Leaders | Jeremi Suri

Posts Tagged ‘Leaders’

Destroying Ourselves

15 June 2011

Politics is a form of warfare. In its best moments, it encourages creative competition to innovate and improve. In its worst moments (like today in the United States), it produces pathologies of self-destruction. The belligerents fight in ways that undermine the very things they are fighting for.

I have never lived through a more self-destructive political moment. The examples, from those who deny the September 11 terrorist attacks to those who question President Obama’s American birth, are numerous and they are multiplying. Attack politics have become so pervasive that they are now almost “normal.” My young kids have never seen anything different. Neither have my undergraduates at the university. Most depressing, these attack politics have made it impossible to address our real problems: broken budgets, a failing health care system, environmental degradation, growing international competition, and the decline of educational institutions, our engines of mobility and innovation.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin, the traditional heart of progressive American politics, has received a lot of international news coverage for its wrenching struggles with these destructive dynamics. In the latest and most depressing development, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor, Carolyn “Biddy” Martin, resigned her job in evident frustration. Of course she did not say this, but anyone watching events could recognize the clear causes. Martin is one more bold and creative leader shot down by attackers on all sides. She is leaving her job, recognizing that real reform in major institutions, with broad public impact, is nearly impossible today. The stagnation and decline at the University of Wisconsin is the stagnation and decline of Wisconsin as a whole, as well as the United States and its world-leading institutions.

Chancellor Martin was not flawless. She made many mistakes. What made her a promising leader was her effort to address the crisis of our country head-on. Public universities sponsor the vast majority of our society’s research and innovation. They also educate the vast majority of students. If you have spent any time at a public university, you will immediately see that they are terribly under-funded. The classrooms are bulging at the seams, and the students are carrying ever-heavier debt burdens. The only exceptions to these observations are college athletic facilities (and salaries) that appear to grow as academics suffer.

Like most athletic teams, universities are under-performing. They are more isolated and inward looking than ever before. As they face budget cuts, they circle the wagons and oppose all external advice. They protect traditional departments and fiefdoms, as overall quality suffers. Universities badly need more money, more reform, and more outreach.

Martin was unwilling to coast in the face these challenges. She could have done that if she wanted. She could have accepted the circumstances and committed herself to empty rhetoric and small changes. Many experienced people offered her exactly that advice: “don’t go so fast,” “don’t rock the boat,” “don’t ask too much from people.”

Martin did not follow this cautious advice. More than almost any of her peers, she initiated big changes that offered a new model for higher education. Martin pushed a “Madison Initiative for Undergraduates” to encourage the teaching of new interdisciplinary subjects and to hold the university accountable for offering the best education to its undergraduates. Martin also invested precious resources and energy in supporting collaborative research focused on pressing social and political problems: global health, environmental sustainability, and international security. Most of all, Martin insisted that she receive the necessary authority to allocate campus resources and reform administration for serving student, research, and public demands. She pursued a “New Badger Partnership” that would make the university more flexible, responsive, and innovative.

Republican and Democratic Attacks

These bold initiatives began to change the university, and they received wide attention. They also inspired a barrage of unceasing attacks from all political directions. I witnessed this myself. I felt the isolation that our Chancellor felt, under siege, unable to engage in serious public discussion without becoming the immediate target of name-calling, personal insults, and even direct threats.

Republicans, including Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, approved of calls for flexibility and accountability, but they offered absolutely no substantive support for the university. They cut budgets drastically. They insulted and harassed scholars. They attacked the very idea of public education and free inquiry, proclaiming that the goal of all government efforts must be to encourage business, or at least the particular businesses that finance Republican activities. The Tea Party movement in Wisconsin has taken direct aim at the alleged “elitism” of intellectual life. They really do not believe in a free society that does not conform to their rigid market visions.

Democrats, including the distinguished lawyers serving on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents and many of my faculty friends, praised Chancellor Martin’s efforts to defend the university, but they viciously attacked her initiatives. She threatened their comfortable status and their independence. She called for reforms that would increase pressures for accountability, excellence, and public service – all things that established protectors of academic privilege abhor. Most of all, Martin placed a premium on experiment and change for left-leaning figures who feared those words would jeopardize other values they hold dear. In Wisconsin and around the country, Democrats have proven stubbornly conservative. They have offered few new ideas, and they have savaged their sympathizers who try.

Chancellor Martin’s resignation, then, is part of a broader nation-wide purge of creative institutional leaders, perpetrated by Republicans and Democrats together. Look around. Does anyone deny that the quality of our leaders at all levels of American society has suffered in the last ten years? Congress? Corporate CEOs? University Presidents? Where are the leaders with a positive, reforming vision? Where are the institution-builders and the inspirational innovators?

National Self-Destruction

American attack politics have destroyed these leaders. American attack politics have sent them running. The best and the brightest are not encouraged to become leaders if they value their integrity, their freedom, and their sanity. Instead of our most capable figures in command of our institutions, we are left with mediocrity, at best.

