Author: Barbara

He’s back! After three months of radio silence, fed-up follower pin-up boy Julian Assange is back to taunt the political and penal establishments across Europe and America. Assange is, of course, the mastermind behind WikiLeaks, who happens also to be wanted in Sweden on charges of rape and sexual molestation.

But now is different. Now Assange has been given asylum by Ecuador – which is why on Sunday he was perched on the balcony of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, to speak to the crowd below and demand the U. S. “renounce its witch hunt against WikiLeaks.”

The Austrailian-born Assange is something of a genius. Whatever he did or did not do in Sweden (he denies all charges against him), he was able against all odds to post to the web hundreds of thousands of secret documents, most from the U. S. State Department relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover he is a self-dramatist. Again, against all odds, he has managed to remain free after a fashion, eluding incarceration by staying one step ahead of the authorities. Think of Assange as an old-fashioned outlaw, scum to some and a hero to others – to those who believe in radical transparency.

But behind Julian Assange is another fed-up follower, an all but invisible man by the name of Bradley Manning. Manning is the young army intelligence analyst who was charged by the U. S. government with feeding Assange those secret Pentagon documents. For his troubles, Manning, who has been hidden from the public since the scandal broke (in 2010), faces a court-martial and possible life sentence.

When he spoke in London a couple of days ago, Assange drew attention to Manning, calling him on the one hand a “hero” and on the other “one of the world’s foremost political prisoners.” Whatever you might think of Assange, or of Wikileaks, or for that matter of Bradley Manning, Assange is right to point to Manning’s plight. Since he was initially arrested, the 22 year-old Army private has been treated harshly, extremely harshly. In fact, for the first nine months of his imprisonment he was put in solitary confinement, despite evidence he was entirely different from Assange, not a cool customer but a troubled youngster. Only after an international protest drew attention to his cruel and unusual punishment, was Manning more conventionally confined, though to this day we hear hardly a word about him or his plight, from any of the authorities.

Americans don’t think of themselves as having political prisoners. And, even if they, we, did, there’s a question whether Manning would qualify. But when Assange accuses the U. S. government of a “witch hunt” against WikiLeaks, it’s not so clear he’s way off base.

OK, fine, no surprise: Vladimir Putin won the battle. The three women of Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years behind bars – not for their incendiary remarks about Putin per se, but, ostensibly, for their blasphemy against the Russian Orthodox Church.

However, the interesting question is not about this particular skirmish, but about the larger war. Will the Russian people continue to tolerate the Kremlin’s persecution of the opposition? Or will they somehow make clear that any leader – including Putin – who harasses his followers risks his own personal and political well-being?

The external reaction to the sentencing was immediate and it was harsh. Governments from around the world, as well as human rights groups, let it be known and in no uncertain terms that however outrageous their behavior, punk rockers were not criminals and ought not to be treated as such.

But the question of course is not what happens outside Russia, but inside. Will this event be galvanizing – will it galvanize the Russian opposition to protests that are ever more expansive and strident?

It’s impossible, of course, to precisely predict. But this much is clear even now. First, Putin is running at least slightly scared. He has already gone on record as opposing punishment for Pussy Riot that is unduly harsh, and in fact the two-year sentence is less draconian than it might have been. (Moreover, it’s likely at some point to be cut shorter.)

Second, the internal opposition will not likely forgive or forget. This episode is yet another arrow in the quiver of prominent protesters such as Aleksei Navalny and Gary Kasparov (who was taken from outside the courtroom in a paddy wagon!), more evidence if any were needed that Putin is an autocrat in the ancient Russian tradition.

Think of Russia early in the 21st century as in the process of evolution – not revolution. What this means is that change is slow. What this does not mean is that there is no change at all.

Whoever said Dominique Strauss-Kahn was good for nothing? Turns out, he was good for something – for women, French women in particular.

You’ll recall Strauss-Kahn is the once highly esteemed former head of the International Monetary Fund. You’ll similarly recall that he was caught in New York in a scandal, resulting from allegations that he had sexually assaulted a maid in a Manhattan hotel. Whatever the truth of these charges, as a result it came to light that his sexual behavior more generally had long been, shall we say, radically other than those of a straight arrow. (No, no pun intended.)

