A list of public
leaders is often crowded with the usual suspects — heads of state, other
government officials, military commanders, famous activists. We
forget the public leaders who have significantly influenced thought, culture,
social institutions, legislation, history, and lives. It’s not that they
didn’t rise to prominence. These educators, writers, activists, artists,
prisoners, philanthropists, and a host of others have had, in some cases,
as much of an impact in the public arena as the big names. Yet they still
fail to make the “A” list simply because we get stuck on the conventional,
the hackneyed. Fortunately, today’s public leaders “unapparent”
are becoming less so.
“People
are starting to understand in the late 20th century and early 21st that it’s
possible to exercise leadership without being in a leadership role,”
says Barbara Kellerman, executive director of the Kennedy School’s Center
for Public Leadership.
What follows are vignettes of people in history who fit the definition of leadership but aren’t always thought of that way.
Edward Bernays
A public relations
leader? You betcha. Edward Bernays (1891–1995) invented an applied social
science called public relations, a phrase that his wife, Anne, and his uncle,
Sigmund Freud (brother of Bernays’s mother), came up with when the couple
started their business. In an interview with the Public Relations Society
of America, on the occasion of his 100th birthday, Bernays defined public
relations as “1) information given to the public; 2) persuasion of the
public to modify attitudes and actions; and 3) efforts to integrate attitudes
and actions of an institution with its publics and of publics with those of
an institution.”
Bernays did all
of that with enormous success, and hundreds of thousands have taken up the
profession he created. He advanced causes and careers on behalf of leaders,
governments, and companies. He believed that he should serve the public good.
He wrote booklets to encourage citizens to promote democratic ideas in their
communities and contributed to social, educational, and artistic causes.
His biographer,
Larry Tye, writes in The Father of Spin that Bernays came back from
a visit with Freud in Vienna “convinced that understanding the instincts
and symbols that motivate an individual could help him shape the behavior
of the masses.” With that in mind, Tye says, Bernays worked behind the
scenes to help clients improve theirs and their product’s or service’s
image, employing letters, speeches, other people, and front organizations.
Bernays first
tried his ideas out on New York’s Broadway — stirring up interest
in plays. From publicity, he went on to propaganda. During World War I, the
U.S. Committee on Public Information hired him to find ways for spreading
U.S. propaganda in Europe and for keeping American public opinion behind the
war effort. That work got him thinking about applying opinion-shaping methods,
including polls, outside of the government.
His government
work got the attention of large companies, but also heads of states, political
candidates, and other public organizations. His first political clients were
supporters of President Calvin Coolidge during his first bid for president.
(Coolidge was vice president when President Warren G. Harding died.) Coolidge’s
image of being stiff and serious didn’t appeal to voters. Bernays invited
Al Jolson to serenade Coolidge on the White House lawn, singing “Keep
Coolidge.” Newspaper headlines proclaimed that the dreary-looking president
almost laughed. This image re-making scheme — a first — is credited
with helping Coolidge’s landslide victory weeks later.
But Bernays failed to bolster Herbert Hoover’s campaign against Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Undaunted, Bernays refined his approach and developed what were novel campaign strategies then, including gauging voters’ opinions so that political candidates could tailor their pitch, depending on an audience’s makeup. He got candidates “to stay on message” with ones he had created.
Later, Eleanor
Roosevelt; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Clare Booth Luce; Golda Meir; labor unions;
the Commerce, State, and Treasury departments; and the ACLU sought his advice
and services. He has said that he turned down a Nazi front group, Nicaragua’s
right-wing government, and Francisco Franco. He was shocked to find out his
book Crystallizing Public Opinion was being used by Joseph Goebbels,
Nazi minister of propaganda chief, to create the Furhrer’s image, improve
the image of the Nazis in Germany, and promote anti-Semitism.
For the NAACP’s
first national convention, Bernays and his wife developed a public relations
strategy: Make the North realize that the fight for black civil rights wasn’t
just a Southern concern; highlight Southern leaders’ intolerance to blacks
in an effort to get others on board; and get leaders in the North to endorse
the NAACP in order to pressure Southern leaders to do so as well. He fed the
statements of Northern leaders to the press, which resulted in nationwide
coverage and a feature story on blacks’ rise from plantation labor to
professional positions.
