Bethune-Cookman University under Leadership of Trudie Kibbe Reed: The Role of the Southern Association of Colleges

To add to what I wrote yesterday about Bethune-Cookman University and the recent resignation/retirement of its president Trudie Kibbe Reed: as the university's accrediting body the Southern Association of Colleges prepared to review the school for reaccreditation in 2010, it invited third-party comments from members of the public.  I submitted a third-party comment to SACS as someone who had served as the school's highest academic officer, its vice-president for academic affairs.

In Higher Education News: Bethune-Cookman University President Trudie Kibbe Reed Resigns/Retires

In the world of higher education, a very strange story now coming out of Bethune-Cookman University in Florida: as Michael Stratford reports  in the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday, the university president, Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, has retired in the middle of the academic year.  At least, that appears to be the story.  But getting a clear picture of whether this is a resignation or a retirement or why it's taking place: that's another story altogether.

Collaboration and Better Angels: Leadership Paradigms for Full Democracy

In his New York Times op-ed statement “Edge of the Abyss” today, Paul Krugman says vis-à-vis the current economic crisis, “And what’s truly scary is that we’re entering a period of severe crisis with weak, confused leadership"(www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/opinion/03krugman.html?th&emc=th).

Weak, confused leadership: Do you think?!

We can’t say it enough, those of us who want to see the American democratic experiment continue: we are in serious crisis now, as a nation, in the area of leadership. There simply are not anywhere near the number of models of good leadership in our nation right now to prepare for a viable future. And we’re not going to find our way out of the mess we’re in as a culture if we try to revive the paradigm that got us into this mess in the first place: the blustering self-serving swagger of the obscenely overpaid big man (or woman) on top, all bravado and threats, all egocentric fantasy that only she or he is capable of pulling the strings to save us, all facile, shallow concern with image-management and media manipulation.

Getting us out of our present mess will require a consultative and inclusive style of leadership that harnesses the best angels of all of our natures. Everyone needs a voice in participatory democracy, if we’re to survive as a democratic society. Those of us without jobs and health coverage definitely need a place at the table, as we resolve our economic crisis.

When I heard Mr. Obama talking recently about how a job is fundamental to everything where he comes from, I longed for the opportunity to sit down and talk with him about what not being able to find work—meaningful work that engages one’s talents and allows one to give back to the community—does to a person’s self-esteem. I also wished for the chance to sit and talk with him about how not having any health insurance affects one’s self-image, not to mention one’s health.

When I listened to Mr. Obama, I wanted to tell him how tinny, how false, many of the statements our churches make about the need for full employment and full health coverage sound, when one looks at what the churches actually do. When one examines the leadership models churches offer—top-down, big man/woman on top, power pyramids with no opportunity for those on bottom to contribute to the unilateral decisions of those on top—one wonders how churches can imagine that they have any alternative to offer. Not when their models of leadership perfectly mirror those of the political system that has walked us right to the edge of the abyss . . . .

And when one looks at the other key institution of American culture that also touts itself as the bearer of alternative visions of leadership, one is equally dumbfounded. Universities also replicate leadership model of the top-down, grossly overpaid big man/woman on top. In how they structure themselves, in whom they choose to reward and whom to punish, they do not provide that viable alternative paradigm of leadership that they profess to offer, when they ask for our tax dollars. And when we need such alternative models so desperately today . . . .

Like the political sector, our universities—and chief among them, church-owned ones whose policies prohibiting salary disclosure hide the glaring disparity between what is paid to those on top as compared to those on bottom—love the leadership model of blustering swagger, bravado and threats. The model that does not and cannot harness the better angels of our nature when all of our energies, all of them together, are needed now to avert disaster . . . .

As I’ve noted before, in his vision of a new paradigm for American politics, Mr. Obama could do far worse than to turn to that early 20th-century African-American leader Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune for insights. Dr. Bethune’s insistence that any democratic structure worth its salt must pursue “full democracy” is worth retrieving, for a post-modern paradigm of participatory democracy. In her essay “Don’t Miss the Foot-hold! Women and the Civil Rights Report,” Dr. Bethune urges African-American women to teach their children the concept of democracy they advocate for themselves. Dr. Bethune calls this concept “full democracy”; she notes that full democracy entails bringing everyone to the table, and teaching our youth that color, national origin, or the religion of others can be seen not as stigmatizing characteristics that make us different from one another in ways that alienate us, but differences that enrich a full democracy (Bethune papers, Dec. 5, 1947; in Audrey Thomas McCluskey and Elaine M. Smith, ed., Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World [Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999], p. 191).

In Bethune’s view, institutions of higher learning play a premier role in American democracy by modeling full democracy. In the university she founded, Dr. Bethune fashioned a leadership team that crossed racial and gender lines. She also pioneered inclusive town-gown community meetings that drew communities together for collaborative work to solve problems faced by all members of the community. She made a concerted effort to assure that those most excluded by social structures from the table of full democracy had equal access to a voice at her town-gown meetings.

The model of full democracy that Mary McLeod Bethune worked to create at the school she founded, Bethune-Cookman University, is at the heart of what that university’s current president, Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, an expert in leadership studies, calls “transformative leadership.” In Trudie Kibbe Reed’s view, “Transformative leadership is the ‘art and science’ of learning to facilitate value-centered change within organizations through inquiry, reflection, critique, and collaboration” (the quotation is from an unpublished 2005 manuscript of Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, as cited in William D. Lindsey and Reed, “Transformative Leadership: A Conceptual Framework and Application” [Bethune-Cookman University, 2005], p. 2).

Note the strong emphasis on collaboration as an essential quality of transformative leadership. Healthy democracies build teams of leaders that collaborate in inquiry, reflection, and critique, because no institution can thrive and meet the challenge of the future without inquiry, reflection and critique.

And such inquiry, reflection, and critique must occur in a collaborative context in which the myth of the quasi-imperial big man/big woman on top with all the answers and all the power is put to the test of critical inquiry and reflection. When the test of inquiry, reflection, and critique is applied to such mythic notions of sound leadership, they are found wanting. They are found wanting because they depend on the illusion that only the grossly overpaid, self-interested ruthless individual at the top of the heap has the ability to solve problems that affect an institution or social structure.

Dr. Bethune’s concept of full democracy and Dr. Reed’s notion of transformative leadership depend on and incorporate the confidence that the solution to complex problems affecting an entire institution or the entire body politic is to be found among all of us affected by these problems. Models of transformative leadership that value full democracy assume that all of us have valuable insights into the problems with which we struggle together, and all of us need a voice in the resolution of our shared problems.

On the basis of that assumption, transformative leadership pursuing full democracy brings everyone to the table, and provides a voice for everyone. This is why full employment and full health coverage are so essential to a democratic society, and why institutions (e.g., churches and universities) that profess to offer alternative visions of leadership must work to overcome unemployment and lack of health coverage for all citizens—and why any church or university, and above all, any church-sponsored university, would never contribute to the problems of unemployment and lack of health coverage by unjust termination of valuable employees.

It is for all of these reasons that I recently called on Mr. Obama, as he prepared for his presentation at Bethune-Cookman University on September 20, to take seriously the legacy of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, and to promote her vision of full democracy as he campaigns (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/09/open-letter-to-barack-obama-hbcus-and.html). Mr. could do far worse than to look to this prophetic African-American leader for inspiration, as he seeks leadership models that engage the better angels of the natures of the American people in the 21st century.


*Note: this is an end-of-week précis of points I’ve made at greater length in postings throughout the week, particularly http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/10/leadership-crisis-role-of-american.html.