Strauss-Kahn did huge, almost certainly irreparable damage to himself, and he injured the pride of the French, many of whom had planned to vote for him in the next presidential election. But he also ended up a galvanizing force for French women, who had long tolerated male behaviors that, in the U. S., are by now as politically impossible as they are politically incorrect. Hard on the heels of the Strauss-Kahn affair, French women led by French feminists organized and protested, demanding that men shape up or get out, and that a law be enacted to ensure women be protected against sexual harassment.

And so it came to pass that late last month the French passed rather a stringent new sexual harassment law, which received a unanimous oui from the National Assembly. It provides that sexual harassment be considered a criminal offense, punishable by two years in jail and a fine of some $37,000.

French women have not exactly been at the cutting edge of the feminist movement. Au contraire! They’ve lagged behind. But, inadvertently obviously, Strauss-Kahn threw down the gauntlet, challenging them finally to create change. To their credit, they did. It’s highly unlikely this particular law would have been unanimously (!) passed at this particular time without Strauss-Kahn’s egregious wrongdoing, and without the national outrage that was the result.

Vive la France.

Who knew it would come to this? Who knew Russia’s president would be first publicly ridiculed and now directly challenged by three women from a feminist punk band – Pussy Riot? Who knew Madonna would raise the stakes by becoming embroiled in the fiasco – voicing her support for the band “as an artist, as a human being, [and] as a woman”? Who knew Russian rockers would come to incarnate the growing opposition to perennial Russian strongman, Vladimir Putin?

Along with anti-Kremlin activist Aleksei Navalny – about whom more another time – Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, all women in their twenties, have been the most visible symbol so far of the anti-Putin opposition. For staging a political protest on the alter of Moscow’s main Russian Orthodox cathedral in February – OK, so maybe taking on the government and the church at one and the same time wasn’t the world’s smartest idea – they have been imprisoned since March, charged with hooliganism.

Some of this is funny – including, arguably, Pussy Riot’s original stunt, some of the subsequent courtroom theatrics, and Madonna’s appearance this week on a Moscow stage, in a black bra with “Pussy Riot” stamped on the back. But most of it is not – not funny in the least. Pussy Riot is only the most visible, risible, symbol of an opposition that is growing not only in size, but in the level of its temerity. Since disputed parliamentary elections in December, and Putin’s election, again, as president in March, there have been more or less regular anti-Kremlin protests, some of them involving tens of thousands taking to the streets.

Putin has always been used to getting his way. And likely as not he still will – or at least he will try as hard as he dare, to shut up and shut out those who threaten his power. But times have changed: bully leaders are less likely now to be tolerated, and intrepid followers are more likely now to risk protesting in public.

Notwithstanding his reelection as president of Russia, it’s not been a good year for Putin. Not only does he face unprecedented opposition at home, he faces widespread opprobrium abroad, for defending, at this rate to the death, Syrian dictator, Bashir al-Assad. So far, Putin’s response to all this has been to hunker down and double down. Whether or not this will prove a viable strategy over the long term remains of course to be seen. I, for one, rather doubt it.

Stay tuned – I will be on Putin Patrol on a regular basis..

For years one of the few ways American diplomats had of protesting repression in Myanmar was to continue to call the country by its colonial name, Burma. Now there are signs this may be changing, along with Myanmar itself, which in the last year was transformed from rigid autocracy to fragile, fledging democracy.

To outsiders this seemingly sudden transformation has been a mystery, for on the surface it was initiated from the top down, not the bottom up. Normally, of course, revolutions, or even really rapid evolutions, are instigated by the powerless against the powerful. But, in this case, it appears it was the authorities themselves that took the lead, which makes one wonder, how did that happen, and why?

Even Osnos, writing on the subject in a recent New Yorker (“The Burmese Spring,” August 6, 2012), himself follows the script: “Burma’s opening has so far defied the narrative logic we’ve come to associate with political transformation: there is, as yet, no crowd picking through a ruined palace, no dictator in the dock.” But then, to his credit, Osnos goes on through his own narrative to make clear that change in Burma was not in fact the product of the powerful, of leaders, but rather of the powerless, of followers.

