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  • University Presidents as Moral Leaders
  • Marc Cutright (bio)
David G. Brown (Ed.). University Presidents as Moral Leaders. Westport, CT: ACE/Praeger Series on Higher Education, 2006. 268 pp. Cloth: $39.95. ISBN: 0-275-98814-7.

A boy once asked John F. Kennedy how he got to be a hero. "Son," he replied, "they shot my boat out from under me." That story is told by David C. Hardesty Jr., president of West Virginia University, in his brief essay in University Presidents as Moral Leaders. The point, reinforced by most of the other presidential essays in the book, is that the conditions of challenge and leadership are more often thrust upon individuals than actively sought.

The book is a result of the Fall 2003 Forums on Presidential Leadership, hosted by Wake Forest University and the Center for Creative Leadership. Nine university presidents offer primary essays, with one to three other presidents writing reflective reaction essays to most of them.

The book is more satisfying if one thinks of it not with the title it carries, but with the one it had in conception, Lessons Learned by Successful University Presidents. This title was ultimately rejected because it was "rather boring," according to editor David G. Brown (p. 4). Boring perhaps, but accuracy is important as well. Although some of the essays are set in contexts with moral implications, that doesn't happen often enough that we get much insight into the morality or broader values of presidents as they lead, make decisions, or merely survive.

Brown tells us in his introduction that the summary of the book is in Chapters 1, 28, and 29, and so it is. In Chapter 28, Kathleen M. Ponder and Cynthia D. McCauley of the Center for Creative Leadership opine that university leadership shares with other contexts the need to develop competencies in the domains of leading others, leading the organization, and leading yourself, then note three ways in which university life challenges academic leadership. First, leadership is exercised—or attempted—"in a culture built around a resistance to authoritarian, hierarchical leadership" (p. 211). Second, the university is an institution with extraordinary purposes compared to most other institutions. Third, university culture is not particularly friendly to leadership recruitment and development, making administrative support and transition challenging.

Chapter 29 distills presidential imperatives from the three-session forum, supported by quotations from the presidents. Those themes, articulated by Brown, are: advance university values, honor personal convictions, plan and make decisions, maintain institutional morale, consult and involve, mind the data, exercise both "priestly" and teaching roles, and do not ignore self-renewal.

While these summary chapters are well supported by further commentary and examples, they are necessarily abstract. A few of the particular essays in the book give more dimension to the challenges of leadership. Philip L. Dubois gives us a heartfelt and personally revealing chapter in describing his presidency at the University of Wyoming during two crises. The first was the Matthew Shepard murder. The second, less nationally noted, was the deaths of eight students after a head-on collision in which the driver of the other car was drunk—and another university student. He not only survived, but was ordered by a court, without consultation with the university, to continue attending classes pending his sentencing. Dubois was challenged to lead in atmospheres of deep emotion and hurt.

Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan and a biochemist, tells what it was like to inherit two affirmative action cases, eventually to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, from a president who was a noted constitutional lawyer. The chapter leans heavily toward the merely tactical elements of leadership but is nonetheless a fascinating window into a national saga.

Albert C. Yates, president emeritus of Colorado State University, is probably truest to the book's title in his essay, "Virtue and Leadership: Good Leaders Must First Be Good People." His commentary on the importance of humility—and his own hard-earned development of it—is particularly engaging.

While other entries all have virtues, the overall feeling was that the book had a few nuggets of real insight and wisdom scattered in abundant raw ore...

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