9/11: Do Good, Avoid Harm--In Memoriam

My memories of September 11, 2001, will forever be intertwined with the death of my mother on September 15 the same week. September 11 was Tuesday. The 15th was Saturday.

And I certainly mean no disrespect to the thousands who died on the 11th, and their families, by remembering the week as I do. It’s just that when a huge tragedy intersects with a personal loss, the two become part of a single memory in one’s heart.

About the 11th, I have—as almost everyone who recalls that day will have—sharp memories. The clear blue skies as we drove to work, when the first plane was already careening into the first building, though we knew nothing of that at the time.

The faculty who came to my office (I was academic dean at Philander Smith College in Little Rock at the time), frightened, uncertain what to do, when the news broke. To my shame, I actually thought they were joking when they told me the twin towers had been hit by a plane and that the Pentagon was on fire.

The sudden recognition that this was no joke, and my own fright: why are they coming to me, when I have no more clue than they do about what to do? The prayer assembly that ensued, which made the drama so much worse for some of us unused to such piety, since some students wailed, shouted, spoke in tongues, fell out with religious emotion.

And the week of endless arrangements to try to assist students whose lives had been directly touched by the tragedy, who had family involved, who knew someone in the towers, who were traumatized (as I was, as we all were) simply by the images on the t.v. screen, the planes crashing into the buildings, people jumping out of windows, women with purses streaming along, the collapse of the towers. I went to bed night after night as though plugged into an electric charger, unable to exorcise those pictures from my head, unable to sleep, rigid with shock.

The president of Philander Smith at the time, Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, was a good Methodist who rose to this occasion admirably by taking to heart John Wesley’s dictum that we must live in such a way that we do all the good we can, by all the means we can, in all the ways we can, in all the places we can, at all the times we can, to all the people we can, as long as ever we can. She mandated that my office set up counseling-support groups for students comprised of faculty and staff with experience in this area.

I spent much of the week coordinating those arrangements and participating in a group. Many students were, indeed, traumatized, and it was good that the president anticipated their needs—a demonstration of what being a faith-based community should be all about in practice and not merely in proclamation.

At this time, my mother was in a care facility suffering from advanced dementia. She had not known me for several years. Her oldest sister, a maiden aunt I loved dearly, who exemplified selfless love within our family, was also in a nursing home, severely impaired physically by a series of strokes, though mentally sharp.

I spent much of each week when I wasn’t working going from nursing home to nursing home, checking on my mother and aunt, seeing to their comfort and needs. I was, as we say in the South, frazzled. My work has always received full attention, such that I take it home, work long into the night and before office hours in the morning, as well as on weekends and holidays. Not a virtue but a vice, since life is more than work.

But my parents taught me a strong work ethic, and I have worked always in church-based colleges with a strong work ethic, where many folks are also adroit at playing the I-work-harder-than-you game. I noticed this game early on in each church-based school at which I have worked: some folks would show up early in the day and again as office hours ended, to spend time in their offices after hours, to make it appear that they were working harder than those who are continuously in their office from the time the workday begins until it ends.

I knew the game. I knew that the game players kept tabs on those of us who left when the workday ended, and reported this, as though it were an indicator we were sloughing off. I believed that anyone with sense and integrity who received such a report would see how false it was, and the malice motivating it. I protected myself against such games the best way I knew how, by working and not pretending to work, trusting that my record and output would demonstrate my hard work in an environment of faith-based game-playing.

By Friday of the week of September 11, I was exhausted—emotionally, physically, mentally. Since we expected my aunt to die soon, my mother’s youngest sister, Steve, and I had attended a seminar on the 11th designed to help family members make the transition of a loved one to hospice care.

So when the nurse from my mother’s gerontologist’s office called on Friday evening to say that my mother had a slight fever, I did not go to the nursing home to check on her. I asked the nurse if the fever were serious. She said it wasn’t: it was slight. She was calling because they had a rule that they must call whenever a patient was running fever.

With the seminar on hospice in my mind, I asked the nurse if she thought we were nearing a point at which my mother needed hospice care. “Absolutely not,” the nurse said. “She’s strong and stable.”

I went to bed somewhat worried, but with the thought in mind that I would see my mother tomorrow. She did not know when I came or went, in any case. She had no idea who I was.

Early the next morning, I had a call from the nursing home staff member who took most loving care of my mother, a deep-souled, compassionate African-American woman named Stephanie Smith. “Come immediately,” she said.

I asked no questions. Steve and I threw on our clothes and went. During the night, my mother had lapsed into a semi-comatose state. Stephanie had not been scheduled to work that day. Something had nudged her to come to work. It was she who found my mother nearing death.

I had a precious hour or so—I really don’t recall the length of time; time becomes meaningless under these circumstances—with Steve and my mother’s youngest sister to stand beside my mother’s bed as she died. To hold her hand and stroke her forehead. To pray with her and talk to her.

Do all good, by all means, in all ways, in all places, at all times, to all people: Wesley’s saying, with its final reminder that our time for doing good is always limited by the time we have left, unfailingly puts me in mind of something that happened in the first several years I began teaching, at Xavier University in New Orleans.

While I was teaching at Xavier and chairing its theology department, a chaplain, Brother Jim, died suddenly. He had had a stroke in the night, was found beside his bed.

I identified with Jim. Like me, he tended to gain weight. Like me, he went on binge diets and lost significant amounts of weight, only to gain the weight back. Both of us had what my family calls the “red Irish face”—complexions that never allow us to hide embarrassment or stress, since we are, as my father’s sister often said, “flushers.” People even sometimes mistook me for Jim, addressing me as Brother Jim.

Jim’s sudden death hit home. It was one of those reminders that come all too frequently in our lives, of how sudden the going home can be. The moral lesson of this death was underscored for me—and remains vivid in my mind more than twenty years later—because of something a colleague in the theology department, Sr. Mary Ann Stachow, said when Jim was found dead.

“Do good. Avoid harm,” Mary Ann said, quoting Thomas Aquinas and his ultimate formula for how we are to live our moral lives. Do good. Avoid hurting others—anyone. Do good all the time, everywhere, in every way possible, to everyone: do good and avoid harm.

Because life is limited: do good as long as ever you can, since our time for doing good (and avoiding harm) will one day end. It is a facile truism to say that those whose loved ones head off to work on any given day, never to return, will inevitably ask themselves what more might have been said and done—what breaches might have been mended—had one only known when the end would come.

I certainly ask myself that regarding my mother’s death. What if I had put aside my own tiredness on Friday night and gone to the nursing home then, when the call about her fever came? Though she would not have known me or have known that I was there, some part of me wants to think it might have made a difference to her, on the night she began her passage from life to death, for me to be there.

But I didn’t go. And she did die. And I must now live with the thought that perhaps I could have done more. And with the hope that, if another such occasion arises in my life, I will respond more readily than I did that night.

Do good. Avoid harm. Life ends. If there are those whose rights we have trampled on; if there are those to whom and about whom we have lied; if there are those whose lives we’ve disrupted out of malice or jealousy or prejudice: there is time, while we are still living, to set things right.

There is time to ask forgiveness. There is time to mend broken bonds. There is time to accord the justice we have denied. There is time to realize that when we practice to deceive, we weave webs that eventually ensnare us. There is time to recognize that in doing violence to others in the manifold ways in which human beings can assault others, we set in motion spirals of violence that eventually bring the violence back to our own doorsteps.

There is time to recover our mere humanity by acting like a human being again.

It is never too late. Except, of course, when the clock ticks down.

That is, after all, what doing good and avoiding harm means. And I say this as a lesson to myself, hoping that the words I am writing today will write themselves on my heart.

