Mohan Dutta's reflections on the Academe

When Cathy N. Davidson in a Chronicle letter to College Presidents  wrote about the need for moral leadership among College Presidents, one of the points about her eloquent letter that struck me as inspiring was her plea to Presidents to actually be leaders. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a leader as the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country. To actually lead a group, organization, or country, a leader would fundamentally need to have the backbone to stand up for the human beings that make up her or his group, organization, or country, and adequately represent the issues and concerns of her or his constituents. Now for universities and colleges, one would assume that the key stakeholders are its students, faculty, and staff. Therefore, it seems to be common sensical that leaders would be responsive to these internal stakeholders. And yet somehow, these internal stakeholders seem to be often relegated to the background in decisions such as the ones t

In leadership training sessions and discussions, I have heard the articulation that "leadership can't be ideologically driven. A leader has to be pragmatic." This statement and its look alikes have puzzled me and continue to puzzle me. What is most puzzling about this statement is the active uptake of the statement among academic leaders. In this statement and statements similar to it, there is an implicit assumption that pragmatism is devoid of ideology, or that the commitment to some practical goal or outcome is itself an a-ideological position. This is troubling to me because the discursive move to separate the ideology of the logics of efficiency, effectiveness, bureaucratic organization, and market success from the roots of this logic in neoliberalism is itself a political move. Such a political move erases the underlying agendas of market logics to serve the dominant institutional structures of society and the interests of the powerful in shaping these institut

For the last several years of my academic life, I have been drawn to leadership roles. But what does leadership mean in academia? What do we expect from our academic leaders? What roles do academic leaders play and what are the benchmarks through which we judge them? Is the only option in being a leader to sell your backbone to the dominant players of society? When I consider my own journey in leadership, I wonder: What is the type of leader I want to be? How does my leadership role work within the context of my role as an academic interested in issues of social justice and social change? How does the desire to be a leader fit within the broader realm of my academic identity as a scholar studying social injustices and seeking to work toward spaces of solidarity with those at the margins in order to address these injustices through scholarship? Do I get co-opted into a system that carries out the interests of the top 1% by chosing to participate in a leadership role in u