"To Serve a Larger Purpose": Engagement for Democracy and the Transformation of Higher Education

5. Collective Leadership for Engagement: Reclaiming the Public Purpose of Higher Education

Chapter 5 Collective Leadership for Engagement Reclaiming the Public Purpose of Higher Education A fter nearly a quarter of a century of effort by several thousand presidents , chancellors, and chief academic officers, America’s colleges and universities appear to be no closer to a consensus about the role of higher education in ensuring a sustained and committed role for the academy in preparing civic-minded graduates, generating and applying knowledge about community engagement, and taking leadership in the exercise of democratic processes for the benefit of the common good than they were at the height of their work in 2000. Beyond individual actions, these leaders have formed organizations to support ideals based on community engagement, directed many of their national membership associations to establish programs for student, faculty and institutional development, and supported each other in taking public stands on behalf of civic engagement. Why has what was once thought to be a “movement” become routine, if not ritualized? No one is opposed to civic engagement for colleges and universities, but who is actually engaging? Did the events following 9/11 sap the energy and drive of the movement, which may not have responded to the national crisis with the clarity of purpose and the effective strategies that the moment demanded? Have responses to natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, been more individualistic than institutional? Did the generation of leaders who began the movement simply move on to other things—new issues, satisfaction in having done enough, retirement—without having prepared their successors to continue the work as their own? Is there something inherent in the concept of democratic civic engagement for colleges and universities that leads to banality William M. Plater Collective Leadership for Engagement • 103 and ­ routinization? Did the movement actually succeed, and the sense of stasis experienced by some actually become evidence of success for others? Or is there something in the nature of leadership for engagement itself that is, as yet, insufficiently examined or critiqued? Without question there have been extraordinary achievements led by individual presidents and provosts. Some institutions have literally recast their missions in the language of civic engagement. We are approaching a quarter century of activism that has had an impact on at least two generations of students ; thousands of faculty, including many younger faculty whose idealism has drawn them to higher education instead of other, less civic-minded professions ; and quite arguably the self-awareness of a nation that has elected its first African American president. Despite the apparent health of democratic action and the fresh energy of activism, a vague malaise nonetheless haunts the academy and the expectations of those who imagined that there would be more. Yet, is it possible that instead of waning, the collegiate civic engagement movement is actually pausing at a transition point, much as a car shifts gears, so it can move to a different, higher level of engaged leadership—one more suited for a long-distance effort? Is it worth considering whether a form of collective leadership may be capable of succeeding the individual leaders who have defined the civic engagement movement until now? Leadership on Hold: Have Senior College and University Leaders Contributed to Stasis in Civic Engagement? As a hallmark of service-learning specifically and academic civic engagement more broadly, reflection has entered into the habits as well as the vocabularies of teachers, researchers, and administrators alike. Progress and continuous improvement are due as much to the consequences of reflection and self-assessment as anything else; yet reflection individually or collectively has seemingly not led to inspirational and continuous innovation, enthusiasm, or even renewal at the collective institutional level. If we are in a transition period, do we recognize it? As the movement toward the democratic civic engagement of higher education has matured, there have been several major nationwide, shared efforts to move institutions toward self-studies, formal assessments of engagement, and collective action toward common goals such as those articulated by Campus Compact (e.g., the Presidents’ Declaration and selfassessment ), the American Association of Colleges and Universities (e.g., projects on Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility or Liberal Education and America’s Promise), the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (e.g., the American Democracy Project and the Political Engagement Project), Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (e.g., “The Tenure Team Initiative on Public Scholarship”), 104 • Chapter 5 the Association of Public and Land-Grant...