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The Hunting Ground is the title of a documentary film about sexual assault on American college campuses. Since its release earlier this year, it has been considered a critical, if controversial, contribution to a national conversation that only recently gained ground.

Its airing last night on CNN is certain further to inflame both sides. The one side argues that the film is an essential chronicle of trauma effecting some 20 to 25 percent of female undergraduates. The other side argues that the film is a distortion of life on campus, that it places advocacy ahead of accuracy and even impugns the reputation of some who don’t deserve it.

My point in this piece is not to take sides. Rather it is to argue that even if the film is, as legal expert Stewart Taylor charged “propaganda,” it is propaganda with a purpose. I do not claim that truth should be sacrificed on the altar of political persuasion. But to exaggerate to make a point, to bring in some facts and leave out others, to ostensibly elevate the powerless while simultaneously denigrating the powerful – all these are typical of propaganda at its most persuasive.

I do not take the film’s deficits lightly. Nevertheless the producer and director of The Hunting Ground have managed to do what no one did before.

• They gave widespread credence to the idea that sexual assault on college campuses is a major moral as well as legal issue that we must take seriously.
• They gave widespread credence to a large group of women on college campuses who previously had no voice – none.
• They gave widespread credence to the virtues of campus activism, to the band of sisters who, by banding together, made a difference.
• They gave widespread credence to the charge that campus authorities – including college and university presidents – have been derelict in their duty to a large fraction of their student populations.
• They gave widespread credence to the proposition that money and power play out-sized roles on college campuses – even when it comes to crime.
• They gave widespread credence to the accusation that there is a yawning gap between what American higher education is supposed to do – provide a safe and secure learning environment for every single student – and what it actually does.

These are no mean accomplishments for filmmakers turned leaders. These are no mean accomplishments for Kirby Dick (director) and Amy Ziering (producer), who are also responsible for an earlier film on sexual assault, The Invisible War, in this case in the military. Dick and Ziering came, in effect, out of nowhere, determined to shine a light on rape –  and did. Whatever the errors of their ways, I defy you to watch either one of these films and deny or even discredit their main message.

 

Our attention has been focused on Paris. But Brussels is the bigger story. Brussels exemplifies more than does Paris how a very small, generally weak minority is able to bring a very large, generally strong majority to its knees.

Brussels is not just another European city. It is large – the greater Brussels area has some 1.8 million inhabitants. It is the political, economic, and cultural hub of Belgium. It is headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). And, perhaps most importantly, certainly symbolically, the city is home to several of the European Union’s (EU) most important institutions. Brussels is considered the capital of the EU.

The fact that the authorities thought it prudent to shut down the entire city – metro, museums, malls, cafes, cinemas, every single space and place where people naturally congregate – is a stunning, even stupefying sign of the times. What happened in Bamako was obviously a tragedy. What did not happen in Brussels was less obviously a calamity.

 

 

Whenever an event seems impossible easily to explain, the event is impossible easily to explain. We search for facile answers. We reduce complex events to a single cause. We ache to fix what’s badly broke. But the real world precludes it. The real world is hostile to our desire to control whatever our situation – and to right whatever is wrong.

The terror in Paris falls into this category. The terror in Paris is not amenable either to a simple explanation, or to a quick fix.

To make my case I provide three prisms through which to view the recent events in the City of Lights. None should be considered more powerful a prism than the other two. But, together, they provide a way of grappling with the world in which, willy-nilly, we now live.

The Clash of Civilizations. The phrase is the late Samuel Huntington’s, an esteemed if also criticized political scientist, who for many years was on the faculty at Harvard. In 1993 he published an article in Foreign Affairs titled “The Clash of Civilizations,” that while controversial even now, has come to be regarded by many as prescient. Huntington wrote: It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic….The dominating source of conflict will be cultural…. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

The Wretched of the Earth. The phrase is the title of a book by Franz Fanon. Fanon was a psychiatrist and philosopher who died in 1961 at the age of 36, but not before having written The Wretched of the Earth, a classic of the leadership literature. Fanon’s view of the world was simple. He divided everyone into either master or slave, colonizer or colonized, bourgeoisie or worker, white or black, the former always free, the latter always in chains, if not physically then psychologically. Fanon’s mission in life was to end the inequity, once and for all, if necessary by force. He wrote: For the last can be first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation between the two protagonists….This determination to have the last move up to the front…can only succeed by resorting to every means, including, of course, violence.      

