Hamad - The Case for American Power

Shadi Hamad's book, The Case for American Power (2025) is a perfect follow up to my last post about Greek history. Particularly relevant is that Greece is credited with the first attempt at democracy in 508-07 BCE. Hamad cites the worry Plato expressed in The Republic that "democracy encouraged maximum freedom and equality, which over time undermined cohesion and a sense of common purpose" (p. 75). Threat of maximum freedom among an increasingly diverse citizenry, challenges of meeting the wants/needs of a massive population, and a rising generation who never witnessed the devastation of autocracy gone wild, is pretty much America's dilemma today (I use America and United States interchangeably as does Hamad, knowing that "America" goes far beyond the territorial boundaries of the United States).

I know Hamad from his days as a staff member at the Brookings Institute in Doha, Qatar. Whenever he was on a panel, I made a point to go because I found his perspective fascinating. He is a Muslim American citizen of Egyptian family heritage with numerous reasons to be skeptical about the United States, particularly for its constant errors in handling Middle Eastern affairs. With all the reservations he might have, he sees the United States as the world's best bet as a significant and positive influence in world affairs.

Hamad's book was written before the 2nd Trump administration began to dismantle institutions of government and challenge norms of decision making and decorum. Knowing the fuller context of what Trump has done by summer of 2026, Hamad's somewhat generous review of Trump's conduct was jarring. But I understood that Hamad's book is not about Trump although Trump personifies the complexity of governing in today's world and particularly the growing tolerance for oligarch and autocracy.

Authoritarianism and its manifestations have been the subject of critique for generations. Machiavelli's 16th century assertion that in leadership it is better to be feared than loved was followed by Hobbes' belief that "individuals, acting in their own self-interest, would willingly surrender their natural rights" (p. 28). Relying on 20th century understanding of the relationship between power and social relations, Arendt "argued that power can be exercised with others only through cooperation and communication" (p. 29) which led to Nye's introduction of "soft power" where "coercion, bullying, and the use of force seemed both uncouth and gratuitous" (p. 29). "Autocrats understand, correctly, that freedom brings with it the opening of new possibilities" (p. 51) which is precisely the reason for their desperate attempts to control the narrative and actuality of their conduct. These are terrific lenses through which contemporary politics can be analyzed.

Hypocrisy is one of Hamad's most pointed criticisms of the United States. Particularly related to the Middle East, the U.S.A. has consistently served as a protector of Israel and therefore always chooses those who at least do not threaten it, regardless of the degree of their autocratic abuses of their own citizens. With Israel as well as most of America's foreign policy decisions, "For a nation, if not necessarily an individual, to be seen as hypocritical is the cost of trying to be moral" and, thus, "hypocrisy is a necessary component of a moral life" (p. 147). The interesting reflection about the United States under a Trump administration is that, although often claiming moral grounds, it is less hypocritical simply because the opaque grounds for its work are relatively easy to see through. Trump's behavior and foreign policy is simply transactional and intended to achieve his own or his oligarch partners' benefit. While attempting to serve multiple masters, Trump's greatest vulnerability may be trying to do too many things at once, many of which reflect "competing agendas that create inconsistency and incoherence" (p. 158).

Hamad's belief is that democracy as an ideal guarantees that there will be hypocrisy and plenty of it. The point is that the ideal was perhaps actualized for a brief period in Greece when it was a small and growing in its increasingly sophisticated view of its affairs and role in the world. Perhaps serving all people with fairness is impossible in the modern day. The problem with hypocrisy, which most people recognize comes in the political theater, is that the individual who is a hypocrite "is different because of his ostentatious morality, which is meant to obscure and deceive" (p. 128). The electoral competitions and controversies we now observe are replete with this dynamic, with candidates claiming the ability to solve difficult problems in short order with simple solutions. As raw populism and authoritarianism surge in the U.S. and around the world, increasing "polarization provides proof that American democracy is alive and well" (p. 113).

The self-doubt of many American citizens (i.e., oikophobia = "fear or hatred of home or one's own society," p. 62), reflected in citizen pride dropping from 69% in 2004 to 38% in 2022, is not helpful. Instead, Hamad pleas for American exceptionalism and a belief that "democracy, for all its faults, is clearly preferable to the alternative" (p. 91). "To say that America is always the villain is like saying that America is always a force for good; neither is true, and the impulses that drive these seemingly opposed claims are more similar than we night like to admit" (p. 153). Hamad declares in his "Introduction" that "America can change and improve on itself precisely because it is an idea... ideas are about aspiring toward -- and not losing hope in the possibility of -- something better" (p. 5). I take to heart Hamad's philosophy that in order to counter doubt "in life as well as in politics..., it's better to err on the side of ambition" (p. 18).

