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Conference
Digests
January 2004
In this issue ILF Fellow Harlan Cleveland leads the conference into
a profound and broad examination of Leadership in the 21st century.
In the section titled Roles, Titles and Hierarchy", Harlan opens
with: "There are four simple steps in my argument: Step #1: Nobody's
in charge. Therefore (Step #2) everybody has a chance to be partly
in charge. But (Step #3) most people will not, for one reason or
another, reach for that brass ring. Consequently, (Step #4) those
who do will find that they are "leaders." Harlan brings impressive
credentials to the task, having served in different positions with
three presidents, including Ambassador to NATO under Presidents
Johnson and Nixon and as Assistant Secretary of State for International
Organization Affairs in the Kennedy administration. A graduate of
Princeton University and a Rhodes Scholar, he was the University
of Hawaii's President (1969-74) and founding Dean of the University
of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
November
2003
Thist
issue features our conference on Rethinking Our Response to Islamist
Terrorism. The initial material was supplied by ILF Fellow Daniel
Yankelovich from a draft portion of the report he is preparing on
an alternative to the war on terrorism as an opening stimulus for
the conference. Dan is a noted pioneer in survey research, and through
his work in that field he has kept his finger on the pulse not only
the American public, but on the populations of other countries as
well. No one better understands the public's moods and trends. As
a result, Dan has become one of the most respected commentators
on current events. Dan's draft opens with. "As we continue to
pursue Al Qaeda, we must at the same time fashion a compelling message
to Muslims in general, and Islamists in particular, that lays out
the incentives for them to curb terrorism. We must send the Muslim
community a single, coherent message of unmistakable clarity and
cogency, backed up by consistent policy and action.".
October
2003
Technology & Leadership In
this edition of the Digest, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
leads the conference into an inquiry of the role Information Technology
plays in leadership at the strategy and decision-making levels.
Alex is a visiting scholar in the Science, Technology, and Society
program at Stanford University, and a research affiliate at Institute
for the Future, a think tank in Menlo Park. The author of Making
the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley, he also
serves on the Editorial Board of American Scholar (the official
journal of Phi Beta Kappa), and on the guiding committee of the
Woodrow Wilson Foundation's Unleashing the Humanities: The Doctorate
Beyond the Academy.
September
2003
Youth and Human Rights" In this edition of the Digest,
we direct our attention to the way in which adolescents are regarded
in the US and elsewhere. The conference was led by Mike Males,
a longtime social activist in the civil rights movements. Males
is now a Senior Researcher at the Center for Juvenile and Criminal
Justice in San Francisco, and a faculty member in the sociology
department at the University of California Santa Cruz. Currently
preparing a text on adolescent sociology, he has authored several
other books dealing with the subject of this conference, including
Kids and Guns: How Politicians, Experts and the Press Fabricate
Fear of Youth, Framing Youth: Ten Myths about the Next Generation,
and The Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents.
August 2003
Markets and Democracy: Is that All? In this edition of the
Digest, rather than focusing our attention on a specific social
issue, we are looking at the container itself - the system in which
all the issues arise. Douglass Carmichael,
psychoanalyst, policy consultant, Fellow
of the ILF, and
social critic led the conference.
Douglass works across institutions and organizations, locally and
internationally, on issues of the social consequences of economic
policy and the implications of future change for individual, social,
political, and organizational development. He brings to the discussion
a keen appreciation for the scope of the question and unflagging
energy as he challenges the idea that free markets and democracy
represent the end of history, the winning paradigm.
June 2003
"The Developing and Deepening Conflict" is actually an
amalgam of two conferences, "The Developing Conflict" and "The Deepening
Conflict", both centered in the unfolding of the conflict in Iraq.
The conference was led by Farhad (Fred) Saba, who was born
and raised in Iran, and formerly head of educational broadcasting
for that country. He is now a professor of educational technology
at San Diego State University. He brings to this discussion a deep
understanding of the Arab world, and his moderation is invaluable
as we probe legal, moral and ethical questions surrounding the conflict,
and examine the reactions of the world, possible implications for
the USA as a continuing member of the global community, and speculation
about the post-war future of Iraq.
May 2003
"The Inevitability and Desirability of Globalization," led
by Walter Truett Anderson, a distinguished political scientist
and social psychologist, president of the World Academy of Art and
Science, and the author, most recently, of All Connected Now: Life
in the First Global Civilization. If we consider globalization as
an ongoing process in which connections are made among systems that
were once relatively separate, and in which boundaries often change,
move, or disappear - and if it is a process that shows no signs
of stopping or even of slowing down - what do we do? How would we
think about US foreign policy in such a context? What can we do
about various environmental threats, or the well-being of people
in poor and/or relatively isolated areas? Those are just a few of
the many questions we tackle in this illuminating conference.
April
2003
The
Crisis in Public Education in the USA
Can America
hope to retain its position of global leadership if public education
fails? The crisis is real. The players in this perilous drama are
diverse - teachers, students, parents, community, government, business,
the "system" itself. Each vigorously pursues its separate agenda
and goals. Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Paul Houston,
Executive Director of the American Association of School Administrators,
the institution representing the 14,000 school superintendents,
leads the ILF Fellows in an illuminating exploration into public
education that is both disturbing and heartening.
