Full Description
Critical Administration: Negotiating Political Commitment and Managerial Practice in Contemporary Higher Education explores the challenges that higher education administrators face when negotiating political commitments in the day-to-day practice of university life. Jay Brower and W. Benjamin Myers have collected reflections from 12 administrators, all of whom identify as critical/cultural scholars, about how ideological commitments affect their identities as administrators and the work they conduct. Contributors reflect on how their academic training helps them understand their role as administrators in higher education in terms of central issues surrounding power, ethics, and identity, and how they entwine with managerial responsibilities. Each contributor focuses on specific experiences where their managerial duties intersect with political commitments. Ultimately, this collection provides opportunities to observe the challenges and opportunities of performing ethical leadership in contemporary higher education. Scholars of education, critical/cultural communication, and administration will find this book particularly useful.
Contents
Chapter 1 - Selling Out or Cashing In: Common Fears of and Advice for Critical/Cultural Scholar Administrators
Chapter 2 - Black Male Authority as Oxymoron: Implications for Black Academic Middle Managers in Higher Education
Chapter 3 - Chair Communication as Ethical Performance: Embodiment, Interruption, and Translation
Chapter 4 - Failing to Communicate in a Communication Department: A Former Chair Calls her Spirit Back
Chapter 5 - Minding the Gap: The Performativity of Administrative Identities
Chapter 6 - It's Not Me, It's You
Chapter 7 - An Anxious Administrator: Critical Administrative Practice and Public Failure
Chapter 8 - Diversity and Cultural Leadership
Chapter 9 - Who's Responsible for Salving the Wounds? On Ethics, Leadership, and Conflict in an Academic Department
Chapter 10 - The Liminal Leader: Narrative Conscience and Critical Hermeneutic Leadership in the Neoliberal Academy
Chapter 11 - Drawing the Boundary Between Faculty and Administration Through Concertive Control: Coming out of the Dark into the Light
Chapter 12 - Feeling Compromised: Notes on Chairing