Beaton - A Global History of the Greeks

Did the Greeks really plant the seeds of democracy that some contemporary politicians idealize? What of the monumental Greek revival style buildings that grace many cultural and governmental centers throughout the world? What happened to the cultural foundations that archeologists have uncovered over the years?

These are questions addressed by Roderick Beaton in A Global History of the Greeks (2021). Beginning in 1500 BCE and ending in 2021, Beaton traces the roots and tendrils of Greek thought and culture through the ages and around the world. Mycenae, the Bronze age citadel, provides evidence of the first of these complex societies. Mycenaean warriors conquered Crete by 1450 and turned it into a blended culture between Minoan Crete and Greek-speaking mainland. This culture included an integrated economic structure that supported a population center greater than any that preceded it and fostered trade throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Some sort of systems collapse resulted in the decline of Mycenean dominance around 1200 BCE, signaled by its failure to conquer Troy, an important rival of the age. The population of mainland Greece fell by almost half and cultural and economic prosperity descended into a 'dark age' through 1000 BCE. The darkness lifted around 800 BCE as the Iron Age allowed the Greeks to again move further throughout the Mediterranean, establishing trade with Phoenicians and Etruscans.

Written records improved once the Greeks picked up Phoenician notation systems and combined them with Semitic signs that used "mnemonics for the respective sounds: alf, bet, and so on" (page 61) to form the alphabet. This alphabet improved communication to such a great degree that fields such as history, philosophy, and literature began to emerge. The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer (now understood as possibly multiple authors) are transcending evidence of the new importance of language and written records, acquiring a level of prominence almost equivalent to sacred scripture. As movie theaters await the introduction of the story of Odysseus in the summer of 2026, his long journey and its symbolization of a difficult quest will no doubt stir numerous conversations. It's important to recognize that these stories are of an imagined age of heroes rather than reflecting historical evidence.

The growing population centers on the coastlines of the Mediterranean came to be known as polis (poleis in plural) which can be translated as 'city-state.' With ceremonial and trade areas at their centers, the deliberation to organize citizens into a polis led to the idea of reasoned argument in politics (affairs of the people). The three forms of polis known to these settings were rule by one man (tyrannis), rule by the many (demokratia), or rule by the few (oligarchia). The "world's first functioning democracy is usually said to have been created in Athens during the years 508-507 BCE" (page 100). Adding to the richness of the poleis, authors/poets performed in private houses with food and drink (symposium) and philosophoi (lovers of wisdom) emerged for Greeks to look outward to the rest of the known world. A fascinating attempt to negotiate internal struggles and tensions in some of the new democratic institutions was a yearly vote by 'ostrakon" (painted sherd) whereby citizens could vote someone who they believed had been disruptive to be exiled (known to be the origin of 'ostracism').

The "classical age" of Greece from 494 to 404 BCE was an era of conflict as wars between and among Greek city-states and the distant Persians emerged. The Persian/Greek battle of Thermopylae ('hot gates'), struggles between Islam and Christianity, and other conflicts were in many ways a reprisal of the earlier struggles of Athens and Sparta. Resistance to Persian invasion can be seen as the beginning of what historically has been viewed as the conflict of a 'civilized west' and 'barbarous east'. During this age of conflict and perhaps stimulated by it, Socrates emerged as the great philosopher who engaged fellow citizens in dialogue on the purpose of life. For him, "the goal of all human beings was arete" (page 146) meaning 'goodness' and 'virtue'. To not explore this reason for being meant resigning oneself to an unexamined life, one not livable for a human being. Almost immediately after Socrates' death, Xenophon and Plato picked up his intellectual legacy. Isocrates extended their historical and philosophical musings into what would be recognized as identity, "understood as a set of values that anyone can aspire to attain" (page 171). Although a hereditary monarch, Phillip II, King of Macedonia, fully embraced these ideas, personifying the Hellenic ideal, and was responsible for an era that attracted painters, sculptors, and philosophers from Athens and other southern Greek cities to the north. Among the most notable was Aristotle who had studied with Plato and would become tutor to Phillip's son, Alexander. No doubt that Aristotle's teaching "that the goal of human life is 'so far as possible to become immortal and to strive in every way to live according to the finest thing that is in us," (page 195) contributed to the heroic aspirations of young Alexander. Influencing, conquering or enveloping numerous cultures along the way, Alexander the Great extended the influence of Hellenism to the farthest reaches of the known world of the day. This success of these notable thinkers and leaders is significant because it connects the importance of an examined life to an understanding of identity in a free society via the spread of Hellenic (e.g., Greek) culture through influence and battle.