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Interviews
January 2004
Interview
with Ray Alden
Until his retirement, Ray Alden served as one of America's top corporate
leaders. After graduation from Stanford, and Naval service, he began
his career as a professional radio engineer and spent most of it
in the telephone industry. At the Hawaiian Telephone Company he
was Chief Engineer and then Vice President, Operations. He was President
of United Telecommunications, Inc. (now renamed Sprint Corporation)
for eight years, then Vice Chairman for three years, remaining as
a director until 1987. He has served on the boards of several companies
and two years on the Telecommunications Advisory Board of the State
of California. Ray opens the interview with: "Recently, in an advertisement,
I saw a quotation attributed to Samuel Butler: "All animals, except
man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it." Our
economic culture is designed to make us dissatisfied, and to keep
us that way -- permanently. An enormous advertising industry is
dedicated to that task, and many enterprises depend upon such advertising
for their success.
November
2003
Interview with Harlan
Cleveland
ILF Fellow Harlan Cleveland has served in different positions with
three Presidents, including Ambassador to NATO under Presidents
Johnson and Nixon and as Assistant Secretary of State for International
Organization Affairs in the Kennedy administration. A graduate of
Princeton University and a Rhodes Scholar, he was the University
of Hawaii's President (1969-74) and founding Dean of the University
of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. He
is a Fellow and past President of the World Academy of Art and Science,
and a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Harlan Cleveland has authored hundreds of magazine and journal articles,
and eleven books, mostly on executive leadership and world affairs.
October
2003
Interview with Hallock Hoffman
After
college, ILF fellow Hallock Hoffman became a flight instructor,
and when WWII broke out, was given a commission in the Army Air
Corps, and spent the war teaching flying and ferrying planes to
the European theatre. In 1954 Hallock joined Robert Hutchins at
the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Republic. In 1974 he co-founded
the Fielding Institute, one of the most important graduate schools
in psychology and the social sciences, based mainly on distance
education. Along the way he was chairman of the Pacifica Foundation,
the parent of two of the leading public broadcasting stations. Our
interview with Hallock provides rich historical detail on the Marshall
plan, which his father headed, and on the Fund for the Republic.
September
2003
Interview with Douglas Strain
ILF fellow Douglas Strain,
is a top technologist/industiralist and the founding chairman of
ElectroScientific Industries in Portland, Oregon, a successful business
in laser technology, and a company highly regarded for its enlightened
management.He has received numerous awards including the Bausch
and Lomb National Science Award, Certificate of Achievement from
the Office of Scientitifc Research and Development and Northwest
Management Man of the Year. Our interview with Douglas provides
unique insight into what led him to a career in science, what has
shaped his company's success in management, and a glimpse of what
tehcnology of the future may hold in store for us
August
2003
Interview
with Gloria Feldt
President
and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Fellow
of the ILF Gloria Feldt,
is also the author of the recently
published, "Behind Every Choice Is A Story". The timing for this
interview coincides with several current events which have thrust
abortion to the front pages again. In this interview, Gloria reveals
the positive impact of planned parenthood on society and economics
globally, and sounds an alarm at the potential ramifications of
the abortion ban bill coming out of Congress.
June
2003
Interview with Ambassador Jivan Tabibian
Currently the Ambassador
of Armenia to Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, Jivan
Tabibian is a Princeton-educated political scientist, who became
interested in social design, serving on the faculties at USC, UCLA
and the California Institute of the Arts. In our interview, the
ambassador brings to our attention some of the subtleties of real
world politics as he discusses conditions of paradox, ambiguity,
ambivalence, contradiction, and even incoherence that underlie the
surface issues of free-markets, asymmetric power relations, and
uneven benefit/cost distribution of globalization. He shares an
astute awareness of how dominance vs. vulnerability creates concrete
conditions of unmanageable change, economic collapse, intra-state
violence and an international legal political system whose capacity
to adapt is seriously challenged.
May
2003
Interview
with Rushworth Kidder
Well known
through his many writings, Rush Kidder is President of the Institute
for Global Ethics, a longtime columnist for the Christian Science
Monitor, and a perceptive reporter and thoughtful analyst with vast
experience in tracking worldwide political, economic, and cultural
trends. In his book, "Shared Values for a Troubled World" Rush questioned
whether there is a common ground of values that could bring the
world's peoples together instead of driving them apart. He discovered
eight moral values that will shape our global future - Love, Truthfulness,
Fairness, Freedom, Unity, Tolerance, Responsibility, and Respect
for Life. Our interview opens with the suggestion that "we, the
peoples" are not living up very well to these "widely-held" moral
values.
April
2003
If
a survey were taken, Mary Douglas would appear on everyone's
short list of the great living anthropologists. Educated at Oxford,
she has long been on the faculty of the University of London. In
recent years she has had visiting professorships in the departments
of religion at Princeton and Northwestern. Her book, Purity and
Danger is only one of the classic texts she has contributed to the
field. The focus of the interview is our current concern about terrorism,
and how to better understand the threat we all seem to fear from
religious fundamentalism, not just from groups in the Middle East,
but also from the rapidly growing fundamentalist religions in the
US. Mary joined us from her home in London.
