Reading the story of the UVa President Teresa Sullivan, I am filled with amazement at her integrity and character. Professor Sullivan first and foremost is an A-grade academic, a solid researcher, a great teacher, and an engaged citizen. Of course above and beyond these top-notch credentials, she is a strong leader, one with vision and compassion for her faculty and students. When I read more and more about her leadership style, I am reminded of something my father used to tell me when I was young "You need to have integrity to do anything well in life. You need to figure out where you stand and make sure to stand up for what you believe in, even when that is inconvenient." Now, I don't think I have always been able to follow this dictum consistently, but it is a broad principle that guides me and the way in which I understand leadership. Part of the story of Professor Sullivan's integrity is her excellence as an academic. Academic excellence to me is deepl
Mediocrity, you know it when you see it (or is it really so easy to detect?), couched in privilege and in the desire to not have this privilege ever be questioned by alternative values and viewpoints from elsewhere. Mediocrity is about keeping on doing what you have been doing for years, to keep repeating the already invented cycle, sitting amidst the comforts that come with privilege. Mediocrity is the mantra of the mainstream power structures in society that want to invent a wide variety of languages to justify their medicority, for not having to work for the things that one "should" naturally be entitled to. Knowledge structures and the games within these structures are essential to the logic of mediocrity; if you are mediocre, you don't raise any alarm bells and so you are "safe." Within my own discipline of Communication and within the social sciences, I see this mediocrity in the everyday practices of academics and in what they consider to be their entit