Bernays, naturally,
had detractors. But late in his life, and after his death in Cambridge, Mass.,
many said that Bernays had the greatest impact on American opinion in the
20th century. Hundreds of thousands have followed his lead and become public
relations specialists in the public and private sectors, some of whom fit
into the category of “political campaign consultants.”
Horace Mann
Schools across
the United States are named for Horace Mann (1796–1859), who is considered
the first great American advocate of public education. He believed in free,
nonsectarian education for all and in the need for professional teachers,
and he successfully convinced many others of its value within a democratic
society. Perhaps growing up in poverty and little schooling were the impetus
behind his crusade.
Mann was partly
self-taught — with books donated by Ben Franklin to the library in the
town in Massachusetts named for Franklin, where Mann spent his childhood.
Occasionally, Mann was taught by inferior teachers. At the time, Massachusetts
did have a school system — a poor one, at that, with ill-trained teachers,
very short school sessions, and a fee that was unaffordable for the poor.
The tutoring Mann received in young adulthood got him into Brown University
as a sophomore at age 20. There he excelled and became interested in politics,
social reform, and education. He gave the valedictory address, in which he
suggested that education and philanthropy could join forces to benefit mankind.
Following graduation, Mann pursued a law career, which he was happy to leave
behind when he was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1827.
In 1835, he became a Massachusetts state senator and then president of the
state senate. In that position, he signed a bill that provided for a state
board of education.
Mann was appointed
secretary of education, a position that in reality had no authority. However,
in 12 years, he managed to transform the Massachusetts public school system.
He had a strong vision and believed that education was “the great equalizer
of the conditions of men.” He spearheaded the reforms through his writings,
which were distributed across the United States, and through other means:
• Sought to persuade the public of the necessity of public
education.
• Organized education conventions in every Massachusetts county for teachers
and other school officials, as well as the public.
• Understood the need for better education of teachers and pushed for
the establishment of schools for teachers — the first in the country.
• Started a journal that focused on the problems of public schools and
that was distributed widely.
• Wrote 12 annual reports that discussed school problems, needs, and
solutions.
During his tenure,
the school year was increased to six months, teachers’ salaries were
raised, school buildings were improved, and 50 high schools were established.
He clashed with those who wanted sectarian education and prevailed. His victory
influenced schools nationwide. In addition, state governments sought and followed
his advice in the founding of public schools in their states.
Reforming public education was Mann’s primary cause, but he did become involved in others. Prior to his career in education reform, he had led a commission for the building of a state hospital for the mentally ill in Worcester, Mass. Although not an abolitionist, Mann became involved in the anti-slavery movement when he filled the U.S. congressional seat of former President John Quincy Adams, upon his death in 1848. Mann became president of Antioch College, a new coeducational institution for blacks. In a speech there shortly before his death, Mann said, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
Leaders in
Prison
In November 2000,
John
Thomas MPA 1964, PhD 1969, lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School,
faculty chair of the Singapore program, and faculty affiliate at the Center
for Public Leadership, received a hand-delivered letter in a small tan envelope.
The letter had been written by candlelight on brown paper in very neat handwriting.
When Thomas started reading and realized who was the letter’s author,
he closed his office door because he was so moved. The letter was from a former
Mid-Career student in the Master in Public Policy Program at the National
University of Singapore, which Thomas helped start, and who is now imprisoned
by his government. The letter had been smuggled out of the jail and the country
and probably had changed several hands before a courier arrived with it at
Thomas’s office. (To protect the writer from additional danger, identifying
details will not be revealed.)
Thomas had taught
the man in 1993, and the last he saw of him was before the man returned home
for vacation that year. At the end of that brief visit, after the man’s
wife had dropped him at his country’s airport to return to the university,
he disappeared. Through various sources, Thomas eventually found out that
his student was under government arrest and in solitary confinement in “dog
cages,” so called because they are similar to cages in a dog kennel.
The reasons for his arrest are vague, but Thomas guesses that the man had
met with some known political opposition members during his visit. He was
brought to trial and sentenced to 12 years in prison. At the time, he was
in his early 40s. “Several of us did everything we could to get him released,
but it appeared our efforts were hurting rather than helping,” Thomas
says.