Consider just this:

• For decades Nobel Peace Price winner Aung San Suu Kyi has stood as largely silent witness to the autocracy that strangled her country. Her long years under house arrest underscored rather than undermined her status as symbol.

• In 2007 tens of thousands of monks took to the streets to protest the government. The so-called Saffron Revolution seemed, at the time, to have failed, a victim of the Army’s brutal repression. But it’s clear in retrospect the monks made a difference – their bravery and martyrdom were imprinted on Burma’s collective consciousness.

• More recently citizen activists began to emerge, some businessmen, journalists, and academics, all of whom seized the day together to organize against stasis, and for change.

What’s been happening in Burma is not, in other words, the result of officials waking up one fine morning and saying, “Gee whiz, time for us to do things differently.” Rather it’s the consequence of context – decay and decline – and of at least some followers brave and bold enough to marshal their forces against their leaders.

It’s possible and even probable that at some early point the U. S. State Department will drop its allegiance to “Burma,” and begin to call the country its preferred name, Myanmar. When this does happen it will not be the product of spontaneous combustion, but rather of long years during which plain people slogged on to take on a regime that was repressive in the extreme.

After its defeat in the second World War, Japan’s culture and society underwent fundamental change. But as the 2011 earthquake and tsunami – and the ensuing nuclear calamity – revealed, this change was not sufficient to preclude decision making that was deeply flawed.

In the 1970s and ’80s Japan was an economic powerhouse, rivaled only by the U. S. Since then it suffered slight decline, though compared to most of the rest of the world the Japanese economy remains impressive.

The same cannot be said of the Japanese government, which for decades has suffered from a “parade of prime ministers” – from a continuing circumstance in which no single prime minister has been able to hold on to power long enough to provide a stable and secure government. Japan’s political system is, in other words, fragmented and fractions to the point of dysfunction. (Such dysfunction is not, of course, peculiar to Japan.)

All this became crystal clear in the wake of the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, during which, to its credit, the Japanese government did some serious soul searching. Parliament set up the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, charged with uncovering why the country failed so egregiously to handle the disaster swiftly and sanely. Concluded Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the commission’s chairman, “It was a profoundly man-made disaster – that could and should have been foreseen and prevented.”

Predictably, the commission’s report placed blame on the usual suspects: faulty planning, weak regulation, likely malfeasance, and a breakdown in communications. Unpredictably, Kurokawa reserved his most damning criticism for Japanese culture, which he implied was reminiscent of the traditional authoritarian mindset that characterized Japan during its long (pre World War II) history. In his introduction to the English version of the report, the chairman wrote that the fundamental causes of the disaster were to be found in the “ingrained conventions of Japanese culture; our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the “program;’ our groupism; and our insularity,.” In other words, the commission found that the Japanese people were stuck in a rut – stuck in a world in which people in positions of authority controlled the action, while followers conformed, meekly towing the line.

Whether the report – released earlier this month – will have an impact over the long term remains obviously to be seen. But it is clear even now that Japan’s political elite is finally facing what in many other countries has become a familiar 21st century sight: widespread public protest. Tens of thousand of protesters now gather each week in front of the prime minister’s residence, shouting anti-nuclear slogans. It’s conceivable, then, that the crippling public distrust that followed Fukushima will spark the sort of change that Japan has long needed – in which ordinary people actively participate in determining their future.

Are we women really supposed to exult? Are we really expected to grovel in gratitude that a woman who is six months pregnant has been named CEO of what once at least was an iconic American company?

In your dreams! The appointment of Marissa Mayer as chief executive officer of Yahoo could have been a significant moment in the life of women at the top. It could have been a celebration of women in a field – technology – in which generally they’re given short shrift. And it could have been a celebration of motherhood, a rare occasion on which a woman soon to give birth was christened top dog.

But the moment was lost – a rare opportunity wasted. Instead of glorying in the duality of her duties, Mayer downplayed the one at the expense of the other. “I like to stay in the rhythm of things,” she insisted on insisting. And then she added, as ingloriously as unnecessarily, “My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I’ll work throughout it.”

