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About The Open Mind

About the Host About the Series About the Archive
Alexander Heffner

About the Host

Alexander has covered U.S. culture, politics, and civic life. He is recipient of University of Denver’s Anvil of Freedom Award, Franklin Pierce University’s Fitzwater Medallion for Leadership in Public Communication, and Yale University’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism.

He is coauthor of best-selling A Documentary History of the United States (Penguin, 2022) whose newest edition chronicles the pandemic and January 6th insurrection. He was a special correspondent for PBS’s Need to Know chronicling the youth vote, founded and edited SCOOP08 and SCOOP44, the first-ever national student newspapers covering the 2008 campaign and the Obama administration, and taught a civic education seminar in New York City public school classrooms.

He has lectured at the Newseum, National Constitution Center, Museum of American Finance, FDR Library and Museum, Initiative for Truth at University of Sydney, Center for Information and Bubble Studies at University of Copenhagen, Institute on Constitutional Democracy at University of Missouri, Civil Discourse Lab at the University of New Hampshire, Department of Writing and Rhetoric at University of Mississippi, Center for Constitutional Democracy at Marshall University, Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State, Clarke Forum at Dickinson College, Honors College at Clemson University, Alpha Seminar at Carroll College, among other institutions of learning.