What you’re about to read is a journey — and I launch it with the most famous line in the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and…
For most kids in America, the school year is coming to a close. But the civics lesson has only just begun. With protests against police brutality sweeping the nation, there’s a lot to learn about how to be effective, engaged citizens. As an educator of moral courage, I teach young people to do the right…
In work and in life, one of the scariest things to do is negotiate with someone who disagrees with you. It takes moral courage to start, and sustain, that conversation. When I teach this skill, a crucial part of my method is improvisational theater (“improv”). Each participant has to accept what every other participant is…
I teach courage for a living. Over the course of 20 years, I’ve researched, studied, written, filmed, and spoken about the skills needed to exercise “moral courage,” which means doing the right thing in the face of fear. For all of my expertise, though, I’ve absorbed something counterintuitive these past few months: that the quietest,…
Bruce Lee, the martial arts master, would teach his students to “be like water.” What he meant was, water always gets to where it needs to go — even in the midst of obstacles. Water doesn’t demand that those obstacles disappear, or label them as the oppressor. Rather, water washes over them, glides around them,…
Increasingly, I’m speaking at colleges and universities about the hottest topic going: how to achieve diversity and inclusion. Most educators see diversity as a matrix of skin colors, genders, religious affiliations and sexual orientations. But diversity is also about airing different perspectives. At institutions of higher education, intellectual diversity should be a no-brainer. It’s not,…
On MKL Day 2020, I had the honor of speaking from the very pulpit that the man himself once did — at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The Rev. Dr. Bernice King, daughter of Martin and Coretta, invited me to pay tribute to him. Which I did with relish. I didn’t remember Dr. King as…
Without a doubt, it was the wrong thing to do. And I knew it. I did it anyway. “You think you can bulldoze anybody,” I sneered at her. “Nobody calls you out on your behavior, so you feel entitled to keep pushing and threatening and intimidating. Well, I’m here to say that I see through…