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Commentaries
January 2004
The Perilous Fragility of America
Dr. Richard Farson, psychologist, author, lecturer, and educator,
is co-founder and president of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute,
serving also as director of its International Leadership Forum.
He has been a Naval Officer, dean of the school of environmental
design at the California Institute of the Arts, president of Esalen
Institute, a faculty member of the Saybrook Graduate School and
Research Center, and a Fellow on the Human Relations Faculty of
the Harvard Business School. His recent books are the critically-acclaimed
bestseller, "Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership,”
now published in twelve languages, and, with co-author and ILF Fellow
Ralph Keyes, the highly praised “Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes
Wins: The Paradox of Innovation”. An article based on that book
won the McKinsey award for the best Harvard Business Review article
published in 2002, the one "most likely to have a major influence
on managers worldwide.
November
2003
The Dangers of “Moral Clarity”:
Ideals and Realities in American Foreign Policy
A
professor of history and humanities at Reed College
Edward B. Segel
received his A.B. degree in History from Harvard in 1960, and his
Ph.D. in History from the University of California at Berkeley in
1969. His courses include European Diplomatic History in the 19th
and 20th Centuries, War and Society in Europe from the 18th to the
20th Centuries, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and Modern British
History.
October 2003
Global
Citizenship
While the basic
idea of membership in a universal society that transcends all others
is as old as the Stoics of ancient Greece and Rome, Walter Truett
Anderson explores its revival today as part of a widespread
move toward new social contracts and new ways for people to understand
their political allegiances, rights and obligations. Walter Anderson
is a distinguished political scientist and social psychologist,
president of the World Academy of Art and Science, and the author,
most recently, of All Connected Now: Life in the First Global Civilization.
September
2003
Democracy and
Capitalism
John Hart is an ILF Fellow, and the president and CEO of PICO
Holdings, Inc., a globally diversified holding company. PICO seeks
to acquire businesses and interests in businesses that are identified
as undervalued - as based on the private market value of its assets,
earnings, and cash flow. Additionally, the business must have special
qualities such as unique assets, a potential catalyst for change,
or be in an industry with attractive economics. The primary objective
is to generate superior long-term growth in shareholders' equity.
Mr. Hart graduated from Pomona College with a degree in Economics.
In this concise commentary, John addresses, from a capitalist point
of view, the premise of last month's conference "Markets and Democracy:
Is that All?".
August
2003
A
Strategy for Curbing Islamist Terrorism
Daniel Yankelovich,
one of America's leading social scientists, is a major developer
of the field of survey research. His outstanding achievements in
that work, and the understanding of shifting public attitudes that
he has gained, have made him a highly respected figure in academic,
political and corporate circles. Founder of the well-known research
organization, Yankelovich, Skelly and White, and co-founder of the
nonprofit Public Agenda, Dan is now Chairman of Viewpoint Learning
— a company devoted to the use of dialogue in the search for
better solutions to challenging social problems. Author of many
books and articles, his most recent book is The Magic of Dialogue.
An ILF Fellow and WBSI Trustee, Dan has given us this excerpt from
a larger report he is preparing that describes an alternative approach
to the current war on terrorism.
June
2003
On The Media
James
Goldsborough. An award-winning author, journalist and political
correspondent, Goldsborough is well qualified to comment on the
media. The major portion of his career was spent in Europe as a
political columnist and European correspondent for the New York
Herald Tribune, as Paris bureau chief for Newsweek, and as European
Project Director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
For the past twelve years he has been foreign affairs columnist
for the San Diego Union-Tribune In this penetrating commentary,
Goldsborough indicts the U.S. media for its lack of in-depth reporting
on the Iraq war.
May
2003
Unending History
Psychoanalyst,
policy consultant, and social critic, Douglass Carmichael
works across institutions and organizations, locally and internationally,
on issues of the social consequences of economic policy and the
implications of future change for individual, social, political,
and organizational development. In his commentary Douglass points
us toward reexamining the logical outcomes of democracy and the
free market system. While these systems, on the surface, offer great
hope for a better future for the world, they also contain the potential
for severe damage if not constrained with the necessary checks and
balances.
April 2003
Harlan Cleveland
The Transatlantic
Erosion
What might be
the possible reaction of NATO to an American tone of voice that
has seemed repeatedly to say, "If we can't get our way on this,
we'll simply act on our own." Harlan Cleveland, former US
Ambassador to NATO, provides unique insight into the role of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Iraq crisis -- and, by
extension, the future of NATO in world politics. This commentary
developed from comments he made in an ILF conference, and is now
published in World Paper, a global periodical that appears on five
continents in eight languages. It will also be published in the
American Oxonian, the journal of the American Association of Rhodes
Scholars (of which the author is a member) Spring issue, sent next
month to all present and former Rhodes Scholars.
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