In July, 2009, the What Would Dumbledore Do campaign took over Twitter, movie theaters and CNN. As part of the campaign, we asked members to tweet about life lessons that they had learned from Dumbledore with the label #dumbledore. We amassed over 12,000 tweets in which people described how Dumbledore taught them important lessons about life and themselves. In addition, HPA members brought name tags to releases of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to spark discussion and engagement with movie attendees about lessons learned from Dumbledore, not just in the US, but across the world as well. The campaign was also featured in an article in the Huffington Post, written by our own Andrew Slack.

The goal was to honor one of the most revered and celebrated characters in the Harry Potter world by examining the lessons that Dumbledore has taught us. He represented the power of love and tolerance in the books, constantly promoting the idea that love is our greatest weapon, and that it is only with love that we can conquer evil. And while the lessons that we have learned from Dumbledore can be as simple as the necessity of a good pair of socks, Dumbledore also constantly reminds us of the power of unity in the face of great and divisive evil.