What to do When People are Rude

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P.M. Forni
http://krieger.jhu.edu/civility  
410-516-8047

Dr. P.M. Forni, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, co-founded the Johns Hopkins Civility Project in 1997. An aggregation of academic and community outreach activities, the JHCP aimed at assessing the significance of civility, manners and politeness in contemporary society. The JHCP has been reconstituted as The Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins, which Dr. Forni now directs. This Web site is designed to introduce Dr. Forni's work on civility and to offer links to related material.

What to do When People are Rude

In this video P.M. Forni, the founder of The Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins, gives essential information on how to deal with that daily and ubiquitous irritant that is rudeness. A quality of life issue, rudeness is best dealt with by trying to prevent it from coming your way. Professor Forni shows how to do that in the first part of the video. Since prevention is not always possible, however, it becomes crucial to prepare to respond to rudeness. The second part of the video shows how to respond to all sorts of acts of rudeness in the most civil and effective ways possible.

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P.

M. Forni: Hi! I am P.

M. Forni of Johns Hopkins University. And today we are talking about what to do when people are rude. In our conversation today, we are going to cover four main topics rudeness as a quality of life issue, the rudeness prevention, the first line of defense, accepting the reality of rudeness and how to respond to rudeness. Before we start let me tell you something about myself. I have been teaching at Johns Hopkins University for the past 22 years. I am a professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, but I also teach courses on the history and theory of manners. Over the years I have co-founded the Johns Hopkins University Civility Project and the Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins and written two books Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct and The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude.

In our conversation of today, I will show you how to prevent rudeness from happening to you whenever possible. And when it is not, how to cope with it, how to deal with it, how to confront it effectively? So let's just get started.

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