Think about different types of factors that influence your advocacy topic, including policy, guidelines, and regulations. Carefully reflect on how the context provides b
Think about different types of factors that influence your advocacy topic, including policy, guidelines, and regulations. Carefully reflect on how the context provides both opportunity and constraints. Also, consider levers—such as policy—as well as your own practical wisdom and courage. Keep these factors in mind as you complete the following Discussion.
Discussion 2: Policy, Practical Wisdom, and Courage
Think about different types of factors that influence your advocacy topic, including policy, guidelines, and regulations. Carefully reflect on how the context provides both opportunity and constraints. Also, consider levers—such as policy—as well as your own practical wisdom and courage. Keep these factors in mind as you complete the following Discussion.
To prepare:
Consider factors that influence your advocacy topic, including policy, guidelines, and regulations. Carefully reflect on how the context provides both opportunity and constraints. Also, consider levers—such as policy—as well as your own practical wisdom and courage. Keep these factors in mind as you complete the Discussion.
By Day 4 of Week 8
Post an analysis of the issues of policy and practical wisdom as presented by Bruno, Fromberg, Robinson, and Schwartz in this module’s media pieces. How do these ideas and presentations influence your perceptions of the common good as related to early childhood, education, and schooling? In each of the presentations, it takes courage to address the needs identified. Within your post, consider and comment on what it means to exhibit courage. Specifically, how might courage help early childhood leaders to create and manage change?
https://go.openathens.net/redirector/waldenu.edu?url=https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0013161X11427394
http://gseuphsdlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/justice-and-caring.pdf
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Dr. Rosenthal's paper was presented in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2009, for a panel on "Leader Development in School of Public Affairs" that included faculty from the University of Virginia, Harvard University, and Texas A&M University. The DC conference, on Leadership and National Security Reform, was cosponsored by The George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service and Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University, and the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. The Strategic Studies Institute has published this paper as a chapter in the edited volume, Rethinking Leadership and "Whole of Government" National Security Reform: Problems, Progress, and Prospects (June, 2010). Click on the link to download the book free of charge. What does one need to know to be a leader in the field of public policy? I want to argue for the centrality of ethics as a basic component of leadership training for anyone pursuing a career in public and international affairs. If you are a student, please take a moment to ask yourself what you have learned about ethics in your time in the classroom. If you are a teacher or administrator, consider what your curriculum covers in this regard. We know that medical students engage medical ethics, law students study legal ethics, business students take on business ethics, military officers study military ethics, and so on. So let's ask ourselves, what should students and aspiring leaders in public affairs know about ethics to be considered professionals competent to practice? By ethics, I do not mean simply compliance with law. Compliance is of course an essential part of ethics. But it is only a beginning. Compliance is a floor, a minimum upon which to build. Many actions in government, business, or private life comply with the law but are not optimal from an ethical perspective. Examples are all around us. British members of parliament may not have broken laws when they used expense accounts to bill tax payers for lifestyle enhancements such as moat cleaning, the upkeep of expensive second homes, or the rental of adult movies. But surely this kind of behavior was wrong. In more serious policy matters, it may well be that most of our major banks and financial institutions were in full compliance with the law when it came to the management of credit default swaps and derivative trading. Yet something went very wrong in the area of risk and responsibility. There are many things we can do and still be in compliance with law—but some of them are wrong. Ethical reasoning helps us make these distinctions. The discipline of ethics begins with Socrates' question: How should one live? Ethics is about choice. What values guide us? What standards do we use? What principles are at stake? And how do we choose between them? An ethical approach to a problem will inquire about ends (goals) and means (the instruments we use to achieve these goals) and the relationship between the two. Ethical reasoning is the process of raising awareness of moral claims and applying principles to arising circumstances. Ethical reasoning implies an interrogation of the moral claims that surround us rather than a mere listing of do's and don'ts. In a word, ethical inquiry is proactive rather than passive. The philosopher Simon Blackburn writes that ethics takes as its starting point that: "Human beings are ethical animals … we grade and evaluate, and compare and admire, and claim and justify … Events endlessly adjust our sense of responsibility, our guilt and our shame, and our sense of our own worth and that of others."1 According to Blackburn, ethical inquiry is normative in the sense that it suggests "norms." Norms are what we consider "expected and required" behavior. We all experience functional norms. For example, in the United States, drivers stay on the right-hand side of the road; in the United Kingdom, drivers keep to the left. We also experience moral norms. A moral norm would consist of an expectation such as nondiscrimination in the workplace or the requirement to respect the needs of the most vulnerable members of society (e.g. children, elderly and the infirm). Moral norms are aspirational and prescriptive rather than functional and descriptive—they paint the "ought" rather than the "is." It is this type of norm that I want to focus on in this essay. A cautionary note is necessary here. Norms, expectations, and ethical claims depend deeply on context. No single normative theory or formula will suffice across different types of examples. One of the great ethicists of recent memory, Isaiah Berlin, famously gave up his Oxford chair in normative theory, so the story goes, because he felt he had no single normative theory to purvey. Berlin did not pretend to offer a grand theory that would meet the test of the many different types of cases he was concerned with.2 Berlin's work reminds us that normative inquiry is a non-perfectionist art. The first lesson of ethics is that values overlap and conflict. The single-minded pursuit of any particular virtue can subvert a competing virtue. So as we often see, freedom can conflict with order, justice with mercy, and truth with loyalty. In international affairs, peace may be our goal, but we cannot ignore the need to confront aggression. Some may chant "no more war." These same people may also chant "never again genocide." Sometimes, tragically and unavoidably, force is needed to prevent harm. Here, and in countless similar examples, we see norms clashing. Berlin lets us know that these clashes happen more often than not.