This must change. American society must stop destroying itself. States like Wisconsin must promote, not attack, creative leaders on the model of Carolyn Martin. Institutions like the University of Wisconsin must promote excellence and creativity, not comfortable conservatism.

Great leaders do not appear magically from the gunfire of unceasing conflict. They are made from efforts by citizens of diverse political stripes to find new sources of common ground, new instruments for collaborative innovation. Americans need to start nurturing real leaders of positive vision, rather than the trigger-happy foot-soldiers who are now disastrously in control.

This blog post originally appeared at http://globalbrief.ca

Posted in Blog, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Grand Strategy, history, Teaching |

Tags: Biddy, Board of Regents, Carolyn Martin, Chancellor, Congress, Democrat, education, Leaders, Republican, Scott Walker, University of Wisconsin, UW, Wisconsin |

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Why are people protesting everywhere?

8 March 2011

We have entered one of those moments when citizens around the world become aware of their global connections. People in numerous regions are revolting against their government leaders. This is most evident in the Middle East – from Tunisia and Egypt to Iran and Libya – where young men and women are courageously organizing to topple dictators. In China, groups of citizens are “strolling” through cities to express their dissatisfaction with restrictions on their freedom. Throughout Europe in recent months groups have demonstrated against governments that seem stymied by slow economic growth and ever scarcer public resources. Even in the United States – especially in “heartland” cities from Madison, Wisconsin to Columbus, Ohio – tens of thousands of citizens have taken to the streets against strong-willed governors. In Madison, teachers, firefighters, carpenters, and students have spent three weeks camping in front of the state Capitol demanding that Republican legislators reconsider proposals to starve public education, cut health services, and crush unions. From Cairo to Madison, political contention has motivated major public protests on a scale not seen since the late 1960s.

A Global Moment

Men and women in these cities are acutely conscious that they are part of a global moment: “The whole world is watching.” Protests against electoral fraud in Iran in 2009 inspired marches in Tunisia, then Egypt, and now Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and other Middle Eastern societies. The courage and hope of one group of citizens convinced others that they too could make demands on long repressive regimes. In the United States, the evidence that young men and women could challenge the guns of dictators abroad surely motivated workers and students to assert their own power, in far less dangerous circumstances. As historians have observed for prior moments of transnational unrest (1968, 1919, 1848) the “demonstration effects” of protests are quite strong, especially when events get prominent media coverage. The whole world is watching, and many observers are moved (and empowered) by what they see.

Global movements do not have single causes. People revolt in different places for different reasons specific to their locales. The demands of protesters in Egypt, China, and Madison, Wisconsin are not the same. They Egyptians are demanding an end to military dictatorship in a context of economic and social stagnation. The Chinese are pushing for more personal freedom in a police state that promises security, economic growth, and single-party rule. The workers and students in Madison are operating in a free and austere environment, challenging the claims of recently elected officials that budget cuts require savaging basic commitments to community and the least advantaged. These are separate movements, with diverse motives and goals. They operate in very different circumstances.

What makes these movements global is one basic theme that frames protests across the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the United States. This theme contributes to a sense of urgency, an affirmation of righteousness, and a feeling of togetherness across societies. Protesters feel they are not alone, but part of a larger community that shares their concerns, their frustrations, and their moral claims. Despite the local odds, they feel they cannot lose because “history is one their side.” The whole world of forward-looking people is watching.

The “Representative Gap”

What is the theme that offers this global connection? We might call it the “representative gap.” In each and every society experiencing major protests today there are political leaders in power who have strong claims to legitimacy based on established procedures of selection: tradition, elite consensus, party promotion, and popular election. All of the figures under public attack can claim that their authority is “normal,” “constitutional,” and “recognized” internationally. Citizens are not confronting usurpers, but entrenched political powers.

That is precisely the point. The diverse men and women who have taken to the streets in different societies comprise groups of educated, articulate, energetic, and mostly young citizens who feel locked out of power. Established political processes in nearly every major society are organized around interest groups that are corporate, backward-looking, and middle aged. They think in terms of factories, budgets, and public order. They are generally baby-boomers who came of age after the Second World War and are fearful that their present earnings and security are jeopardized.

The protesters come from large social groups (pluralities but not majorities) that have little voice in political systems affirming the present over the future. They are professionalized, forward-looking, and often entering what should be their highest earning years. The protesters think in terms of innovation, investments, and the free flow of ideas among as many people as possible. They are the real advocates of markets: markets driven by creativity, connection, and individual control. Their model is the web-like social networking of Facebook and Twitter, not the linear television and telephone lines favored (and manipulated) by their leaders.

The “representative gap” between the traditional political interests in modern societies and a new cohort of professional citizens is the common source of conflict across the globe. The “representative gap” reflects the demographic, educational, and economic trends that cross cultural and national boundaries. Until a new set of pragmatic and courageous leaders emerges in multiple societies to bridge this gap we can expect more protests, more polarization, and probably more violence. The protests mark a global turning point when the politics of the street require a new politics in the besieged palaces of power. Stubborn entrenched leaders in Tripoli, Beijing, and Madison, Wisconsin will only turn conflict to disaster.