Update of Update: UCA President Resigns

Update of update: University of Central Arkansas president Lu Hardin did resign yesterday (www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2008/08/its_official_hardin_resigns.aspx#comments, www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2008/08 hardin_resigns_harding_correct.aspx#comments).

As one might have predicted, the UCA board of trustees presented the resignation as something other than a forced resignation of a president who had demonstrated patent lack of integrity: the board chair’s announcement speaks of Mr. Hardin’s health needs, and thanks him for the fine work he’s done for the university. The chair also announced initially that Mr. Hardin would be on sabbatical for a year, then retracted that term, and has now noted that the term does apply.

The buy-out is, as expected, exceedingly generous. Details are in the articles to which I link above. From an educator’s perspective: one cannot help wondering what underpaid, hard-working faculty feel about the plums thrown the way of this values-challenged president, as he resigns.

And about the board’s malfeasance . . . . The board’s lack of courage and immediate sensitivity to the lapse of in value-judgment is evident in the length of time it took the board to respond to this issue, and to the growing public hue and cry for action. The board’s lack of professional acumen (a lack often evident among trustees of universities in many places) seems to me to be evident in the back and forth about whether Mr. Hardin had received a sabbatical.

A UCA insider posting on the Arkansas Times blog reports that that a new board of trustees is now a “done deal,” and that soundings for new board members have been underway for weeks—though “it will all be done and leaked slowly and ‘conservatively’ so as not to give the impression of panicky desperation -- which is what it is.”

And, see, again, this is what I don’t get (though I know full well most university boards act this way). These are values issues. These are leadership issues.

What do board members think they are saying to students about values and leadership when they move “slowly” and “conservatively” to address shocking breaches in values-oriented leadership? Do they think they can continue to speak of their institutions to students and the public as values-laden and interested in producing ethical leaders, when they appear to demonstrate so little sensitivity to values, as trustees?

Well, if nothing else, this little story demonstrates that university presidents and university boards can occasionally be held accountable, when the public demands such accountability. Maybe this will provide hope to those watching other universities where similar questions about the integrity of key leaders are being asked. And—wild hope—maybe this story will provide some lessons for board members of such institutions to ponder, as they sit by in silence, doing the “conservative” thing.

As the current president of Bethune-Cookman University, Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, who is an expert in the field of transformative leadership, notes, it is imperative for those leading institutions of higher learning to have in place mechanisms to critique and evaluate failures of the institution to fulfill its mission and to abide by its core values:

Change for the sake of change is never the objective of effective leadership. On the other hand, the lack of a mechanism to critique and evaluate an agency’s mission could be a barrier to that organization’s future. Clarity on philosophy and mission are essential to address our leadership crisis. As our world continues to be more complex, diverse, and divided, the role of education has to concern itself with confronting values that conflict with humanistic goals (“Leadership to Match a New Era: Democratizing Society through Emancipatory Learning,” Journal of Leadership Studies 4,1 [1997], p. 62).

If Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed is correct in this assessment of the role of academic leaders (and I believe she is), boards of trustees have a strong responsibility to assure that the institutions they govern have in place “a mechanism to critique and evaluate an agency’s mission”—particularly when questions are raised about the commitment of key leaders in the institution to the core humanistic values that must drive the mission of any institution of higher learning. As an aside (which is not an aside), if Barack Obama was correct when he noted in his acceptance speech last night that the time is past when American citizens can allow their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to be discriminated against, it seems incumbent on all U.S. colleges and universities today to have policies in place forbidding discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation—and mechanisms to expose and correct such discrimination, when it occurs.

If boards of trustees are not looking at these issues, mandating such policies, and setting in place mechanisms to hold even the top leaders of institutions accountable for lack of integrity, they are failing the institutions they serve—and the public at large.

Power to the People: Citizen Journalism and the UCA Story

Since I’ve blogged a number of times about the unfolding saga at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), I think it’s important to provide updates to that story as they come along. The Arkansas Times reports last evening and again today that UCA president Lu Hardin has chosen to resign with a buy-out contract of $1 million (www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2008/08/hardin_to_resign.aspx#comments, www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2008/08/hardin_to_resign.aspx#comments).

The chair of the UCA board of trustees has confirmed that the board will meet today, noting that Hardin has the votes to remain as president if he so chooses. Max Brantley, editor of the Arkansas Times, suggests that the board of trustees has been, well, less than scintillating in its handling of a matter in which the president’s integrity appears to patently compromised in a very public way. Brantley writes,

The Board of Trustees has not distinguished itself in this matter. If Hardin resigns in recognition of his inability to credibly lead, would it be wrong to suggest that the Board should make a similar gesture? (emphasis added)

On the whole, bloggers at the Arkansas Times website wholeheartedly agree. Comments of bloggers about the role the board has been playing in the UCA story include the following (emphasis added):

▪The Board, with their handling of this just sent a terrible--really a horrible lesson and message to anyone paying attention to this. Shame on them all. They never got out in front of this. Not once. Even know. I'm sorry, I just have absolutely no respect for their handling of this.

▪If Hardin needs to resign then surely a majority of the board does too.
▪Sad as this is to say, the reality is that what is right and fair is irrelevant. Only the politics of the possible. It is really disturbing to think that the board will pay him the full buyout when he could have, should have been removed for cause.

▪I just sent the governor an e-mail asking him to exercise some control over the BOT.

▪Go back and look how the whole affair has unfolded. Early on the Board was in denial and defensive of the facts. If Hardin is REWARDED for his actions with severance pay, then say adios to the Board for wasting TAXPAYER dollars in awarding severance pay for the SECOND time. The UCA episode has evolved into the likes of a Greek tragedy with Lu Hardin playing lead. It is time to end the tragedy by not only releasing the lead player but the supporting cast as well.

▪The Board still doesn't get that their role is stewardship of the institution. Again, shame on them for blowing it here. Thankfully, and I think this was a large part of it, the ArkTimes Blog kept this in play long enough and to the degree necessary for the issue to be kept alive until the full weight of what happened here was fleshed out. Once again, evidence that the power is shifting from the hands of the mass media to the masses.

As I’ve noted before, I have a twofold interest in this story. One is, of course, that I’m a citizen of Arkansas and my tax dollars help fund this school (to which, by the way, two of my aunts went to do graduate work as they prepared for teaching careers).

But I’m even more intently interested in this story because of the questions I’ve raised in this blog about the significant role higher education plays in imparting to students civic values essential to the successful maintenance of a democratic society. As I’ve noted, when the example set at the top of an educational institution—from the board of trustees and the president—is one that contradicts core values necessary to build a sound participatory democracy, we all have reason to be concerned.

My experience in higher education has been solely in faith-based universities. Though these institutions cannot be held directly accountable by citizens and by state governments in the same way that UCA can, our tax dollars also help to fund church-owned universities. And we therefore have a vested interest—all of us, as citizens—in calling for the tax dollars also help to fund church-owned universities.same degree of public accountability, transparency, and integrity on the part of boards of trustees and presidents of church-owned universities that we expect from state-sponsored ones.

In fact, I would go further and argue that the church sponsorship of church-owned universities gives those institutions an added responsibility to exemplify the highest level of integrity on the part of their leaders—starting with their governing boards and presidents. Precisely because these institutions proclaim that their mission is grounded in the ethical teachings of their sponsoring churches, leaders of church-based universities have an exceptionally strong responsibility

▪to value and speak the truth

▪to be transparent and accountable to the various publics they serve

▪to entertain open discourse about the core values of their institutions by members of those constituencies, even (and especially when) that discourse exposes disparities between the values an institution proclaims and the behavior of its key leaders

▪to defend those most susceptible to abuse within the power dynamics of the university

▪and to refrain from doing harm—as in ignoring the rights of vulnerable minorities who have no legal protections, and then using legal threats to silence members of minority groups who protest such immoral treatment.