The End of Leadership/The End of Power. The first phrase, The End of Leadership, is the title of a book that I published in 2012, which argued that leaders were in decline, and that followers, ordinary people, were on the rise. Times had changed in ways that made it increasingly possible for people without obvious sources of power, authority, or influence to be preemptive or proactive, while those with obvious sources of power, authority, and influence were increasingly obliged to be reactive. This is not to say that in the past the powerless, even single individuals, never effected change – the young Serbian nationalist who assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 lit the fire that ignited World War I. But it is to say that in the 21^st century governments, such as, yes, the French government,  have less power (and authority and influence) than they used to; that power has become more widely distributed; and that warfare, which typically was symmetrical, is likely as not now to be asymmetrical. I wrote: In the last one hundred years, relations between leaders and followers reached a turning point, if not a tipping point. Leader power and follower power became the more equivalent.  The second phrase, The End of Power, is the title of a book by Moises Naim that came out a year later, in 2013. His argument is essentially the same – that power is undergoing a “historic and world-changing transformation.”  Naim writes: The growing ability of small, nimble combatants to advance their interests while inflicting significant damage on much larger, well-established military foes is one way in which the exercise of power through force has changed. 

 

 

 

No more need be said.

 

Ordinary Americans have a hard time organizing on their own behalf. Other than the high impact but short-lived Occupy movement, they, we, have been unable in recent years, in any significant, sustained way, to bring about change – even when there is wide agreement on what sort of change is called for. There has been, in other words, a disconnect: on the one hand a high level of popular dissatisfaction, and on the other an inability to turn this dissatisfaction into something new and different.

Occasionally this disconnect gives way. Occasionally something new and different does come to pass – as now, in two special, select cases. Two of America’s most wildly successful private sector disrupters – Uber and Airbnb – have started harnessing followers to their own purposes. Moreover both plan further to expand their already sizable armies of followers – consisting largely but not exclusively of satisfied customers – to fend off government attempts to regulate them.

Historically in America government has been supposed to protect ordinary people from the rapaciousness of big business. Now business is out to rally ordinary people against the protectiveness of big government. In both cases the idea is to provide people with what ostensibly they want. In both cases the idea is to forge people into a collective to maximize their political power. And in both cases people end up relying on others to do their organizing for them. Which begs the question: Why do Americans have difficulty acting in their own interest absent an outside agent?

 

Some years ago I developed a course at the Harvard Kennedy School titled “Leadership Literacy.”* It’s not, obviously, a how-to course. Rather the students  and I get at leadership by reading great works about leadership (such as by Plato, Machiavelli, and Freud), great works that are, themselves, acts of leadership (such as by Paine, Marx and Engels, and Friedan), and great works that echo leaders leading (such as by Gandhi, Churchill, and King).

One thing to emerge from the classics is how some of the history’s greatest leaders ever developed their ideas, and also their tactics and strategies, by taking to the printed page. In articulating on paper and, or, out loud, what they thought about leadership and why, they drafted a blueprint for how they later led.

Not only did legendary leaders do this – lesser leaders did the same. Ronald Reagan is a case in point. We now know about him that far from being the bozo he was frequently depicted, well before moving into the White House he had written and spoken extensively about policy, both domestic and foreign.

I am not drawing any parallels. But I am pointing out that Donald Trump – who himself has been thought a buffoon, a political novice and establishment outsider – is by no means a lightweight or even fresh to the fray. Far from it – as his literary legacy testifies.

First, though he has been a businessman first and foremost, like many other top corporate leaders, Trump has been steeped in politics for decades. Second, we recently learned that he gave serious thought to running for political office as far back as 1988. There’s an anecdote in Jon Meacham’s new biography of George H.W. Bush that reveals that Trump angled for, or at least flirted with being Bush’s original running mate. (Bush ultimately chose Dan Quayle.) Finally, and this returns us to being leadership literate, Trump has written books, a number of books, all of which deal either directly or indirectly with how to lead.

