Letter From The Director

As misleaders increasingly dominate public discourse, leaders willing to speak up, stand up and chart a path toward a more just and sustainable society are urgently needed at the local, national and global levels. While progress is too often defined by speed and expansion, who will stand tall to encourage us to slow down and be still? The humanities are beyond relevant to the most pressing questions of our times. They are essential. Therefore, the most effective and impactful leaders must draw on core elements of the humanities to lead the way.

The Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities promotes and encourages leadership across campus and in the wider community, elevating core values rooted in the humanities to advance a more just society. The Center champions leadership rooted in collective well-being, affirming that many of the most impactful leaders act without titles, guided by a strong sense of justice.

 In higher education, students should consider their humanities courses as a training ground for navigating the career of their choosing and a world of their imagining. Humanities faculty research and write on the human condition and possibility. Working professionals in industry, education, healthcare, technology and politics can benefit from looking beyond balance sheets, quantitative data and the penchant for growth at all cost. The humanities urge leaders of all positions and convictions to, for example, contemplate the ethics of AI, to consider the historical context of executive lawlessness and the importance of cross-cultural engagement in a global nation and world, to appreciate the creativity of resistance, to tend to communication as a tool of clarity, coherence and compassion, and to normalize critique as a necessary process of critical analysis, truth and even dissent. Grounded with humanistic thinking, those with fancy titles and positions may keep people at the center of policy and ahead of profits, and make space for those with strong convictions and a moral compass on human dignity.

The Humanities tell the stories of the human condition. We invite everyone to embrace humanistic thinking to tell those stories, but also to create new stories that offer a better future for us all.