As someone who has had the unpleasant experience of watching university boards of trustees operate up-close, I have to say that I have seldom been overwhelmed by the degree of competence and—above all—commitment to core civic or religious values among many members of boards of trustees. As with boards of state institutions, boards of church-sponsored universities too often value impression management and protection from legal action above respect for the core values of their institution (and, in the case of church-sponsored universities, of the sponsoring church). Most will bend over backwards to protect a president even when they have strong reason to suspect that the president is either incompetent or venal, or both. Hardly any will take the trouble to investigate—and to hold open forums—when it is patently obvious from many credible reports that a president’s behavior is dangerously close to violating core ethical principles of the institution.

The blogger who notes (above) that, sad to say, “the reality is that what is right and fair is irrelevant” to many boards of trustees, is right on target. As that blogger concludes, many boards—and I include boards of church-sponsored universities here; my experience has been solely with those—are interested only in the politics of the possible.”

And so what does that communicate to students and to the public constituencies served by any university about its values? That they don’t mean much at all, when push comes to serve. That values are something to be paid lip-service in a classroom, but discarded when students enter the real world.

Holding faith-based institutions accountable for the services they provide the public, and for the ways in which they either exemplify or betray core civic values: this is an exceptionally important task of the American public, since we are a nation with the soul of a church that invests billions of dollars in these institutions precisely because we believe they serve the common good.

And as long as church leaders, and the leaders of church-owned institutions, resist transparency and public accountability (as they often do)—and as long as they use their financial clout and institutional image-management capital to resist transparency and accountability and attack those who call for integrity on the part of their leaders (as they continue to do)—the most significant tool we have today to accomplish this task is, as one of the comments cited above note, the ability of citizen journalists to keep significant issues in the public eye.

If readers will forgive my citing once again something I have written (but collaboratively so, with a leading scholar in the field of values-based education and transformative leadership, Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed), I would like to conclude with several reflections from the document I cited earlier this week on transformative leadership, which is used as an introductory text the master's program in leadership at Bethune-Cookman University:

▪Abundant literature suggests that a key challenge facing higher education in the 21st century is to produce leaders for a rapidly changing postmodern cultural context. The cultural context within which students are now growing up and in which they will pursue careers is marked by change (technological, social, political, and economic) of an ever increasing pace, a communications and information explosion, new fusions of regional cultures throughout the world, increasing interaction of people from various cultural backgrounds due to advances in transportation technologies and migrations of people, and profound ethical shifts concomitant with the preceding developments.

▪If educational institutions fail to assist students in dealing with these developments—above all, to assist them to acquire the ability to think critically about and respond with ethical sensitivity to them—they will abdicate one of their chief responsibilities. This is to shape leaders who help to promote civic cultures in which more and more constituencies are drawn into participation, and in which the voices of groups historically marginalized (and those presently marginalized through lack of access to information) are heard and valued in processes of participatory democracy.

▪Because they are often looking solely at economic trends and focusing only on skills rather than internal and affective ethical change, organizations that fail are usually entrenched in maintenance forms of leadership that value preservation of the status quo above responding creatively to change.

To my way of thinking, this says it all: educational institutions, including (and perhaps particularly) church-owned ones, which value maintenance of the status quo and entrenched forms of leadership above the imperatives of mission, which ignore the centrality of values to the educational process, which abdicate their responsibility to inculcate values that build participatory democracy, are failing—even when, as at UCA, the numbers game allows them to claim that their "brand" is appreciating in value in publications such as US News & World Report.

Assuring Integrity in Academic Leaders

Thinking these days about integrity. And about its connection to leadership. The backdrop of my reflections is the current federal election cycle, in which it is often difficult to judge precisely where truth lies, and whether leaders possess sterling integrity.

And integrity and truth are connected—intrinsically so. They are connected because the root meaning of the word “integrity” is “wholeness.” No person or organization can be whole when there is a split between what the person or organization says, and what the person or organization does. Dishonesty cleaves a person to the core of her or his being.

The integrity of rock-solid honesty is essential on the part of leaders, because the institutions a leader heads founder when the leader lacks integrity, and the virtue of truth-telling. When the leader of an organization (especially a values-drive one—one that at least claims to be driven by values) is routinely dishonest and is permitted to trade in lies, the culture of the institution she or he leads becomes similarly split. It can be so cloven at its very core by the disconnect between what is professed and what is practiced, that it begins actively to promote those who lack integrity, producing a culture dominated by what Scott Peck calls “the people of the lie.” As a companion piece I intend to post today on this blog notes, when people of the lie begin to control and institution, that institution’s fate is sealed.

I’m afraid we live in such a culture now in the U.S. And I am not sure we can climb out of the pit into which we have dug ourselves, by our willingness to hear lies for so long now, and not challenge them. The endemic nature of the assault on basic truth in our culture is so deep that determining the integrity of a prospective leader is now exceedingly difficult. Even the very sources that purport to seek unvarnished truth in our political process, and to purvey it to the rest of us—the media—are seldom characterized by a strong regard for integrity. Or dominated by people whose integrity is self-evident—people willing to pay the price to tell uncomfortable truth that we don’t want to hear.

As an educator, I can say (sadly) of my own profession that it, too, often fails today in its responsibility to serve the public by fostering the values necessary for civil society to work effectively, by producing leaders with a strong sense of integrity, and by offering students leaders of integrity as role models. This is a motif emerging in analysis of the ongoing problems at the University of Central Arkansas, which I’ve previously discussed on this blog.

Those problems increasingly center on the president and board of trustees of UCA. That is, people’s awareness of where the problems at UCA lie is now focused squarely on the top leaders of the university.

And on the issue of integrity. As journalist and political commentator John Brummett notes in a piece about UCA published today for the Arkansas News Bureau, though the numbers look good at UCA (a rise in US News & World Report rankings, more students, increased revenue), serious questions about the integrity of president Lu Hardin now threaten to undermine his effectiveness and credibility, and thus of the institution itself (http://arkansasnews.com/archive/2008/08/26/JohnBrummett/347650.html).

Brummett sees Hardin’s damning sin not as lying to the media, creating his own little fiefdom at UCA, or violating state FIA laws. In Brummett’s view, the action that most radically calls into question Hardin’s integrity (and, implicitly, the board of trustees’, if they fail to act decisively) is his having created a memo arguing for secrecy in a board-approved pay raise, and then having typed the names of three vice-presidents at the bottom of the memo.

Brummett’s analysis focuses squarely on Hardin’s egregious lapse of integrity, then, and what it is going to do to the university he leads, if the board of trustees does not act. In Brummett’s view, the outcome that will serve UCA’s best interests and place it back on track as an effective (which is to say, values-oriented) institution of higher learning is the board’s insistence that Hardin step down.

These are issues I’ve long thought about in my own work in higher education—and written about. At one of the institutions at which I have served as academic vice-president, I wrote a guide to effective academic leadership. The list of attributes begins with integrity.

I began my analysis of academic leadership with integrity because, in my view, it is the foundational virtue for effective leadership. Without integrity, everything a leader does is vitiated from the outset. If a leader lacks integrity—in particular, if a leader deliberately deceives those she or he leads—everything the leader does will be undermined by the lack of conformity between what is professed and what is acted out. As my document “Leadership in Academic Life” notes,

Integrity is about making our example conform to the message we preach. It is about harmony between the words we say and the actions we take. Leaders of high integrity stand by their words. They do not make promises they are unable to keep. They do not make statements that fail to conform to the truth. In cases in which not every piece of information is able to be disclosed, leaders exercise critical judgment about when to speak and when not to speak: leaders do not disclose information that violates the confidentiality of others, or that might potentially damage the College. At the same time, when they do choose to speak, they back up their words with appropriate action that illustrates conformity of behavior to words.

