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Alexander Heffner, host of PBS’s “The Open Mind,” will deliver a keynote lecture at Allegheny College on Thursday, Sept. 7, at 12:15 p.m. The lecture, “Civil Discourse in an Uncivil Age: The Quest for a Post-Partisan Citizenship,” will be held in the Tillotson Room of the Tippie Alumni Center at 12:15 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Heffner’s visit will also include a classroom visit and a breakfast workshop with students on the engagement of young people in the political process.

Heffner was a special correspondent for PBS’s “Need to Know” chronicling the Millennial vote in 2012. He 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/journalism seminar in New York City public school classrooms.

His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today, Newsday and RealClearPolitics, among other leading newspapers and magazines. He has been interviewed about politics, education and stories in the news by PBS, C-SPAN, CNN and the BBC, among other national and local broadcast venues. He was political director and correspondent for WHRB 95.3 FM and host and managing editor of “The Political Arena,” a Sunday afternoon public affairs broadcast.

PBS’s “The Open Mind,” billed as a “thoughtful excursion into the world of ideas across politics, media, technology, the arts and all realms of civic life,” is the longest-running public broadcast in the history of American television.