A New Book From 
Dignity Press!

Vulnerability Protected:

Visions of a 
Dancing Mind

By Carol Smaldino

Vulnerability Protected: Visions of a Dancing Mind invites readers to reconsider what it truly means to be vulnerable — and why it matters now more than ever. Vulnerability, writes Carol Smaldino, is not a soft cliché but a profound state of openness that touches every part of our being. It is rarely smooth or easy. On the contrary, genuine vulnerability depends on a sense of safety, both physical and emotional, and becomes a gateway to repair and reconnection when we inevitably falter.

In this new work, Carol Smaldino explores how vulnerability is a central ingredient in empathy — for ourselves, for each other, and even for the natural world. When we allow ourselves to feel deeply into our own experience, we become more able to extend that same depth of understanding outward, bridging the gaps that so often divide us.

New Book

Driven to Their Knees: 
Humiliation in Contemporary Politics

By Roxanne L. Euben

How the rhetoric of humiliation defines the powerful and the powerless in modern politics

Humiliation pervades our politics, from images of stripped Palestinian men in Gaza to mocking chants at MAGA rallies. It suffuses pictures and videos, speaks through bodies as well as words, and is expressed by those with too much power as well as by those with too little. In Driven to Their Knees, Roxanne Euben takes readers from conflicts in the Arabic-speaking world to America’s divided public square, advancing a theory of humiliation rooted in the ways people articulate and enact it (Princeton University Press, 2026).

Roxanne L. Euben is the Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. 

This book is available through Princeton University Press.

Where in the World is Evelin Lindner?

Our Global Ambassdor

Founding President Evelin Lindner, MD, PhDs, has been on the move, carrying the spirit of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies into communities around the world.

Drawing on decades of global research, Evelin Lindner strives to chart paths "from humiliation to dignity” with everyone she encounters. This year she has spent extended time connecting with friends —and making new friends — in places like Norway, Germany, France, Morocco, and Egypt. She is always engaging in dignifying dialogues, and joins colleagues in exploring how we can cultivate and nurture dignity in these challenging times.

Evelin Lindner builds relational bridges to connect classrooms, conferences, and informal gatherings into a living network of people who care deeply about mutual dignity, human rights, and beneficials ways of living together on a fragile planet. Her visits are never just “stops” on a tour: they are occasions to listen, to learn from local experiences of courage and resilience, and to co‑create responses to injustice that honor every person’s worth.

Through her ongoing journeys, Evelin helps weave a global conversation that reminds each of us that dignity is not an abstract ideal, but something we build together — one relationship, one community, and one courageous dialogue at a time.