The Academic President as Moral Leader: James T. Laney, 1977–1993

by Randall E. Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

F. Stuart Gulley, The Academic President as Moral Leader: James T. Laney, 1977–1993

It is not easy to classify this book. It mixes elements of biography, history, social theory, leadership theory, and ethics. In terms of history, which is the dominant discipline in which the book partakes, it would be classified as "original history," if one were to use the Hegelian categories, in the sense that it seeks to record firsthand the events of the time of its author, events which he experienced firsthand, and in whose spirit he shared. As Hegel indicates, it is the task of the original historian to "transform the events, actions, and situations present to them into a work of representative thought." This certainly occurs in Gulley's book, but it is mixed with pragmatic elements of "reflective history," in Hegel's scheme, since Gulley aims to make a contribution both to our thinking about what leadership is and what it ought to be—and ought not be—in the present time, at least among academics. As Hegel indicates, it is from the pragmatic style of reflective history that we find "moral reflections and moral enlightenment to be derived from history." Finally, this is also "fragmentary" history, in Hegel's sense, because it does not seek to establish anything universal about historical patterns; rather, it adopts a comparative method as a means of bringing out one type of history—i.e., the history of academic leadership in the United States in the twentieth century, as understood from the standpoint of the university president. As history, therefore, Gulley's book seeks both to document and to form judgments.