I address these issues, as well, in a document I had the privilege of writing collaboratively several years ago with the current president of Bethune-Cookman University in Florida, Trudie Kibbe Reed, when she hired me to co-author a document to be used in creating a master’s program in leadership for BCU. In that document, entitled “Transformative Leadership: A Conceptual Framework and Application,” Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed and I note that values must be front and center for leaders, because many recent studies demonstrate that a lapse of values on the part of an institution’s leader impairs the effectiveness of the entire institution. Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed and I state:

Recent developments in many organizations demonstrate that the inability of an organization and its leaders to meet ethical challenges forthrightly undermines the organization’s effectiveness. Lack of ethical sensitivity and practice results in lost income and courts legal penalties that deplete an organization’s resources.

Whether in the non-profit or for-profit sector, organizations are by their very nature mission-driven and mission-oriented . . . . Accrediting bodies for institutions of higher learning are increasingly emphasizing an institution’s conformity to its mission statement, as accreditation or re-accreditation is considered.

Along with the increasing emphasis on the centrality of a mission to both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations has come an understandable emphasis on the need to develop institutional leaders who have strong values and the ability to understand and implement the mission of their organization. Unfortunately, the ability of institutions of higher learning to adapt to the challenge of producing values-oriented leaders of strong character has not always kept apace with the demand for such leaders. Some educational analysts have suggested that perhaps both undergraduate general education core curricula and the professional-training components of undergraduate programs have been too narrowly devoted to preparing graduates to meet the demands of a specific job. Too little attention is paid to character development and inculcation of leadership skills—though these should be strongly embedded across the curriculum in institutions of higher learning.

I am delighted that this document is now used as an introductory text in the master’s program for leadership at Bethune-Cookman University.

In another (unpublished) text I wrote at an institution at which I previously did administrative work in the field of academic affairs, I put the point this way:

A respect for basic human dignity—particularly in a faith-based institution—demands that people be told the truth. It is demeaning in the extreme to communicate untruths to others. Such behavior objectifies a human being, turning that person into an object rather than a human subject with human dignity and rights.

The preceding statement was a reflection on something I myself experienced in the institution in question. I made the statement in a letter I chose for various reasons not to send. As the letter itself notes, in the polity of this church-owned university, administrators work at the good pleasure of the president, so there is no appeals process for administrators who find themselves subject to discriminatory treatment—though, when administrators also have faculty appointments, as I myself did, and are not given written evaluations (as I was not) or recourse to an academic grievance process, the university is violating key academic freedom stipulations of accrediting bodies.

In my case, the situation to which I was struggling to respond was this: an outside consultant had been brought in to work with my division. Prior to the interview, I was told by an administrator who is second in the chain of command at the university that the consultant would meet only with me, my associate, and the person heading our accreditation preparation committee.

When I met with the consultant, I discovered that he had been told to meet with the entire academic team reporting to me, to do an "evaluation" of my work (one I was never allowed to see). Though that "evaluation" was about an hour in length, and the consultant had never met me and showed abysmal ignorance of my career (and of the accrediting standards he was supposedly expert in), the "evaluation" was used to remove me from my position and eventually to terminate me.

Here is how my unsent letter described the effect of having been lied to on me and my work:

Because the disparity between what I was told prior to the interview process and what actually occurred in it is so stark, and because the process itself violated my human dignity by subjecting me to a performance evaluation without informing me in advance of any shortcomings in my performance or allowing me to prepare a defense against allegations based on false information, I find myself challenged to know how to represent this faith-based university in any public setting.

I am strongly committed to the values of this [name of owning church omitted] Church university. In my view, how I have been treated in recent weeks violates those values in a very egregious way. As a result, I am deeply divided inside myself about appearing as a public representative of an institution that violates the core values of the church communion and university community it represents. I do not know how to participate now in public ceremonies until it has been made clear to me why I have been demeaned, and why core principles of honesty, integrity, and respect for fundamental human rights have been contravened in my case.

To add insult to injury, when I reported to the two top administrators of this university something the consultant told me in the interview, they accused me of distorting the truth, and informed me that they had called the consultant and verified that he did not tell me what I reported what he had said. When I refused to back down and insisted (in writing) that we both be given a lie-detector test to determine who was telling the truth, they informed me they had called the consultant again, who now admitted having said what I maintained, but who qualified the statement as saying something to the “effect of” what I was repeating. Again, a written request for a lie detector test did not result in any action on the part of the two top administrators of the university.

Discovering that someone who heads a church-based university will lie to you is devastating. Perhaps I am naïve. But I care about the truth. Caring about truth is, ostensibly at least, what brings anyone to the field of teaching. As a theologian, if I am not dedicated to truth-seeking, then what possibly motivates me in my vocation?

And because I care, I keep repeating my bottom lines. Bottom line: institutions of higher learning absolutely cannot produce students with a keen sense of values unless they are led by presidents and boards of trustees who model the values the institution seeks to impart to students. And second bottom line: under the social contract governing the role of higher education in American culture at large, a core responsibility of higher education is to produce citizens and professionals with solid values and the ability to make sound ethical judgments.

Unfortunately, for those of us who are (openly) gay, it is an uphill battle, in conflict situations in which the leader of a church or a church-based institution denies the validity of what we report, when the report is inconvenient. Churches and their constituents still all too often automatically give the benefit of the doubt to anyone other than the employee who is (openly) gay. They all too often automatically assume that gay people are malicious, bent on undermining Christian institutions, and unable to be truthful.

They are also all too often willing to use their financial and public-relations clout, as well as ugly, immoral tricks, to "neutralize" a gay person who raises questions about their integrity as leaders. Churches and the institutions they sponsor have incredible power to do damage control to disguise the lack of integrity of their leaders, and to vilify those who come up against these leaders, particularly when the employee who is proving to be a thorn in the side for corrupt leaders is (openly) gay.

But, if we believe in truth, we keep on telling it, in season, out of season, until enough people who both cares and can do something to make a difference listen.

Don't we?

What's the Matter with Florida?!

To borrow from the title of Thomas Frank’s outstanding 2005 book about the tendency of heartland voters to vote against their own economic interest in voting neo-conservative: what’s the matter with Florida?

As I’ve noted before on this blog, Steve and I own a house in Florida that we’d druther not have bought, and which we bought by being foolish enough to respond to empty promises about tolerance and inclusion on the part of someone who is, sadly, unable to tolerate and include openly gay people in her life.

What happened to us when we believed those empty promises and went to Florida to assist a “friend” who turned out not to be a friend, and now the added fact of owning a house in Florida—this gives us an interest in what is happening in a community in whose history and future we are now implicated despite our own wishes.

Consequently, I follow Florida news—especially news about the fate of LGBT people in a state I found to be aggressively homophobic, though I also know many wonderful folks there—with avid interest. I’m interested today in reports that are everywhere on blog sites, about a St. Petersburg Democratic legislator, Darryl Rouson, who states, “I think that lesbianism and homosexuality is morally wrong and the law's supposed to discriminate sometimes” (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=923673E8FBB802245E9AA344D5881F0F?diaryId=6404; www.bilerico.com/2008/08/disturbing_video_the_law_supposed_to_dis.php;
www.towleroad.com/2008/08/florida-democra.html).

Rep. Rouson made that astonishing statement in a 2006 television interview in which he addressed the issue of gay adoption. In the interview, Rouson proposes that children raised in households headed by same-sex parents suffer psychological damage.