Despite our lack of a single theory or formula, Berlin and others do offer a framework for ethical reasoning. Inspired by Berlin and other pragmatists, I think of this framework as ethics in three dimensions.
The first dimension focuses on the decision maker—the actor or the agent who makes a choice. We can and should evaluate the acts of individuals, be they presidents, ministers, official representatives, CEOs, community leaders, advocates, employees, consumers or citizens. Each has a role as an autonomous actor. At first glance, the idea of the autonomous actor seems simple and straightforward. However, we should bear in mind that identity is fluid not static. Most individuals have multiple identities. Consider an example like the following. A single individual could say: I am British. I am a Muslim. I am a woman. I am a professor. I am a feminist. Clearly, many sets of values make up a composite yet single-actor identity in an example like this. Each element of one's identity plays an important role in determining which values and allegiances among many may have priority. Claims of national loyalty, religious obligation, professional codes of conduct, and solidarity around an issue of social justice and concern might all come into play. This is the way life is actually lived, isn't it?3 In addition to single actors, a discussion of agency must also consider the identity, values, and acts of collective actors such as states, corporations, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations. One of the most important trends of our time is the growing power of non-state actors—especially multinational corporations. Wal-Mart, Microsoft and other companies of this size and scope rival the capacities of many states in terms of their economic, political and social reach. It is therefore both necessary and proper to ask and answer questions relating to the moral choices of corporate entities. All are moral agents. The second dimension of ethics has to do with the systems, social arrangements, and conditions that define our range of choices. In short, we need to examine the "rules of the game" by which we live and make decisions. We all live within sets of norms and expectations—some more fair and just than others. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this dimension is to show you examples of when "rational" choices within a set of arrangements yield "bad" or less-than-desirable results. In other words, in some systems, when you do the "right thing" within the system, the net result is sub-optimal. Here I am thinking of a common example of consumer behavior. When shopping for clothes, it usually makes sense for you to buy the least expensive shirt available when quality between competing options is equal. But because of the supply chain of the global economy, that shirt may be produced in a sweatshop that runs on child labor. Buying the least expensive shirt of equal quality might be rational according to market design—yet the result might be ethically troubling. This problem exists on many levels of policy and institutional design. For example, consider the nuclear weapons doctrine of MAD—mutual assured destruction. The entire strategic framework is based on the idea of reciprocal threat. Within this system, to insure stability, the most rational thing to do is to make an immoral threat (and be prepared to carry it out). Clearly, there is something deeply troubling about MAD. It would seem to me to be a worthy goal to try to create frameworks and policies where the "rational" thing to do would be more benign than to make a threat of mutual assured destruction. In brief then, this second dimension calls attention to the fact that we live within institutions, systems, and social arrangements of human design. The rules, norms, and conditions of these arrangements should be subject to ethical evaluation. The third dimension of ethics is the assertion that we often have the opportunity to improve our situation—to do better. One way to think of this is to consider a standard ethics scenario like this: My mother is sick. I cannot afford medicine. So I steal the medicine from a pharmacy whose managers will not even notice that it is gone. Is stealing the medicine in this circumstance the right thing or the wrong thing to do? We can discuss this case in terms of my decision as a moral agent—whether I am a thief and villain, a rescuer and a hero, or both. Ethical questions are frequently raised as dilemmas such as this one. In many situations, there is a genuine need to choose between two competing and compelling claims, and ethical reasoning can help to sort these out. But we can also expand the inquiry to ask a broader question beyond the narrow question of whether to steal or not to steal. We can also ask: What kind of community denies medicine to sick people who cannot afford it? Is there something unfair or unethical about this system? To further illustrate this third dimension, it is useful to note the distinction that Andrew Carnegie drew between charity and philanthropy.4 Charity, according to Carnegie, is the duty to attend to immediate and acute human suffering. Charity translates to feeding the hungry, tending to the sick and destitute, providing relief to victims of natural and man made disasters, and giving shelter to the homeless. Philanthropy is something different—it is an endeavor that reaches above and beyond the imperatives of charity. Philanthropy explores new ways of living, new ideas and institutions to improve society. While this may sound abstract, Carnegie's philanthropy was specific and practical. He addressed the societal-level problem of education by suggesting and then providing the infrastructure for two institutions we now take for granted: the public library and the teacher pension system. Carnegie believed that every person should have access to knowledge. Universal literacy and educational opportunity would be possible by supporting a free public library system which he began to do all