I was a presenter for the Leadership for Academicians Programme of India, "LEAP," sponsored by the Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development, and supported by the Ohio State University (OSU), and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Sept. 8-15, 2019. I presented on the topic of leadership in terms of identity politics, and the role universities might play in navigating highly politicized debates related to them. I have substantial experience with this in my role at the Middle East Studies Center where almost any subject connects personally to someone in the classroom or public space in which we are presenting. My audience consisted of faculty members from nine different Indian universities, all of them aspiring to become chairs, deans, chancellors, etc. I needed to choose my topic wisely.

I chose the topic, "The Importance of University Leadership in an Age of Identity Conflicts." To me being an academic leader in this arena means demonstrating the value of academic tools for filtering and processing information, modeling open-mindedness, and at the same time modeling uncompromising critique of ideological or politically biased assumptions. It means teaching students, junior scholars, and the general public, how to "do academics" by sharing the means for inquiry and critical analysis in very explicit and easy-to-understand ways. The topic of the workshop, leadership, is a useful lens for reflecting on the work we do in academia. Not enough metacognitive work is done on how we not only lead but teach others how to use our lenses of analysis, in my opinion. At the same time, we don’t implement the tools of dialectic and debate enough, or engage with the many public discourses which sorely call for academic scrutiny. It takes a true leader to do those things, both inside and outside of the university.

As is obvious from my take on academic leadership, I am biased towards the humanities in my perspective - and most of these faculty members were in STEM, agriculture, or environmental sciences. Before diving into the importance of recognizing one’s own cultural and academic lenses in order to be more effective with students, colleagues and the public, I need to grab them with something tangible and not lose them with lofty ideas or jargon. It was especially important to get them on my side early because of my different perspective, both as an American and as someone with more of a humanities and social sciences background. I decided to start with data on the current state of U.S. politics, and especially the intense polarization over the past 25 years amongst the electorate.

We live in increasingly polarized times in the U.S. Despite our ability to communicate with each other more conveniently and have dialogue, because of technology, political views have become more, not less entrenched. A 2018 study (Bail et al.) showed that repeated exposure to ideologically opposing viewpoints on Twitter actually deepened opposition. Here is a visualization of the data from a Pew survey related to conservative/liberal orientation and one’s stances on key political issues:

Then I turned toward the importance of self reflection and perspective-taking in times of identity conflict. I spent some time discussing what it means to become aware of the self as a cultural being, which is a threshold concept for obtaining perspective-taking skills. The audience became silent at that point. Always a little bit nerve-wracking! One of the participants told me afterward that it was because they were deep in thought. Who knows?

I managed to include some information on "Decoding the Disciplines" before my half hour was up. It is a step-by-step process for teaching those outside of your field how to use the concepts and analytical tools of your field. Then we had quite a lively discussion about whether or not we are in an age of identity conflicts and what that means. We also discussed the enormity of the problem of politicized debates and what we as academics could do about it. I brought up the fact that it was the instrumental use of persuasive narratives, culled from the "big data" of American thought made available by Facebook, which played a major role in the last U.S. presidential election. The audience was all-too-familiar with them. I said, remember the chant, "Build that wall?" Someone responded, yes, and "Lock her up!" Exactly. If that wasn’t a call to leadership and action, what is?