The man is no
longer in solitary confinement and, in the letter, wrote that he is teaching
fellow prisoners about leadership from his recollections of his courses with
Thomas, and of books he read at the university. Among the books he mentioned
that he thought were particularly valuable are Leadership Without Easy
Answers by Ronald
Heifetz, co-director of the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership
(Thomas had given the man a copy of the book’s manuscript when he was
attending Thomas’s class); Making Democracy Work, by Robert
Putnam; and Public Choices and Policy Change, by Merilee
Grindle and John Thomas.
“What is
stunning is that here is a man that the system has done everything to break,
who has been stripped of any authority, and yet he is powerfully exercising
leadership. I am overwhelmed that he can still use what he learned in the
classroom to try to influence the future of his country in these circumstances,”
Thomas says. “I assumed he was broken by now. Instead he is asserting
a quiet but critical leadership.”
Thomas becomes
quiet. He mentions other leaders who had been imprisoned for their opposition
to oppressive governments — Gandhi, Mandela, and others. Yet they maintained
some degree of influence from within prison walls.
Mohandas Gandhi
was imprisoned for sedition in South Africa in the early part of the 20th
century. Gandhi had spent 21 years in South Africa using his strategy of nonviolent
civil disobedience to protest discrimination against Indians. When he was
jailed, he was placed in solitary confinement because the government feared
he would influence fellow political prisoners. Gandhi’s technique of
nonviolent civil disobedience was adopted by two Nobel Peace Prize winners
— one a former political prisoner, the other still a prisoner.
Years later,
Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 28 years (1962–1990) by the South African
government. Initially, Mandela had used nonviolent tactics to protest apartheid.
He resorted to sabotage following the massacre of unarmed Africans by police.
Initially he was sentenced to five years, but after a trial for treason, sabotage,
and violent conspiracy a year later, was sentenced for life. While in prison,
Mandela’s support by his fellow black South Africans continued. They
still looked upon him as their leader. International support grew, as many
countries came out against apartheid. In 1990, President F.W. deKlerk released
Mandela, and the two worked together to end apartheid. They were awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Mandela served one term as president. “Mandela
is a wonderful exception,” says Thomas, using him as an example of someone
who led a revolution but stepped down. “He recognized that he was not
the leader who could institutionalize change.”
Another Nobel
Peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyui, remains under de facto house arrest in
Burma. She is the daughter of a martyred hero of independent Burma. The Burmese
now look to her for leadership against the oppressive government, which has
renamed the country Myanmar. Suu Kyui had been living abroad, but returned
to her homeland in 1988 to care for her ailing mother. While there, she spoke
out against a massacre of protesters and began using nonviolent tactics in
the name of democracy and human rights. She was placed under house arrest
in 1989, and cut off from the rest of the world. The Nobel Prize committee
awarded her the Peace Prize in 1991. In 1995, she was “freed” from
house arrest. Today, however, she cannot leave her home. This past September
her travel to another city was thwarted, and her home is surrounded by troops.
Phone lines have been cut, and diplomats and others may not meet with her.
Her deputy has been placed in solitary confinement. Despite house arrest,
Suu Kyui still finds ways to fight for democracy. Her very struggle keeps
the world aware of the government’s oppressive ways. They have not been
able to still her voice.
J. Robert
Oppenheimer
A theoretical
physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) is known less for his work
in physics than for his leadership of the Manhattan Project, an undertaking
by the United States to develop the atomic bomb during World War II. Oppenheimer’s
assignment was to assemble the best scientific minds from the United States,
Canada, and England and establish and direct the project’s laboratory
in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
The son of a
wealthy German immigrant, Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard University in
1925 and then went to study at the University of Cambridge in England and
Gottinger University, which awarded him his doctorate. Oppenheimer also had
a strong interest in literature, the arts and sciences, and learned eight
languages, including Sanskrit. Upon his return to the United States, he taught
physics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he built up the
largest graduate program in theoretical physics in the United States, and
the California Institute of Technology. He was a great inspiration to his
Berkeley students, who adopted his mannerisms and, because they wanted to
continue working with him, joined him at CalTech, where Oppenheimer taught
between terms at Berkeley. His early research focused on the energy processes
of subatomic particles.
During the 1930s,
Oppenheimer’s political consciousness was raised when he saw the plight
of his students during the Great Depression and learned of the maltreatment
of Jews in Germany, including his relatives.
