Terry Newell

Terry Newell is currently director of his own firm, Leadership for a Responsible Society. His work focuses on values-based leadership, ethics, and decision making. A former Air Force officer, Terry also previously served as Director of the Horace Mann Learning Center, the training arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and as Dean of Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute. Terry is co-editor and author of The Trusted Leader: Building the Relationships That Make Government Work (CQ Press, 2011). He also wrote Statesmanship, Character and Leadership in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and To Serve with Honor: Doing the Right Thing in Government (Loftlands Press 2015).

Recent Blog Posts

All in Establish Justice

Jan 13

Jan 13 The Downside of American Freedom

Terry Newell

Establish Justice, Governing Ourselves

We seem to want more freedom and less government, when in fact more freedom may also require more – and better - government.

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Oct 12

Oct 12 Corporations and Accountability at the Top

Terry Newell

Establish Justice

We need to find ways to lay personal responsibility and societal accountability on corporate leaders who willingly do societal damage and treat the resulting fines as just a cost of business.

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Jul 2

Jul 2 Who's Responsible for Improving Student Achievement?

Terry Newell

Establish Justice, Civic Virtue

When we look for reasons to explain poor student achievement, there is one we seem reluctant to cite: the students themselves. If we were to make a list of who’s responsible for ensuring they do well in school, the first group on the list should be students.

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Apr 14

Apr 14 Race to the Bottom

Terry Newell

Civic Virtue, Establish Justice

If America is the land of opportunity and optimism, why, from one area to another, do we seem driven not by the soaring rhetoric of hope and promise but by the sinking call to lower our expectations?

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Jan 2

Jan 2 The "Debt Tax"

Terry Newell

Establish Justice

Every time the national debt increases without a way to pay for it, our taxes pay the interest on that larger debt. Call it the “debt tax.”

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Nov 21

Nov 21 Trade-Off America

Terry Newell

Governing Ourselves, Establish Justice

Government is inherently a matter of trade-offs, in values and policies. How to make those trade-offs is, in fact, one of the chief functions of government and one of the chief sources of contention in a free society.

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Aug 2

Aug 2 Move That Mosque: Shall We Retreat from Religious Freedom?

Terry Newell

Establish Justice

When people protest the building of a mosque in their community, they dishonor the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

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Mar 22

Mar 22 Questioning the American Dream

Terry Newell

Establish Justice

While shouting at each other, both the political Left and Right hardly recognize a shared concern: the sense that they are caught amidst economic forces that threaten the self-sufficiency and control over one’s destiny so central to what we have always believed was the promise of being American.

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