As the blogsites referenced above indicate, Rep. Rouson is now trying to back off his inflammatory statements, perhaps because he is in a tight race for his seat. His opponent, also a Democrat, Charles McKenzie, is a Baptist minister who happens to be for gay equality and opposed to attempts to forbid adoption rights to gay couples.

Both men are also, as it happens, African American—a fact that makes Rep. Rouson’s statement that “the law's supposed to discriminate sometimes” particularly odious. When people who experience discrimination turn around and discriminate against other marginalized groups—when people who oppose discrimination advocate it for others who are denied rights—those discriminatory people totally undermine their own claims to justice.

I haven’t seen anyone reporting on this, but it seems to me that Rep. Rouson’s claims that children raised by same-sex parents suffer psychological damage makes his own track record as a parent fair game for those who find his claim about same-sex parenting to be bigoted balderdash. I find on the website of Bob Andelman a 2003 assessment of Rouson as a lawyer (a very positive assessment) that has disturbing information about his own parental role modeling and commitment to family values.

Rouson has been married three times. His second wife died tragically of breast cancer. The first marriage ended in divorce due to Rouson’s drug habits—and led to a long-standing estrangement between him and his daughters of that marriage. To his credit, Rouson has gone through rehab for his drug habits, which reappeared as his second wife died. He is now married for the third time.

My point in bringing up this biographical information is quite simply as follows: when someone claims that children are automatically psychologically damaged by living in a household headed by same-sex parents, but when that same someone has had a failed marriage due to drug abuse, and when that failure has resulted in estrangement from his own children, it would seem fitting for that someone to look at the possibility that heterosexual marriages can inflict psychological damage, before attacking the marriages of same-sex couples.

Rouson is not the only high-profile Florida political leader to weigh in on gay rights issues as the state faces a vote to add a ban to gay marriage to its constitution. Recently, Governor Charlie Crist stated that he supports the proposed amendment banning gay marriage (www.ocala.com/article/20080805/NEWS/808052035/1402/NEWS&title=Crist_says_he_ll_support__tax_swap__vote_in_November).

Yes, Charlie Crist. Yes, that Charlie Crist. Yes, the “longtime bachelor” who announced his engagement (the spouse-to-be is Carole Rome) on 4 July, as rumors abounded that he was being vetted by John McCain for the vice-presidential slot.

As I’ve said before on this blog, what an opportunity the churches in Florida have today to teach basic civic virtues such as tolerance, inclusion, respect for everybody and in particular for the marginalized, open conversation about civic matters in which everyone has a place at the table). What an educational opportunity the churches have in a state in which homophobia continues to trouble Florida communities, and even manifests itself in ugly incidents of violence.

And with that opportunity, what a marvelous model Florida churches have in the town-hall meetings developed by the prophetic African-American leader and founder of a Methodist college, Mary McLeod Bethune. In this period following a United Methodist General Conference in which the United Methodist Church challenges its member churches and the institutions they sponsor, what could be more appropriate than for the Methodist bishop of Florida, Timothy Whitaker, and the president of the university Dr. Bethune founded, Trudie Kibbe Reed, to re-institute Dr. Bethune’s town-hall meetings—with a particular focus on the issue of educating about and including gay, lesbian, and transgendered citizens of the state in civic life?

Churches place great (and understandable) emphasis on reaching the culture in a transformative way. This is a hallmark of Methodism in particular. When social need is great, and when models to meet that need are embedded in institutions sponsored by a particular church, it seems unthinkable that the church would not consider adapting those models to meet contemporary social needs, doesn't it? Particularly so, when churches wish to be taken seriously as they talk about their mission and values . . . .

Hate Crime in Daytona Beach: The Continuing Pertinence of Mary McLeod Bethune

News of a horrible hate crime in Daytona Beach. According to Mark I. Johnson and Seth Robbins, “Driver Charged with Hate Crime after Bicyclist Run Down,” yesterday Thomas Darryl Cosby was charged with a hate crime after he deliberately ran down an African-American woman the day before (www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD02EAST071608.htm). Simply because she is black.

The allegation is that, Monday evening, Cosby ran his sedan off the street in Daytona Beach, careening into Mekeda Cato, who suffered a badly broken leg and internal injuries. His car then crashed, at which point, Cosby emerged from it, inciting bystanders to racial violence and shouting that African Americans should be returned to Africa.

This story catches my attention for a number of reasons. First, it’s a story illustrating the violence to which minority communities are still all too frequently subjected. And when such events occur, news coverage is often spotty and localized. We all, as part of the body politic, need to listen more carefully to the stories told by members of various minority communities about violence to which they are subjected, simply because they belong to a marginalized group.

Second, Steve and I lived for over a year in Port Orange, which happens to be where Mr. Cosby also lives. In fact, we own a house there, one we have been unable to sell, since we acquired it as a result of promises made to us that were revoked after we made the crucial decision to put ourselves in debt by purchasing the house.

So I feel a certain personal connection with this story. We often biked along the sidewalks of this city and neighboring ones, including Daytona Beach.

Third, as readers of this blog know, I have a very strong interest in the life and work of that important 20th-century African-American educator, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. Dr. Bethune founded a college in Daytona Beach, now known as Bethune-Cookman University.

As various postings on this blog have noted, Dr. Bethune developed a powerful pedagogical theory underscoring the links between education and participatory democracy. As did Bayard Rustin, the African-American Quaker thinker-activist whose work I have also cited frequently, Dr. Bethune considered American democracy unfinished business.

Both of these prophetic black leaders noted that democracy is an ideal that has not yet been fully realized. Both maintained that democracy will be realized—will be extended, will move from ideal to real—as the body politic recognizes that some groups within our society are disenfranchised and must be brought to the table.

Both Dr. Bethune and Bayard Rustin stressed the need for safe spaces in which marginal communities can come together with the mainstream community for dialogue, interaction, and development of a vision of the common good that will serve the needs of all. Dr. Bethune built such town-gown meetings into the educational philosophy and practice of the college she founded.

In these meetings, Dr. Bethune modeled the kind of inclusivity that she challenged American democracy to develop. Dr. Bethune’s town-gown meetings gave no privileged place to any group. In a time and place in which whites were expected to occupy seats of honor and blacks to sit at the back of the room, Dr. Bethune opened her doors to everyone, with the provision that people sit where they could find seating.

By eradicating preferential seating—a radical act in the time and place in which she lived—Mary McLeod Bethune demonstrated to her community what participatory democracy is all about: it’s about bringing everyone to the table, providing an equal place for everyone, and listening respectfully to everyone across lines that divide us. Dr. Bethune’s town-gown meetings abolished the lines that divide, at least for the space of the meeting itself.

In the leadership team she developed for her college, Dr. Bethune also sought to model such inclusivity and such abolition of racial lines. Dr. Bethune’s leadership team deliberately brought together people from across racial lines. She stressed the need for her students to be taught by people from all racial backgrounds, from all walks of life, since they would be functioning in a pluralistic society.

As the story from Daytona Beach that begins this posting illustrates, Florida still struggles, along with the rest of the nation, to build participatory democracy. Racial divisions remain strong in Daytona Beach, and in many parts of Florida.

As I have noted before, Bishop Timothy Whitaker, bishop of the Florida United Methodist Conference which sponsors Bethune-Cookman University, has a premier chance today to develop a model that would put into practice the recent UMC General Conference’s challenge to Methodists to educate themselves and others about discrimination. The university founded by Mary McLeod Bethune, which is under Bishop Whitaker’s pastoral jurisdiction, offers a rich opportunity for Bishop Whitaker and Florida Methodists to develop workshops and educational programs that explore marginalization and its effects in Florida communities.

