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).
Abigail Adams, a key contributor to the American founding, also expanded roles for women through her intelligence, political savvy, persistence and character.
Civic rituals are a way to strengthen ties among Americans. Strengthening civic rituals can help ease some of our national divides.
A bad outcome does not mean it came from a faulty decision making process. That’s just one trap of the outcome bias.
Candidates for president need to handle cognitively complex reasoning. How well they remember dates is a poor measure of that capability.
The civil rights of Black Americans were gained in the courts as well as through protest marches. Thurgood Marshall was both advocate and pioneer in this use of the law.
Too many assume that the “red” and “blue” divisions in American cannot be healed. We sell ourselves short.
The human need to feel useful to others is central to good health and happiness. When that need goes unfulfilled, we and society suffer.
Justice is the end of government. Freedom must serve that end. A good society ensures that freedom is restrained when it becomes a barrier to justice.
As perhaps the earliest Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin defined the meaning of citizenship for America and exemplified how to contribute to forming a good society.
Life is filled with people certain they “just know” about a topic, event or person. Yet what people “just know” can be wrong, choking off the learning needed to fully understand.
Political parties can be helpful but only if their adherents exercise the self-restraint essential to avoid their dangers to democracy.
My musical gift to you. Let voices and sounds lift your heart!
Rosa Parks is rightly honored for risking her life to end bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama. But her contributions for racial justice go well beyond that seminal event.
Most of us know that what we think is not what others must think, yet we can be prone to ignoring this. We see a consensus that just isn’t there.
Americans have inaccurate views and conflicting expectations about the nation’s finances. An effort to educate us might be a useful step.
The coming of fall demands certain changes in how I live. I’m not so good about changing.
Joshua Chamberlain put his commitment to country above his career as a college professor, serving with humility and courage during the Civil War and throughout his life.
Violent extremists can change. Former Ku Klux Klanner Chris Buckley and Muslim refugee Heval Kelli demonstrate the power of openness, listening and healing.
The trust essential for a healthy society is common resource but either infinite nor easily renewable. We are depleting that “social commons.”
When Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s “unbreakable” record by playing in his 2,131st consecutive baseball game, the achievement said a lot about character.
