prepare and plan for having a child, no time will ever be perfect. This became especially clear when my husband and I realized that ...
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While the world struggles to reopen after months of lockdown, many businesses, devastated by the measures taken to prevent the spread of Covid-19, won’t be coming back. Others will undoubtedly ...
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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the closure of more than 124,000 public and private schools, leaving more than 55 million primary and secondary school students at home. For many ...
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Citizens and businesses across the United States have stepped forward to help one another in this extraordinary time of uncertainty and need. The already severe economic and social costs of ...
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Until January 2019, reporter Tim Swarens had devoted his entire 35-year career to journalism—the last 15 years spent as a reporter and editor at the Indianapolis Star. The end came ...
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Some weeks ago, my husband and I were walking to church when we observed a peculiar scene: a man in a white Mercedes paused at a stop sign, blaring his ...
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President Trump and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sent the internet into a frenzy after this week’s State of the Union address with twin acts of incivility. Before his ...
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The Mellifluous Echo of the Magnanimous Soul   My mother, Grandma and me on Dec 23, 2019, less than month before her sudden decline and passing. On Tuesday morning, January ...
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Infusing goodness, beauty, and truth into our public discourse Issue No. 7 Gracious Reader, Merry Christmas! I hope you had a wonderful holiday with loved ones. Among the many things ...
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Novak 2019 FellowshipIt is my profound honor to have been awarded 2019 Novak Fellowship for my original journalism on American civic renewal. Run by The Fund for American Studies and ...
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Debut on Fox News Has our existential crisis of meaning in America contributed to mass shootings? Why is American health care so expensive? It was great to discuss these important ...
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As members of a “society of equals”—and without a God-ordained order of birth and rank—Americans have always suffered from a collective case of status anxiety. For this reason, they have ...
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Alexandra Hudson is working on her first book, about American civic renewal. “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” held Samuel Johnson. This unflattering sentiment has been adopted widely ...
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When our first president was sixteen, he hand-copied 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, a book of etiquette originally compiled by a group of French ...
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The drive for recognition is among the most basic and universal of human motivations. It is the mainspring of human action, having motivated the Alexanders, Caesars, and Napoleons of the ...
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“What does your part of the country think about what’s happening in Washington, D.C. right now?” a man in his mid sixties read aloud from a sheet of paper to ...
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“I’m done with my grandfather,” a friend confided in me after a recent family gathering. “He compulsively talks about how George Soros is to blame for everything—and then refuses to ...
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“What is man, that you are mindful of him, human beings that you should care for them?” The question the Psalmist asks God is the same question philosophers have been ...
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“Truth springs from argument amongst friends.” —David Hume, 18th C. Scottish empiricist and philosopher We live in a deeply divided moment where people disagree on very important topics. We also ...
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I sit down on a plush, blue-grey booth seat and admire the freshly cut daisies on the table in front of me. It’s a rainy day in Fort Wayne, Indiana, ...
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One cannot write about this show with any insight without also, however inadvertently, giving away some plot twists, which is to say: what you will read contains spoilers. So if ...
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Avenger’s Endgame became the highest grossing opening weekend in film history. Its opening weekend shattered expectations by grossing an estimated $350 million in the US alone, and over $1 billion ...
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“Intelligent discussion is the life of democracy,” said W. Norwood Brigance, a professor of legend in the Department of Speech at Wabash College, an all male liberal arts college in ...
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On Thursday the second of May Facebook drew a line in the sand, banning from their platforms people who purvey ideas they deem dangerous. Being purged from Facebook and Instagram ...
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Ball State University’s Bias Response Team (BRT) is one of many proliferating on college campuses across the country. Unlike some other BRTs, this office has no disciplinary authority. But such ...
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It’s the popular and fashionable thing to do these days — on both the political Left and Right — to name, shame, and blame the social media giants for the ...
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This week, YouTube chose to ban the channel of right-of-center comedian Steven Crowder. This situation is the same as when Twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos or Facebook banned Louis Farrakhan. In ...
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Rebecca Bunch, the protagonist of The CW’s musical romantic comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, shows how pursuing happiness alone is as vain as grasping for vapor in the wind. As the award-winning ...
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I am loath even to write about this topic so as not to give it more attention than it deserves, thereby perpetuating the incentives around polemical behavior (in the time ...
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Alexandra Hudson (Vankevich, ’14) could hardly contain her excitement when she was appointed to a position in the US Department of Education. In many ways, this was a dream come ...
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Technology is often condemned as a pox on American public discourse. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, as well as other social media technologies, are criticized for promoting division and creating echo ...
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During a time of deep political polarization, not everyone could get a representative from Black Lives Matter and the Tea Party in the same room. But an organization known as ...