Beaton traced the idea of Hellenism as it influenced Egypt, Asia, Africa, and Europe. Perhaps the most important influence was Rome as it expelled its last king in 109 BCE and defined its new state as res publica, a state belonging to the people. The rule of Augustus resulted in a 200-year pax romana that expanded continents and spread the ideal of Hellenism that Roman's had incorporated into their views of government and culture. The births of Jesus of Nazareth around 4 BCE and crucifixion in 30 BCE led to the emergence of Christianity. One of its central authors was Paul, whose letters are the oldest Christian texts and were written in Greek due to the continuing influence of Greece on language and culture. Perhaps because of these early Christian texts being in Greek, and their content challenging the abuses of the Roman empire, Christians at different times were persecuted or, under the rule of Constantine, embraced. Both the rejection and adherence to Christianity continued to be controversial and a threat to the Roman empire until its conclusion during the reign of Diocletian in 305 AD.

As I skip chapters that summarized centuries, and fast-forwarding to the present, Beaton declared that the present global movement across national boundaries may be larger and impacting more nation-states but, in some ways, it is not dissimilar from the inclination of Greeks from their earliest days 5,000 years ago.

In the "Epilogue" Beaton advised that, with half of those who consider themselves Greek living outside the Hellenic Republic, the story of Greece and its influence is not over. Perhaps the poem by Iranian refugee in Greece, Hiva Panahi, captures the journey of so many over so many generations (p. 505):

We the wandering, We the barefoot, We without space or country, We the burnt and fiery winds. We say you, with those final breaths, that burned a piece of the sea.

The realization that Greece had different forms of government in its early days of experimenting with democracy offers some solace for where democracy stands today. Perhaps most significantly, the fables we celebrate, the language we use, and the monuments that elude to days of old, are consoling and they represent the lingering impact of Greece in contemporary culture.

Leadership learning at a crossoads...

I recently participated in the International Leadership Association's webinar "What has changed? The Global Context Leadership Educators must face." This webinar recording link includes several of my ILA colleagues and is substantially based on the article I published last year - "Leadership Learning at a Crossroads: Adapting the ILA General Principles for a Changing World."

Publishing the article and participating in the webinar reflects the culmination of 50 years of exploring, researching, and theorizing about leadership and how to cultivate it in others. This journey has been a labor of passion and love allowing me to arrive at this moment in peace - I did all I could, I kept the faith that the work was worthwhile, and I shared with numerous wonderful colleagues along the way.

One of the things I've advocated most consistently is sharing the work of leadership cultivation across programs, disciplines, sectors, cultures, and every type of possible different perspective. My Crystal Ball... reflections confirm the importance of joint and complementary work and add insights I've gained related to international leadership that I shared at the Leadership Educators Institute of 2024.

The AI era is upon us and will require additional layers of capacity than we previously had, or sought to nurture through education of all sorts. The blog post on my other blog, Future proofing graduates, addresses how the current graduates of higher education can best prepare for a promising future. The Gemini 3 AI generated response to the question of future-proofing asserted that graduates will need to develop increasing metacognition agility, ethical discernment, empathic leadership, and fuller systems thinking and application. Complementing these ideas and driving them more deeply into the self-awareness required to thrive in the future, Otto Scharmer proposed that we are at a "new axial" in human experience. This new axial is at least as monumental as when humans moved from hunter-gatherers to communities of shared purpose and destiny.

I believe that the most powerful driver of dysfunction and discord today derives from one central issue - fear. Fear of change, fear of others, fear of not getting our fair share, fear of missing out, fearing the loss of meaning. Boiling down all that I've said or written to the central challenges of leadership, I believe that the primary purposes of our work are 1) deeper understanding of self, 2) honoring the interdependence of humanity, 3) optimism that there is enough, and 4) facing the future with hope.

Fairfield - Introducing Dewey

I have long been curious about John Dewey but after years of reading references to him, or reading things I thought surely were related, I picked up Paul Fairfield's Introducing Dewey (2024) to take a deeper dive. Fairfield's book provided excerpts from select publications and referenced other authors who noted Dewey to place him in context historically and philosophically, and explored the application of Dewey's ideas to ethics, liberal politics, education, religion, and aesthetics.

