From BGSU OFFICE OF MARKETING & BRAND STRATEGY
Bowling Green State University will welcome award-winning journalist and acclaimed author Colin Woodard for a free public lecture at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 10, in the Bowen-Thompson Student Union Multipurpose Room focused on the delicate balance between individual liberty and the common good, as outlined in his groundbreaking book “American Character.”
As one of the most respected authorities on how America’s colonial past shapes the present, Woodard has spoken extensively on the topic across the United States and overseas and will deliver his inspiring keynote for the first time in northwest Ohio on the BGSU campus.
“I’m so pleased to be speaking at an institution that puts the common good at the center of its identity,” Woodard said.
Woodard is a New York Times bestselling historian and Polk Award-winning journalist, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and has spoken for esteemed institutions such as the U.S. Senate, Smithsonian and European Parliament.
“American Character: The Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good” is a Chautauqua Prize Finalist and winner of the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Non-Fiction. In the book, Woodard argues that individual liberty and the common good need to be in balance for a liberal democracy to succeed.
“Our politics has been defined by this struggle,” he said. “Do you best execute America’s mission, set down in the Declaration, by emphasizing individual liberty or the common good?”
Woodard is the director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, a private university in Newport, Rhode Island. He is also a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a POLITICO contributing writer.
“At Nationhood Lab, we’ve produced extensive data analysis and peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate how our more communitarian-oriented regions have outperformed the individualistic ones in health, longevity, social cohesion, economics, pandemic survival, deadly gun violence, environmental policy and democratic responsiveness,” Woodard said.
“Restoring balance via a greater emphasis on the common good is essential to everyone’s future, but college students have a particularly large stake in doing so, as their futures will be profoundly affected by what we do next.”
Woodard has reported from more than 50 countries and seven continents as a longtime foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The Economist, The Washington Post and Newsweek and featured on CNN, PBS NewsHour and NPR’s Weekend Edition.
Woodard has authored six books, including Wall Street Journal bestseller “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” and “The Republic of Pirates” – a New York Times bestselling history of Blackbeard’s pirate gang that was made into a primetime NBC series.
The event is sponsored by the Division of Student Engagement and Success, Division of Inclusion and Belonging and the Democracy and Public Policy Research Network.