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A controversy centered around a conservative YouTube personality, Steven Crowder, about a journalist has sparked a bigger conversation about whether it is acceptable for YouTube to benefit from provocative content ...
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What does it mean to be American? Please join us for a panel discussion on the nature of American citizenship with Congressman Lee Hamilton, former Chief Justice of the Indiana ...
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The Beauty of Front Porch CitizenryIt’s been my pleasure to help curate an art and rare books exhibit that will help revive a conversation about a shared American identity. There ...
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Zuckerberg: The Digital GutenbergI had the privilege of spending time in Aspen last winter to partake in a Socrates Seminar—a program of the Aspen Institute—that discussed the changing role of ...
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Better Angels DebatesI was recently commissioned by California's Independent Institute to profile initiatives across the country trying to heal our public discourse. In my first profile, I featured Better Angels ...
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Your time is your most valuable of possessions, and with these posts I hope to make these musings worth your while. I promise you ample insight from the wisdom of ...
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I approach Berkeley Church, a beautiful gothic revival church-turned-event-space in downtown Toronto, on a Sunday evening that is unusually frigid—even for the Great White North. I am here for “Q ...
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In recent years, publishers have produced a veritable library of books, many of them bestsellers, purporting to describe America’s white working class. Among these works, two questions consistently rise to ...
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Commuters ride the subway in New York City, Nov. 15. PHOTO: WONG MAYE-E/ASSOCIATED PRESS New York As a young man sprints across a subway car to grab a seat before ...
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“What is man, that you are mindful of him, human beings that you should care for them?” The question the Psalmist asks God is the same question philosophers have been ...
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Image: g-stockstudio/shutterstock.com Stephen Carter’s Civility is a sophisticated case for renewal of this virtue in American life. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale Law School, ...
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Sponsors: International & National Security Law Practice Group J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, is a worthwhile read for numerous reasons. It ...
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By Alexandra Hudson, former Rotary Global Grant Scholar Alexandra Hudson and her husband at her graduation from London School of Economics. Looking back on my year in London as a ...
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“What does your part of the country think about what’s happening in Washington, D.C. right now?” a man in his mid sixties read aloud from a sheet of paper to ...
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Image: Corlaffra/Shutterstock.com “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” William Jennings Bryan’s famous ...
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Though people and machines are different, acts of civility are driven by habits. Being impolite to Alexa can cause bad habits, especially in children, that may lead to incivility between ...
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View of Les Deux Magots cafe in the 6th arrondissement in the Saint-Germain des Pres area of Paris, a favorite spot of Sartre and de Beauvoir. (E.Q. Roy / Shutterstock.com) ...
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We’re all familiar with the scene. It’s Easter dinner. Endless foodstuffs. Flowing wine. Echoing laughter. And then, “Did you hear about Glenn Beck’s new book about the latest United Nations ...
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Jordan Peterson (Youtube) Dr. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian professor of clinical psychology at the University of Toronto and Great Books autodidact, has captured public imagination and outrage in equal measure ...
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March 17, 2017: US President Donald Trump hold a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House. Nicole S. Glass/Shutterstock.com “Hell hath no fury like a ...
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You better watch out, you better not cry, better not pout, let us tell you why: Santa Claus is coming to Caracas, and this year he’ll be bringing toys to ...
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Donald Trump’s appointment of Ben Carson to be the next Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development puts Dr. Carson in charge of a $45 billion budget that ...
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School choice increases parental involvement and student achievement. Betsy DeVos could use her bully pulpit as education secretary to drastically deregulate federal education policies. Jeff Brown, a 23-year-old African-American, lives ...
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President-elect Donald Trump with Betsy DeVos, whom Trump has chosen as his secretary of education, on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016 in Bedminster, N.J. Andy Katz/Pacific Press The day following his ...
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"I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em." So said turn-of-the-century Tammany Hall boss George Washington Plunkitt, summarizing how he made himself rich in politics. Plunkitt would buy land on ...
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Shutterstock ‘We are not safe in Iraq while Daesh (ISIS) is in control. We have no future, no work, no belongings,’ says an Iraqi genocide survivor. Amman, Jordan — On ...
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Early Childhood Intervention Specialist Heather Brolly works with Andrew Phillips, 4, during a primary color learning exercise at the First Start pre-school program for children with autism on April 7, ...
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The debate about school choice is often animated in the United States, but critics of the idea may be surprised to learn that school voucher programs are quite common in ...
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(Dreamphoto/Dreamstime) The dynamism and opportunities on offer in America’s economy are shadowed, unfortunately, by a surprising lack of social mobility at the lower rungs of the income ladder. Because of ...
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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has pointed to Scandinavian countries as an example of how social services can work. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File) Charlie Neibergall " We should look to ...
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