KA Second Life 6/19/08

Balancing Act: Standing for what you believe, or Playing your role

The role of the public intellectual

Alan Lightman writes on his website article on the MIT Communications Forum, http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/lightman.html:

" Such a person is often a trained in a particular discipline, such as linguistics, biology, history, economics, literary criticism, and who is on the faculty of a college or university. When such a person decides to write and speak to a larger audience than their professional colleagues, he or she becomes a "public intellectual."

After spending 26 years in the workforce learning to be “a professional”, I am finding myself wanting to be an undergraduate again. I was not one of the protesters at UC Berkeley. I was not one of the protestors at UC Santa Barbara. Instead, I was a quiet student who spent a lot of time in the library trying to learn the rules of engagement to be a “certified public accountant”. I had friends who were arrested because they were protesting at Stanford while getting their degrees. They were proud of their police record. I was afraid of having a police record in case a potential employer (CPA firm) would object. I took the CPA Ethics Exam seriously, unlike a few bad apples at Arthur Anderson, and worried about how to behave so I was not a blight on my profession. These worries, however, were probably NOT why I didn’t protest. I didn’t protest because I didn’t have a passion worthy of a police record.

My passion is my work; My work is my passion

Having heard this many times at graduation ceremonies, at conference keynote speeches about career development, and at Bar Mitzvah’s, the young person’s job is to “find their passion”. How do you do that? It has taken me 48 years. It wasn’t until a year ago, when I was trying to fill out the application to Fielding Graduate University, that I decided to “lay it all out there”. I have the luxury of perspective since I am going to be a ½ century old in 2 months. I started out my life as a CPA because my dad, who is also a CPA, said it’s a great first job because you learn a lot about business and get to see different industries. He was so correct. I was the lucky one in my office, the San Francisco Office of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co, one of the largest of the “big eight” accounting firms. I had 10 different jobs, in probably 5-6 different industries when I was 22 years old. Others in my office got put on one of the large insurance company audits, and was “stuck” there all year. Then, they were labeled an insurance “specialist” on the schedule, and got more insurance jobs. If I had to do it over again, I probably would be the same major in college, and take the same type of first job, and pray for variety, and lots of it.

What I missed, however, was practice at risk taking. Risk Management (read “avoiding risk”) is a function within companies. I manage this function now at the University I work at as it usually falls under the responsibility of the Chief Financial Officer. Administration and the structure of all companies, encourage risk avoidance. There is lots of research around this that I will not address that in this paper.

About 10 years ago, I started my own business. I wanted to work for myself so a) I could pick my own clients, b) work my own hours, c) be accountable to myself, and d) have more time for my family and my volunteer work. I put in my business plan that I wanted to work in not-for-profit, but I didn’t have any idea of what kind of organization. I ended up fulltime 10 years later at a university, my first non-profit client. I also decided about 4 years ago to join the Palo Alto Family YMCA board, and because we are required to join one committee, joined the international committee, now renamed Diversity/International Committee. Since then, I have become a Diversity and International junkie. I plan to attend the World Alliance Meeting (every six years) in 2010, and the YMCA International Conference, probably also in 2010. This is now my passion.

Being a Public Intellectual

It is much easier to be a public intellectual about something you are passionate about. It is amazing how much synergy in things that appear to you when you are looking for answers on a particular topic. Once I got involved in Diversity and International at the YMCA, my boss asked me to head the Diversity Task Force at work and of course, I dived into it, doing lots of research and reading. I probably would not have bothered if it didn’t resonate with me. It was very successful, and I’m not sure if it was the extra work I put into, or because I was so engaged, or because it was the right thing to do. Now, in this class and in my dissertation, it is much easier to be public about your opinions if you feel that even if the thoughts are private, that you feel so strongly about them, it doesn’t matter. Passion becomes identity, and being public reveals your identity to others.

Cyberspace

I feel that the videos in this section revealed the passion of the authors. What Peter Senge would call “creative tension” is everywhere on these websites. The internet allows us to leave digital bits and pieces of our identities around for others to discover in a very public way. The virtual “soap box” of yesteryears is evolving as we speak giving louder voices to marginalized groups, but also excluding others (the digital divide). In “Cultural Imperialism in the Virtual Classroom: Critical Pedagogy in transnational Distance Education” Gayol and Schied talk about how “critical pedagogy attempts to pen a democratic space in the sphere of contents, but it is more important to share expertise in order to allow marginalized groups to under the process of being a virtual learner”. Cyberspace, similar to the printing press, is giving a broader voice to new groups of people, and public intellectuals in both environments are the perfect people to take advantage of these paradigm shifts.