Will They Come When You Call?
9 Pages Posted: 22 Aug 2012
Date Written: 2000
Abstract
This essay was written marking the completion of Hugh Macgill's extraordinarily successful term as Dean of the University of Connecticut School of Law. I believe the skills Hugh displayed in leading sophisticated teachers and students offer important lessons to our broader political community. I will make that case along the following lines. First, I will link the challenges to political authority that form a core part of our understanding of the Vietnam and Watergate era with intellectual developments in the legal academy that have marked the last twenty-five years. Second, I will explain how criticisms developed in the narrow context of legal analysis are particularly significant when viewed as challenges to conventional notions of leadership. Third, I will describe the rhetorical problems leaders face in seeking to overcome our collective loss of faith in core ideologies that might have served as rallying cries in earlier eras. Finally, I will detail four strategies available to solve the rhetorical challenge and link them back to my initial remarks concerning Hugh's style in leading the law school.
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