Academic leadership and pragmatism
At a recent academic leadership workshop I attended, I heard a talk about the irrelevance of ideology in academic leadership. The talk emphasized how academic leaders need to be fundamentally pragmatic.
As a critical scholar, this made me reflect upon my interest in issues of academic leadership. What kind of leader do I want to be, given the ideologically based nature of my scholarship, my teaching, my very existence as an academic? Are there even spaces of leadership for those scholars who deconstruct academic practices and their ideological bases? Where are the spaces for leadership for those scholars/paradigms that explicitly note the ideological nature of knowledge producing practices/entities?
As I reflected more on this and conversed with my colleagues, it became apparent that such discourses of apolitical/ideologically divorced leadership are misleading because they are fundamentally ideological in their articulation of pragmatism. As one of my colleagues put it, "Machiavellianism is in and of itself an ideology, and a dangerous kind of ideology."
Leadership that divorces itself from questions of ideology runs into the danger of turning academe into a profit making entity, driven by the needs of the market, the demands of corporations, and the dictates of economic productivity. Ideas that are out of fashion, unfundable, unlikely to be sponsored by corporations and funding agencies are placed at the margins, while the mainstream is taken over by funds, ventures and profits. Questions that our academic leaders continually ought to ask themselves are questions about the vision and mission of universities as sites of knowledge production. What do they want academia to look like? What are the purposes served by knowledge? What structures/instituions/stakeholders are served by knowledge? How can we maintain our intellectual diversity, even as we seek to remain economically viable in a competitive environment?
Knowledge production is fundamentally a political exercise that is powerful in terms of the effects it has on society. We need to be aware of this political nature of knowledge production and talk openly about it rather than fostering a-ideological academic spaces.
I am aware of the financial pressures on universities to generate revenues, particularly so in our current economic scenario, but also believe that as we engage in these revenue generating exercises, we need to ask difficult questions. Reflexivity and ideological engagement are perhaps the starting points for fostering a scholarly climate. We ought to be continually reflexive regarding our role as universities. What is our role as producers of knowledge? Whom are we serving? What is the world that we are envisioning for our students and for the future?
As a critical scholar, this made me reflect upon my interest in issues of academic leadership. What kind of leader do I want to be, given the ideologically based nature of my scholarship, my teaching, my very existence as an academic? Are there even spaces of leadership for those scholars who deconstruct academic practices and their ideological bases? Where are the spaces for leadership for those scholars/paradigms that explicitly note the ideological nature of knowledge producing practices/entities?
As I reflected more on this and conversed with my colleagues, it became apparent that such discourses of apolitical/ideologically divorced leadership are misleading because they are fundamentally ideological in their articulation of pragmatism. As one of my colleagues put it, "Machiavellianism is in and of itself an ideology, and a dangerous kind of ideology."
Leadership that divorces itself from questions of ideology runs into the danger of turning academe into a profit making entity, driven by the needs of the market, the demands of corporations, and the dictates of economic productivity. Ideas that are out of fashion, unfundable, unlikely to be sponsored by corporations and funding agencies are placed at the margins, while the mainstream is taken over by funds, ventures and profits. Questions that our academic leaders continually ought to ask themselves are questions about the vision and mission of universities as sites of knowledge production. What do they want academia to look like? What are the purposes served by knowledge? What structures/instituions/stakeholders are served by knowledge? How can we maintain our intellectual diversity, even as we seek to remain economically viable in a competitive environment?
Knowledge production is fundamentally a political exercise that is powerful in terms of the effects it has on society. We need to be aware of this political nature of knowledge production and talk openly about it rather than fostering a-ideological academic spaces.
I am aware of the financial pressures on universities to generate revenues, particularly so in our current economic scenario, but also believe that as we engage in these revenue generating exercises, we need to ask difficult questions. Reflexivity and ideological engagement are perhaps the starting points for fostering a scholarly climate. We ought to be continually reflexive regarding our role as universities. What is our role as producers of knowledge? Whom are we serving? What is the world that we are envisioning for our students and for the future?
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