Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Leading Generously: Tools for Transformation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) is among a group of hybrid-genre works recently published by academic leaders, including Brian Rosenberg’s “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It”: Higher Education’s Resistance to Change (Harvard University Press, 2023), and Mary Dana Hinton’s Leading from the Margins: College Leadership in Unexpected Places (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024). Fitzpatrick situates her theory of leadership in both self and systems, arguing that real change starts within and radiates outward. Just as reflection leads to action, the generous acts Fitzpatrick describes can ultimately lead to the re-imagining of higher education itself.
Although failures in leadership and institutional crises make their appearance in these pages, Leading Generously leans toward the positive, identifying the habits of mind necessary to help higher education professionals recapture a sense of mission and purpose. To “lead generously,” in Fitzpatrick’s terms, means imagining and implementing new systems and structures that would allow us to work differently on behalf of students, colleagues, and communities. To provide examples of generous leadership, Fitzpatrick shares stories of successful change in higher education, focusing on individuals and teams who’ve worked to make their own institutions more inclusive, student-centered, and humane. As a keen observer of senior leadership rather than a representative of the “C-suite,” Fitzpatrick is more interested in “building cohorts and collectives of grassroots leaders” (7) than in speaking to would-be or current executives, making this a guide for systemic as well as individual transformation. At a moment when the crises facing higher education may be more acute than ever, Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s work is distinctly refreshing.
The strengths of the project derive from Fitzpatrick’s big-picture thinking, including her reframing of the perceived divide between higher education and business. Fitzpatrick straightforwardly declares that acquiescence to the business model has done higher education a disservice: “our institutions’ mission statements die a little every time someone says that the university should be run more like a business” (26). This approach pits employees and students against each other in a struggle for resources and forces institutions to compete for place in a dubious ranking system.
Fitzpatrick claims that institutions can reclaim their mission of serving the public good through a vision of “mutual aid.” Viewed in terms of mutuality and public service, higher education institutions become both internally and externally collaborative entities whose goal is to elevate all members of the community, rather than to pit them against each other. For Fitzpatrick, institutions are only as strong as their most precarious stakeholders. Echoing principles of universal design, building for those likely to be excluded by broader initiatives—as in one example, by focusing on students disadvantaged by the digital divide during the coronavirus pandemic—can create results that are beneficial to all. Unsurprisingly, several of Fitzpatrick’s examples come from libraries—historically, settings where collaboration and a service orientation are the norm, and whose employees are often institutional unsung heroes.
Rather than focusing on action-oriented qualities, like problem solving, Fitzpatrick turns our attention to habits that promote both individual and institutional thriving: vulnerability, transparency, and sustainability, to name just a few. I especially appreciated Fitzpatrick’s focus on narrative as a tool of academic leadership. Classroom teachers know how the stories that motivate our work can motivate students in turn, yet we don’t always view storytelling as central to the institution. In her discussion of the overhaul to the faculty review process at Michigan State University, Fitzpatrick envisions the faculty career as holistic, iterative, and recursive—a story with “horizons,” “milestones,” and “stepping-stones,” rather than a linear trajectory. Fitzpatrick urges us to avoid simplistic metrics, like impact factors, and to question myths of bureaucratic objectivity, in which all are measured by the same yardstick. More nuanced narratives can do more than help faculty and staff reflect on their own goals and accomplishments; they can help us tell institutional stories at a moment when meaningful stories about higher education are desperately needed.
While I hesitate to critique a book so clearly written in the spirit of generosity, Fitzpatrick’s form and content underscore her openness to critique. While Fitzpatrick’s positivity is inspiring, at times I wondered how we get from a broken system to one that foregrounds interdependency and thriving. Fitzpatrick’s observational leadership has an advantage, in that she can push her arguments to their reasonable conclusions without worrying about how one gets there. For example, deepening understanding of faculty inequities leads to a questioning of the tenure system and possibly to unionization (166-167). And while I agree with Fitzpatrick about the need for more values-based metrics, like those of HuMetrics HSS, moving to more holistic evaluation methods will involve a profound rethinking of faculty work (117-119). Smaller institutions, where metrics like impact factor are less likely to be the norm, could conceivably take the lead in such conversations; for that reason, it was striking that most of Fitzpatrick’s examples came from research institutions and community colleges. In the conclusion, such practicalities fade from view as Fitzpatrick’s “benediction” exhorts readers to be their best selves. If you’re seeking inspiration, this book provides a tonic at a challenging time; readers seeking something more bracing can find many books that position higher education on the brink. Perhaps the ultimate gift of Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s book is that it left me contemplating how one does the difficult work to get to leading—and living—generously.