With the heritage bequeathed by its founder, Bethune-Cookman University can continue to play a significant role in modeling participatory democracy and in educating for participatory democracy both locally and internationally. The recent decision of the United Methodist Church to place the current president of Bethune-Cookman University, Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, on its University Senate is another opportunity for Dr. Bethune's university to demonstrate to the church at large what Dr. Bethune’s legacy means in practice. Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed is a distinguished African-American educator and a Methodist leader. Her placement on this important Methodist university body holds much promise to bring the legacy of Dr. Bethune into a wider community.

As the story of Mr. Cosby’s horrific assault on Ms. Cato indicates, we have much work to do—and Florida has much work to do—to overcome violence against minorities in our communities. What better way to begin the process than by following the path set before us by Mary McLeod Bethune—by developing safe spaces to bring various communities together for dialogue; by developing inclusive structures of educational leadership that model the kind of inclusivity we seek to teach students; and by moving our churches’ rhetoric about social healing beyond the rhetorical level to actual practice?

And, it goes without saying, such new models of educational leadership in church-sponsored colleges and universities absolutely have to deal with questions of marginalization due to sexual orientation. I’m reminded of this crucial need in Florida by a recent email I received from Chuck Wolfe, president of Victory Fund, a Florida political organization committed to pursuing rights for the LGBT community in Florida.

The email I received begins by stating,

Not every state with a big LGBT community is friendly to LGBT rights. Take Florida – where it’s still legal to fire employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity alone. Gays and lesbians also can’t adopt, and committed same-sex couples have zero partnership rights.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence then that Florida is the largest state to have never elected an openly LGBT state legislator.

There’s work to do in Florida. I’m pleased that the school founded by Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune is on the scene, continuing to embody the ideals of Dr. Bethune. I encourage Bishop Whitaker and Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed to continue developing Dr. Bethune’s educational model for a local community in which the need is obviously so acute. With the historic first represented by Mr. Obama's bid for the presidency, we have a chance today for a renewed dialogue about race (and other forms of marginalization) in American democracy. Institutions like Bethune-Cookman University, with the rich legacy of Mary McLeod Bethune, have a singular opportunity to contribute to this dialogue.

UMC University Senate: Historic New Appointment

Exciting news from a United Methodist University in Florida. Readers of this blog will be aware of an historically black Methodist university in Florida, Bethune-Cookman University, because I have posted a number of times about its prophetic founder Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, one of the premier African-American women leaders of the 20^th century.

In a 20 May press release on its website, Bethune-Cookman University announces that its current president, Trudie Kibbe Reed, has just been elected to the prestigious United Methodist University Senate (www.cookman.edu/press_releases/PR052008.asp). As the press release indicates, the University Senate plays an important role by overseeing all United Methodist institutions of higher learning, assuring that they “meet the criteria to be institutions affiliated with the United Methodist Church.”

The press release notes Dr. Reed’s distinguished background within the governing structures of the United Methodist Church, adding that “her election to the University Senate marks Dr. Reed’s return to the UMC . . . .” According to the press release, Dr. Reed has served as the General Secretariat (“comparable to CEO”) of the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women in the United Methodist Church.

The statement concludes by noting, “This is a prestigious honor for both Dr. Reed and Bethune-Cookman University.” Indeed. As the caption beneath Dr. Reed’s picture on her welcome page on the Bethune-Cookman website proclaims, “It is not enough to talk about the accomplishments of Mary McLeod Bethune. We have a responsibility to take that legacy and make a difference.”

And, as a posting of mine on this blog on 17 May entitled “Democracy: Ongoing Battle, Shifting Faces,” notes, Dr. Reed’s website welcome statement stresses the “rich legacy” Dr. Bethune has bequeathed to her university—in particular, her stress on “democratizing society through civic engagement and academic excellence.” As my posting on the ongoing battle for democracy indicates, throughout Dr. Bethune’s writings, there runs a constant insistence that the American democratic experiment is ongoing: we can never stop struggling to bring everyone to the table—especially those shoved away in our own time and place by structures of marginalization.

As my postings on Dr. Bethune have maintained, I can think of few places more appropriate for exploring the ravages of sexism, racism, and homophobia—all social ills the United Methodist Church professes to address—than Bethune-Cookman University. The university transmits a noble heritage: Dr. Bethune’s appeal to her followers to keep analyzing each new cultural context at each new point of history, to identify who is shoved from the table here and now. This appeal reflects a concern entirely appropriate for a United Methodist institution, because of the strong commitment of the United Methodist Church to social justice: this is Dr. Bethune’s concern to bring to the table of participatory democracy those excluded here and now, at each moment of history, in each unique cultural context.

Mary McLeod Bethune’s commitment to ongoing democratization of American society could not be more appropriate for a United Methodist institution of higher learning, given the UMC’s commitment to social and economic justice, equality for all, a place at the table for all, as well as its commitment to fight discrimination and violence in all their manifestations, including racism, sexism, and homophobia. As I have noted previously, it is even more appropriate that a United Methodist university in Florida undertake the mission of educating people to identify and eliminate manifold forms of discrimination and social violence, given the state’s recent history, in which brutal attacks on LGBT citizens occur with disturbing regularity, and in which the homeless are being assaulted regularly by teens around the state.

For these reasons, I am delighted at the election of Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed to the United Methodist University Senate. Surely this election signals a strong commitment on the part of the United Methodist Church—particularly in its Southeastern Jurisdiction, whose bishops put Dr. Reed’s name into the hat for this position—to involve the church in more intentional educational initiatives against racism, sexism, and homophobia.

As I have noted, the University Senate of the United Methodist Church exists to assure that United Methodist institutions of higher learning meet the criteria of all institutions affiliated with the United Methodist Church. These criteria include the important, much-cherished Social Principles of the United Methodist Church.

The University Senate’s foundational document “Marks of a United Methodist Church-Related Academic Institution” states, “A Church-related institution recognizes the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church and seeks to create a community of scholarship and learning which facilitates social justice” (www.gbhem.org/site/c.lsKSL3POLvF/b.3871459).

A community of scholarship and learning which facilitates social justice: a noble task! This “mark” of a United Methodist institution requires that United Methodist colleges, universities, and seminaries embody the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church in their own institutional life. In this way, the Social Principles are transmitted first to the university community itself, shaping a community of scholars bound together by a commitment to social justice, and then to the surrounding community. The community of scholars committed to the shared goal of social justice becomes a premier teaching tool for how the United Methodist Church models social justice for the world in its own institutional life.

Among key United Methodist Social Principles that the University Senate must assure that all its institutions embody, model, and practice in their own institutional life are the following:

▪ Primary for us is the gospel understanding that all persons are important—because they are human beings created by God and loved through and by Jesus Christ and not because they have merited significance (§161, Book of Discipline).

▪ We insist that all persons, regardless of age, gender, marital status, or sexual orientation, are entitled to have their human and civil rights ensured (ibid.).

▪ Homosexual persons no less than heterosexual persons are individuals of sacred worth. All persons need the ministry and guidance of the church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self . . . . We implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons (ibid.).

▪ We reject the use of violence by either party during collective bargaining or any labor/management disagreement. We likewise reject the permanent replacement of a worker who engages in a lawful strike (Book of Discipline, §163).

▪ We support rights of workers to refuse to work in situations that endanger health and/or life without jeopardy to their jobs (ibid.).

▪ We hold governments responsible for the protection of the rights of the people to . . . . petition for redress of grievances without fear of reprisal . . . . (Book of Discipline, §164).

