Alexander Heffner is host of The Open Mind weekly TV series on PBS and daily podcast. He has covered American politics, civic life, and society since the 2008 presidential campaign. He has been profiled in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Des Moines Register, Christian Science Monitor, Variety, Medium, and on C-SPAN, NPR, CNN, NBC, ABC, and the BBC. His writing has appeared in USA TODAY, WIRED, TIME, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily Beast, and The Independent, among other publications. Heffner is the co-author of best-selling A Documentary History of the United States (Tantor Media, 2020; Penguin, 2018), and 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 has lectured at the The American University in Cairo, 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, and Alpha Seminar at Carroll College, among other institutions of learning.