Upon his appointment
to direct the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer set out to supervise the building
of the labs in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to obtain lab equipment, and persuade
hundreds of scientists to come to Los Alamos with their families for the remainder
of World War II. Oppenheimer saw to it that they were as comfortable as possible
in a compound where security was tight. “Oppie,” his nickname, also
had to deal with conflicts among scientists and their egos and keep all focused
on the goal of their work. The group conducted the first nuclear explosion
in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in 1945, followed by the surrender of Germany.
Right after the bomb had been dropped on Japan, Manhattan Project scientists
were eager to educate policymakers and the public about its implications to
help pave the way for creating an international control that would prevent
an atomic arms race. Soon after the bombings, Secretary of War Henry Stimson
said of Oppenheimer in a speech, “The development of the bomb itself
has been largely due to the genius and the inspiration and leadership he has
given his associates.
Following the
Manhattan Project, Oppie advised various committees on the use, control, and
development of atomic energy. In 1947, he assumed the prestigious post of
director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. From
1947 through 1952, he chaired the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic
Energy Commission, which opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb in 1949.
In 1953, Oppenheimer
became persona non grata when a military security report accused him of Communist
ties, failure to promptly name Soviet agents, and opposition to the hydrogen
bomb. Yet Oppenheimer had passed security clearances several years earlier
when every aspect of his life was scrutinized before his appointment as head
of the Manhattan Project. In his days at UC Berkeley, Oppenheimer had contributed
to many causes, including Communist fronts, which had championed causes such
as the plights of American farm workers and freedom fighters in the Spanish
Civil War. Such ties among intellectuals were not unusual then. He had been
upset when his brother joined the Communist party when they were both at Berkeley.
But Oppenheimer himself never joined the party and dissolved his associations
with such organizations when he joined the Manhattan Project.
Ultimately, in
1953, Oppenheimer was cleared of treason, but his security clearance was revoked.
His reputation damaged, Oppenheimer lost his contract as advisor to the Atomic
Energy Commission. The Kennedy administration had decided to present him with
the Enrico Fermi Award of the Atomic Energy Commission in recognition of his
contributions to theoretical physics, but also to implicitly clear his name.
Kennedy was to have presented the award at the beginning of December in 1963.
Kennedy never did. The task fell to President Lyndon B. Johnson, ten days
after Kennedy’s assassination.
Dorothea Lynde
Dix
The inhumane
treatment of the mentally ill in the mid-19th century spurred Dorothea Lynde
Dix (1802–1887) to seek reforms. In the second half of the 19th century,
she convinced legislators in 15 states in the United States and abroad to
establish government hospitals for the mentally ill, including 32 in the United
States
This agent of
change began her political activism in 1841, while teaching Sunday school
at a prison in Cambridge, Mass. There she saw that the mentally ill were imprisoned
among criminals, regardless of age or sex, and lacked clothes, heat, or sanitary
facilities. Some were chained and beaten. From there, she traveled across
the state documenting squalor in similar institutions for two years. She presented
an excruciatingly detailed report of the horrors she had seen in 1843 to the
Massachusetts state legislature, which passed a bill to enlarge the Worcester
Insane Asylum. Dix took her cause to Rhode Island and New York.
Dix had a strategy
to push for reform. She stayed in the background because public work was not
a place for women in her day. Since women were not allowed in state legislatures,
she chose influential men to present her findings to lawmakers. She wrote
letters to newspapers to make the public aware of the mistreatment and sway
their opinions. She had face-to-face meetings with legislators and other people
who would champion her cause. In Voice for the Mad: The Life of Dorothea
Dix, David Gollaher writes that she immersed herself in state politics
because no other leaders had stepped up to promote reform. In three years,
she visited 18 state penitentiaries, 300 city jails, and 500-plus almshouses
and other institutions besides hospitals in the United States. She conducted
similar investigations in England, Italy, and Canada and succeeded in the
establishment of hospitals for the insane.
In 1861, she became superintendent of Union army nurses in the Civil War. However, she was unable to adapt her abilities as a social reformist and humanitarian to administrative duties. Following the war, Dix returned to social advocacy for the mentally ill. She raised money, advised states on the design of hospital buildings, and pushed for better hospital staffs.