▪ Therefore, we recognize the right of individuals to dissent when acting under the constraint of conscience and, after having exhausted all legal recourse, to resist or disobey laws that they deem to be unjust or that are discriminately enforced (ibid.).

The Social Creed with which the Social Principles ends is eloquent in articulating the basic rights of workers: “We believe in the right and duty of persons to work for the glory of God and the good of themselves and others and in the protection of their welfare in so doing; in the rights to property as a trust from God, collective bargaining, and responsible consumption; and in the elimination of economic and social distress.”

I have highlighted statements in the United Methodist Social Principles that have strong bearing on the place of gay employees in United Methodist institutions of higher learning. At this point in history, if the United Methodist Church wishes to be true to its Social Principles, it cannot avoid scrutinizing those Principles and their implications for how United Methodist institutions behave towards LGBT members of academic communities.

Since the University Senate exists to assure that United Methodist institutions of higher learning abide by Methodist criteria, including “marks” of these criteria such as the Social Principles, I am assuming that as a new member of the University Senate, Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed will look carefully at each United Methodist college and university to see how that college/university enshrines the Social Principles. I encourage her and other Senate members to pay particular attention to how LGBT members of the community are treated, in light of the Social Principles.

If the Social Principles actually govern the institutional life of a Methodist institution of higher learning, it will accomplish the following:

▪ It will have public, stated policies in its official documents (normally the University catalogue) forbidding discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

▪ Such statements will be not merely verbal, but will be observed in the practice of the institution: in its hiring and firing procedures, in its process of evaluating employees, in the behavior of supervisors of these employees, in the university community, among the leaders (including the President and Board of Trustees) of the university.

▪ When a United Methodist institution of higher learning hires an openly gay couple (and non-discrimination requires it to remain open to such a possibility), the institution must refrain from forbidding openly gay couples access to rights granted to heterosexual married couples at the institution: e.g., if married heterosexual couples in the institution are allowed to take each other to the doctor for medical visits, gay couples must be allowed the same rights without jeopardy to their jobs.

▪ The Social Principles’ mandate that work environments be safe for all employees will translate into vigilance within and a commitment by Methodist institutions to assure that openly gay employees are not targeted, harassed, or undermined by campaigns of lies by co-workers. The commitment to maintain a safe work environment will also require all supervisors to refrain from discrimination and from use of demeaning stereotypes (e.g., gay men “pout” or engage in “temper tantrums”) in supervising openly gay employees.

▪ If openly gay employees experience and then complain of discriminatory treatment by co-workers or a supervisors—even if that supervisor is the president herself—there must be a transparent and professional grievance process that allows prejudicial treatment of gay/lesbian employees to be addressed openly and fairly, without fear of reprisal or loss of employment by those workers.

▪ Public, officially stated non-discrimination policies should extend to an institution-wide commitment to refrain from all discriminatory or prejudicial behaviors, including open use of hateful language or demeaning stereotypes, the invitation to a campus of speakers engaging in such hateful behavior, etc.

▪ The commitment to producing a safe work environment and a community embodying the virtues of social justice must translate into active support by the leaders of United Methodist institutions of higher learning for initiatives of gay/lesbian workers to create forums in which issues of sexual orientation and discrimination may be addressed openly, respectfully, and without fear of reprisal, as well as support for initiatives to form groups offering assistance and a place to be safe and visible for gay students, staff, faculty, and administrators. The leaders of United Methodist institutions must also provide active support for educational initiatives for all employees of their institutions regarding gay/lesbian issues.

▪ In states or communities that do not afford gay workers any legal protection from unjust dismissal on grounds of sexual orientation, and in states with “right-to-work” labor laws, the Social Principles mean nothing at all in the institutional life of a Methodist college/university, unless there is a specific, stated, public policy protecting the rights of openly gay workers from firing simply due to sexual orientation.

▪ When openly gay employees are hired by a United Methodist institution in such a state or community and then are fired, there is a strong a priori obligation on the part of the governing board of the institution to investigate the circumstances of the firing, even when the ostensible reason for the firing is not sexual orientation. This the case a fortiori when the employee in question has not had a job evaluation—an action that violates not only United Methodist Social Principles, but the principles of accreditation of academic institutions, and so places the institution's accreditation in jeopardy.

Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed definitely has her work cut out for her in her new position on the University Senate. If United Methodist institutions proclaim to the world social justice tenets that they do not practice in their own institutional life, the social justice teaching of the church is entirely vitiated. It comes to mean nothing at all for those to whom it is proclaimed, since the most effective sermon the churches preach is the one they themselves live.

As the preamble to the Social Principles state, all of the Social Principles are premised on affirmation of “the inestimable worth of each individual.” On the basis of that affirmation, the Social Principles call on Methodists to create “nurturing communities” in which each and every human being, regardless of how God has made her or him, has a safe social space in which to achieve self-worth, a place in which he or she may work and realize his/her talents, make a social contribution, and receive respect that affirms that God-given worth in the self-concept of the individual.

When Methodist institutions fail to offer such a nurturing community to some employees—and they do, unfortunately, in the case of gay human beings today—then one is tempted to conclude that the Social Principles are merely rhetorical, a window dressing to gloss over the church's lack of commitment to justice in its own institutional life. One is tempted to conclude that they have no real bearing on how United Methodist institutions and their leaders behave. One is tempted to conclude that United Methodist institutions do not really believe in the "inestimable worth" of LGBT human beings, and therefore do not recognize the cruelty of excluding such human beings from social life and from the opportunity to participate and give, by refusing to hire such human beings or by unjustly dismissing them from employment (access to health care, access to a livelihood, access to community life, access to the respect of others and to self-respect, etc.).

As an African-American woman, Dr. Reed will, I suspect, be aware of the way in which prejudice has often been disguised by rhetorical smokescreens throughout history—even (and perhaps notably) by Christian institutions—and she will, I feel sure, bring to her University Senate work a strong commitment to moving beyond rhetoric to real justice for all. With this new appointment, we can surely look for the University Senate to make strides towards prophetic embodiment of the Social Principles in Methodist institutions of higher learning, particularly in the treatment of LGBT members of Methodist academic communities.

As a leader of a university, Dr. Reed will be aware, as well, that there is another reason for the University Senate to monitor strenuously the treatment of LGBT persons in Methodist colleges and universities. This has to with accreditation expectations of bodies overseeing the professional training of various programs within the university.

As I have noted in a previous posting on this blog, the accreditation body for teacher education programs—the National Council of Accreditation for Teacher Education (NCATE)—has enacted requirements that, in order to be accredited, all teacher education programs must not only teach students about tolerance and respect for LGBT persons, but must model such tolerance and respect in how faculty members treat each other. Increasingly, accrediting bodies look askance at universities and colleges—even church-affiliated ones—in which homophobic behavior is tolerated or encouraged, and the accreditation of institutions that practice or permit homophobic behavior will be threatened.

These are important concerns for the region of the country that has placed Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed in the University Senate—the Southeastern Jurisdiction. This is the area in which the highest proportion of the nation’s Methodists live. It is an area of the nation in which United Methodist colleges and universities are concentrated.

It is also the area of the country in which open resistance to gay and lesbian persons and their rights is perhaps most pronounced. The challenge—and opportunity—for Methodist churches and Methodist colleges/universities to address homophobia is perhaps nowhere so evident as in the American Southeast.

This is a challenge that I believe John Wesley would have relished, were he living today. It is a challenge that I also believe Dr. Reed’s predecessor Mary McLeod Bethune would have accepted with vigor. High hopes ride on Dr. Reed’s new appointment to the University Senate. I wish her Godspeed as she undertakes this charge.