By rushing to reassure that she would never ever slight her job in favor of her child, Mayer fell into a trap. Curiously it’s an antiquated trap, with which a woman like she should have been familiar. Why feel the need to make like a man? Why not embrace motherhood as distinguished from fatherhood? Men don’t carry and then deliver the baby! Men don’t lactate! Why then did Mayer not seize the day and claim the right to time off from work in the wake of the birth of her child? Why did she conform to the norm – leaders on call 24/7?

Let me put it this way: even if Mayer were bound and determined to return to work immediately after having had her baby, it’s not an example she should have set. She should have kept this information private, rather than making it public. Instead, by announcing out loud that she could do it all and have it all, simultaneously, she made it harder rather than easier for other women leaders, who might just prefer to do things differently.

Who’s in control of whom? Who’s in control of what?

In the main, such questions are asked about governance. For example, who has power and influence on matters of state? And who has power and influence in the workplace? Nearly always leadership and followership are thought of along these narrow lines – either as they apply to government, or to business.

But power and influence are evidenced in near every aspect of everyday life. Take, for example, the experience of shopping. Yes… shopping! Say you want to buy a can of soup, or a pair of pants, or a washing machine. Past and present procedure is you walk into a store, check the item and the price, decide whether or not you want to make a purchase, and either buy or take a hike. But soon such habit will be history. Soon the balance of power between seller and buyer will shift, from the former to the latter.

In the U. S. what we typically see in a store is a set price – a price set by the merchant. What’s about to change – what ‘s already changing – is our capacity to control the price by comparison shopping, on the Internet, with a handheld device. As Doc Searls wrote in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal – “The Customer as a God” (July 21/22) – the newest technologies work on behalf of you, the customer, rather than on behalf of the other guy, the seller.

I write about this not because consumerism per se is so important, but rather because it’s part of that larger phenomenon of such significance. It is, in other words, about the growing control of the previously powerless, in this case buyers, over the previously powerful, in this case sellers.

As Searls correctly reminds, the “move toward individual empowerment is a long, gradual revolution.” But it is, irrevocably, in process – in the marketplace as everywhere else. Today the supply side still reigns. But in another ten years or so, customers will be tantamount to free agents.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently featured an article on the sudden firing – and equally sudden rehiring – of Theresa Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia. The piece was titled, “UVA’s Painfully Public Lesson in Leadership.”

But the Sullivan saga had nothing to do with leadership – and everything to do with followership. The sequence of events pursuant to the announcement that the governing board had summarily pushed Sullivan from her presidential perch was not initiated by anyone in charge. Rather it was the relentless series of protests from below – by ordinary people without obvious power or authority – that forced the board to eat crow and reverse itself at breakneck speed.

The members of UVA’s governing board failed to appreciate two key contextual components: first, that academic communities are difficult to govern under any circumstances; second, that in the 21st century the likelihood they will take kindly to big decisions made in secret is close to zero.

Whatever Sullivan’s strengths and weaknesses as president, the decision to fire her was abysmal, that is, the process by which the decision was reached was deeply flawed. To all appearances it was hastily reached as opposed to deliberately considered, covert as opposed to overt, and closed as oppose to open. As a result, all hell broke loose. As reported by the Washington Post on June 25, “virtually every conceivable campus constituency” mobilized in Sullivan’s defense, including students, deans, and members of the faculty. Days later, on her way to meet with UVA’s board, Sullivan threaded through a throng of some 2,000 screaming supporters.

There were important issues at stake here, such as what is the role of technology in the way students learn, and at what pace institutions of higher education should create change. But paramount among them is the issue of good governance: what is good governance in higher education at a time when leaders of every stripe are weaker than before and followers are disillusioned and disappointed on the one hand, and entitled and empowered on the other. As Richard Ligon, president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, put it, boards must understand “that top-down corporate governance doesn’t work in the often frustratingly slow pace of a higher education institutions, even in times like these that seem to mandate prompt responses.”

Higher education has itself been a case in point. Writing in the Chronicle, Jack Stripling points out that there has been “no shortage of presidents who have hit political buzz saws within the past two years,” including those at top schools such as the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. This makes it all the more important that those who are ultimately responsible for governing these institutions – and I refer here to boards, not to chief executive officers – have what I call “contextual intelligence.” For if they remain ignorant of the academic culture, and of patterns of dominance and deference in the 21st century, they will never be able to do what they are charged with doing – serving the academy wisely and well.