Most candidates for president now feel obliged to write a book – usually on how they’re the ones to save a declining America. Trump just did the same – it’s titled Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again.  But unlike most of his competitors, Trump’s been writing books for years, nearly every one about how he has been and maybe you too can be a stunning American success story. His biggest seller so far has been The Art of the Deal. It was originally published in 1987 – when Trump was all of 41!

Trump is a leader who has put his pen to paper for decades. Trump is a leader who has long thought about how to navigate and even dictate the intersecting worlds of business and government. Of money and media. And of people and power. Whatever else you might think him, to think him a fool is foolish.

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*The syllabus for the course is posted on line. A book based on the course is titled Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence.

Depends on how you define your terms, but you could say that the protagonists – the leaders, if you will – of the European migration crisis are the migrants themselves. They in any case are driving the action, while Europe’s ostensible leaders, its chancellors, presidents and prime ministers, are being forced to follow. The former, the migrants, have been proactive. The latter, the leaders, have been reactive.

This conundrum – this vivid evidence of how leaders and followers are fungible – is nowhere so much in evidence as in the person of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Until recently Merkel was without question the most admired political leader in Europe – arguably in the rest of the world as well. Widely esteemed during her nearly ten years at the helm, Merkel controlled not only growing Germany itself, but most of fragile and fragmented Europe as well. During every one of Europe’s recent crises – from Greece to Ukraine – she was able to quell the sense the situation was spiraling out of control. Each time she was able to walk a fine line between the different sides, holding the whole together.

Now, in the space of just a few weeks, the worm seems to have turned. At a minimum, Merkel’s ability to keep the lid on, to manage the migrant crisis, is being thrown into question. Interestingly, importantly, questions are being raised not so much outside Germany, as inside it. Merkel’s open door policy – her pledge to admit into Germany in a short period of time dauntingly large numbers of mostly Syrian refugees – is being challenged above all by members of her own Christian Democratic party. While it is tempting to situate Germany’s Christian Democrats in the larger context of Europe’s right wing – which in recent years has grown steadily more nationalistic and xenophobic – the reality is more complex. For the numbers, especially with no obvious solution to the crisis in sight, seem to a growing German minority overwhelming. Approximately 10,000 asylum seekers continue to arrive in Germany each day. This year alone the flow into this single nation of some 80 million will exceed one million, with many more sure to arrive in 2016.  Warned the liberal mayor of Tubingen, Boris Palmer, “If it continues, we’ll have 3.65 million more people in Germany in the next 12 months. I’m sorry, we cannot make that happen. The government must act, otherwise… social order will implode.”*

The irony of Merkel’s situation is that it is so unaccustomed. By opening the door as wide as she has to mainly Middle Eastern migrants, the Chancellor is in danger of squandering what has been her strongest political asset – her level of control of her person, and of the situation. This time though – motivated or moved by a humanitarian crisis – this most careful of politicians has thrown caution to the winds. For if even one thing goes wrong – say a single recent migrant endangers the public safety – the price Merkel will pay for deviating from her past pattern is likely to be high. And if she shakes, Europe will not only rattle, it will roil.

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*Quoted in, Stefan Wagstyl, “Merkel Opens Door to Her Opponents,” Financial Times, October 28, 2015.

 

 

 

The idea of Servant Leadership is as old as the notion of leadership itself. It goes back at least to the sixth century BCE, when Lao Tzu wrote,

The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead.

He is detached, thus at one with all.

Though selfless action, he attains fulfillment.

In recent decades the concept of Servant Leadership has flourished, even becoming a modest movement. It has evolved from a set of ideas promulgated primarily by a single man, Robert Greenleaf, first, to an organized body of thought; second, to an approach to practice; and third, to an ideology in which the purpose of leadership is to serve the needs and wants of the followers, not of the leader.

In 1970 Greenleaf – who was for many years an executive and management expert at AT@T – published a pamphlet titled, “The Servant as Leader.” The pamphlet is learned and literary, even slightly mystical. Greenleaf references figures ranging from Herman Hesse to Jesus to William Blake, but does not exclude from his discussion a pragmatist like Machiavelli.