John Dewey received his undergraduate education at the University of Vermont (1879), pursued post-graduate studies at Johns Hopkins (1884), first joined the University of Chicago faculty from 1894-1904, and spent the rest of his academic career at Columbia University until his retirement in 1930. Philosophically, Dewey was decidely anti-positivist, seeing science as a constant process of exploration. Knowledge as an absolute was anathema to the idea of discovery and experiential learning which were foundational in the way Dewey viewed all fields. Dewey embraced a naturalistic and biological conception of "the living organism as fundamentally bound up with its environment and engaged continually in a myriad of interactions" (p. 8). The idea of "pragmatism" was imbedded in this view and proposed that "an idea may be defined in terms of the practical effects that the idea's object may be said to have" (p. 8) - a practical, applied, and purposeful way of ideating. The idea also contributed to the notion that specializations (i.e. "scientism") were confining and that a scholar ought to be a roving inquirer in search of understanding.

Dewey believed that "the entire life of the mind can be explained within a three-stage model of sensation, idea, and response" (p. 42). These three elements are the foundation for "reflective thinking" which "starts from the presence of a problem (sensation), and.... its first business is to become clear as to what the problem is and why it is a problem (ideation)" (p. 60). Experimental inquiry can then proceed to hypothesizing and testing with these two steps contributing to loop learning that refines knowledge, identifies new problems, and pursues the process yet again (response). Dewey preferred to call this cycle "instrumentalism" rather than pragmatism that was often used to describe his philosophy (p. 68).

Human experiences, whether empirical, ethical, educational, aesthetic, religious or otherwise, are "profoundly rooted in a social and linguistic world" (p. 45) according to Dewey. The heart of useful knowledge then becomes understanding the relationship between means and consequences. This premise inspired Fairfield to explore each of these areas in depth. Given my interest in wholistic and leadership learning, I choose to focus on education in this post.

"A precondition of a viable democratic order is an educated citizenry" (p. 129). This was the core idea expressed in Democracy and Education  (1916/1938). Dewey believed that the disconnection from students' experience, excessive information retention, and passivity were the primary challenges that had to be faced in democratic education. The alternative was classroom learning enhanced through inquiry and complemented by out-of-class experiences that resulted in continuous and integrated learning. He was not an "Ivory Tower" advocate nor a "student centered" learning proponent, believing that every learning interaction required teachers who guided rather than relying on independent exploratory activity by students. These ideas contributed to a view that "Liberty of mind, thought, inquiry, and discussion is not adjunct of education but an indispensable ingredient of it" (p. 152). John Dewey's Philosophy of Education reiterates the above points about education in a brief video.

In the subsequent chapters, Fairfield explored how Dewey's view of instrumental learning can transfer to domains such as politics, religion and aesthetics. Dewey advocated a similar process of discovery - sensation, idea, and response - in each of these areas. As an example, exposure in music can be a fluid, adapting, and increasingly complex area of learning. However, when exposure to music is limited, there may be an initial rejection of unfamiliar types of music. By contrast, new experiences can lead to new openness and exposure to the numerous types of music that one can enjoy. The initial sensation and ideation about something new then leads to expanding music listening preferences including styles, formats, and creators of diverse music. Consider how this idea might be applied to politics or religion and imagine how different individual and community dynamics in these areas might be.

My only disappointment with Fairfield's excellent integration of Dewey's contributions to multiple sectors was that student affairs work (commonly referred to as student personnel work in the early 20th century) was not mentioned at all in the education sector nor any other. As a student of higher education history who has written of Dewey as foundational to the field, it is both telling and disappointing that there was no recognition of Dewey's impact to how student affairs was shaped by and likely contributed to the preservation of Dewey's ideas in higher education. While I have not found reference to student affairs work, a very interesting article relating Islam to Dewey demonstrates how "instrumentalism" holds value in learning in other cultures beyond the West.

Fairfield's concluding chapter focused on Dewey's legacy, logging the broad implications and applications of his ideas in today's world. Dewey may have been eclipsed by some philosophers and educators in mid-20th century but many of his ideas are as applicable today as ever. Fortunate for those of us interested in exploring Dewey's ideas in greater depth, Southern Illinois University holds and has published Dewey's complete works. Perhaps the current crises in higher education will result in a return to core ideas of how learning can best be understood and hopefully Dewey's ideas will reemerge in these conversations.