across the United States and to a much lesser extent, the United Kingdom (his place of birth). In his lifetime, Carnegie provided funds to build more than 2500 public library buildings. Carnegie's library venture was an extraordinary feat totaling $41 million dollars, easily several billion in today's dollars. Yet tellingly, he asked municipal leaders to be partners in the enterprise by providing the books and the funds for upkeep. Carnegie would build the buildings, but communities would be responsible for whatever would happen next. Carnegie thought that if these institutions had real value, communities would invest in them rather than merely accept them passively as gifts. Similarly, when he decided to provide the funds to build Carnegie Hall in New York City, he built the structure in all its grandeur but he did not leave an endowment for maintenance. He believed that if the music hall had genuine value, its patrons—those who benefitted from it—would contribute to its upkeep. Carnegie also created the first teacher pension institution—now known as TIAA-CREF—to help professionalize the vocation of teaching. If teachers were undervalued, as some surmised, then here was an institution that would contribute to improvement of the educational system by supporting teachers. The idea was simple. But its ramifications were profound. With proper pay and retirements benefits enabled by the new pension system, teaching would become a fully modern profession. Similarly, when it came to politics, Carnegie believed that new institutions could improve public policy. Specifically, as an advocate for the peaceful resolution of international conflicts and disputes, Carnegie supported the mediation and arbitration movement that grew out of Geneva in the mid-19th century. Again, the idea was elegant in its simplicity and grandeur. Just as we have legal mechanisms to arbitrate disputes in domestic society, so too can we have mechanisms in international society for the same purpose. The concept of international law and organization was gaining momentum at the beginning of the 20th century—the movement merely needed new institutions to give it shape and force. In this spirit, Carnegie financed the building of the Peace Palace at The Hague, supported the establishment of the International Court of Justice, and lobbied for the establishment of the League of Nations. Carnegie devoted much of his philanthropy—and his personal energy—to promoting these new institutions and the ideas behind them. So then the third dimension of ethics expands the range of choices we have in front of us. It is about creating new possibilities. I like to picture this idea in its cartoon form. For me, it is comes to life in the character of Bugs Bunny. The narrative is familiar. Our hero gets into trouble and runs away from a threatening pursuer. But he is eventually backed into a corner. There is no escape. What does he do? He reaches into his pocket and miraculously pulls out a pen or marker. He then proceeds to draw a picture of a window on the blank wall. The image of the window becomes real. Then he climbs out. Sometimes we do face genuine dilemmas—and the lines we draw on the wall remain lines. But other times we can and should imagine better options.
Leadership as Practical Ethics
How then do we connect this understanding of the three dimensions of ethics to leadership? Leadership is as vast a topic as ethics, so let's begin with some simple concepts. In his new book George Washington on Leadership, Richard Brookhiser describes leadership as "knowing yourself, knowing where you want to go, and then taking others to that new place."5 There are many ways to lead; there are many styles and countless examples to study. One way to focus our analysis is to examine in detail the ends/means/consequences equation as Brookhiser suggests. This leads to three questions: What is the goal? What means will we use to get there? And what types of tradeoffs and compromises must be made along the way? Brookhiser's observations remind me of one of my favorite undergraduate lectures on American political history. The lecture was delivered by Professor Frank Freidel, a biographer of Franklin Roosevelt. His topic was the leadership style of FDR. Professor Freidel drew a simple X at the top/center of the blackboard. He then drew a zig-zagging line from the bottom of the blackboard up to the top. He explained that Roosevelt considered himself as a sailor heading upwind. The destination was certain—the fixed point represented by the X. Each zig-zag represented a tack back-and-forth needed to approach the goal. As any sailor knows, when in a sail boat, you cannot head directly into the wind. If you try to sail straight into the wind, the sails flap around uselessly, the boat stalls, and you are unable to move forward. This it what sailors call "irons." So like any experienced helmsman, Roosevelt understood the need to tack back-and-forth. Each tack could mean an uncertain and uneasy compromise. Sometimes he would have to tack horizontally just to maintain his previous gains. Yet each compromise was necessary to maintain headway against the headwinds that would mercilessly beat him back or blow him off course. If we accept leadership as goal-driven and compromise-ridden, then we see that ethics should not be a peripheral to any public policy curriculum or program of leadership development. Ethics is neither a luxury nor a hurdle to be cleared. It is central to decision-making and leadership itself. In his book Ethics as Practice, Hugh LaFollette explains that ethics, like medicine, is a practical art.6 Just as we study medicine not only to learn about the body and its functions but to make us better by promoting good health, so too we study ethics not merely for philosophical enlightenment but to improve our living conditions. Ethics helps us to understand what we truly value and how to connect this with the practice of our daily lives, our individ
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