“Who is the Servant-Leader? Greenleaf asks. He answers his own question:

The servant-leader is servant first…..It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. He is sharply different from the person who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such it will be a later choice to serve – after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.*   

The reason Greenleaf has become newly relevant is because the apology culture to which I first drew attention a decade ago has evolved even further. It has evolved into a humble culture in which it no longer suffices for leaders to say, “I’m sorry.” Instead they are expected to take total responsibility for anything that smacks of failure or in any way falls short. When Procter & Gamble’s CEO A.G. Lafley appeared earlier this month at the annual shareholders meeting, he told investors that “the buck stops with me,” and that he was sure that his successor would improve the company’s recently weak performance. Humility is “the flavor du jour,” says Fred Hassan, a former CEO of Schering-Plough, precisely because it is assumed that humble leaders are servant leaders. Their egos are in check. They listen to those around them – their followers. And their desire is first to serve and then to lead.

Given the growing popularity of servant leadership in some circles, it’s curious that in other circles the servant leader has been largely absent.  Whatever you might think of Donald Trump – who is topping the polls for Republican nominee for president in 49 states –the servant leader is not an image that comes immediately to mind. Nor for that matter has Hillary Clinton been sighted eating even a single slice of humble pie.

I’m supposing it’s our doing. I’m supposing it’s because we the American people have given not a scintilla of evidence that in the nation’s highest office, humility is a quality that we especially seek.

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*Robert Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader, Robert Greenleaf Center, 1970, p. 7.

 

I recently wrote three separate blogs, each titled “Women and Leadership – the Missing Link.” The series argued the importance of genetic gender differences to the issue of women and leadership. I pointed out that it is women not men who bear babies, and that it is women not men who breast-feed them. I then suggested that it was possible, just possible, that this difference pertained.

Days after I posted the third of the three blogs was an article in the New York Times (link below) essentially decrying the lactation police – the political correctness that pressured women, American women particularly, to breast-feed rather than bottle feed. Turns out that American mothers are more disposed to breast-feed, and breast-feed longer, than women in many other Western countries. Fully 79 percent of American mothers initiate breast-feeding, and fully 49 percent of American mothers still breast-feed 6 months later. This is in contrast to, say, Britain, where only 34 percent of women breast-feed after the first half year.

Without getting into the argument about the virtues of breast milk over bottled milk – not to speak of breast-feeding over breast-pumping – it seems increasingly evident that they are “modest.” It seems increasingly clear, in other words, that American women are pressured to breast feed not so much because breast feeding is so much better for the baby as because breast feeding is judged good mothering, whereas bottle feeding is judged less good mothering.

None of this is to suggest that women should not breast feed – or that women who want to be leaders should especially not breast feed. But it is to point out that this particular issue is particularly a women’s issue. And it is to point out that women with ambition have a choice. To breast-feed or not to breast-feed – that is the question.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/opinion/sunday/overselling-breast-feeding.html?_r=0

This week was yet another reminder of the importance of family ties in political life. While political dynasties are rare in Canada, this did not preclude the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, from scoring a surprisingly large victory over his opponents, including incumbent Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Meantime, in the US, Jeb Bush continued to ensnarl himself in his brother, George W. Bush, most recently on the question of whether he was somehow culpable in the attack on the World Trade Center.

There is however one prominent member of the Clan Club who has separated herself – even distanced herself – from her illustrious kin. Hillary Clinton.

Last time around, in 2007 and 2008, when she competed against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president, Bill Clinton was regularly in evidence. While Bill was not always to Hillary’s advantage, it was obviously decided that a man widely regarded as the most gifted politician of his generation was more politically advantageous than disadvantageous.

This time around though is different. Bill Clinton has been seen nearly nowhere, even this summer and early fall when Hillary Clinton was stumbling, stung by the e mail scandal, caught short by Bernie Sanders, and unable or so it seemed to relax into her campaign for the nomination.

Now the worm has turned. The past couple of weeks have been good to Hillary Clinton. She scored two major victories – her performances in the Democratic debate and in the congressional hearings on Benghazi. And her position has been strengthened by Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential fray. She is in short sitting pretty this minute – without any apparent assist from her previously ubiquitous husband, the 42nd president of the United States.

Ironically, Hillary Clinton’s strong, steady, even steely appearance during yesterday’s marathon hearings did more than any single thing to prove to the American people that she is presidential timber. Whether she would ever have got to where she is now without her last name being Clinton is open to debate. What is no longer open to debate is that she merits a shot at the White House independent of and unencumbered by anyone else.