PUBPOL 190FS | Leadership in Crisis

Semester: Fall 2026
Meeting Times: TuTh 10:05AM - 11:20AM
Modes of Inquiry: Areas of Knowledge: Institutions Justice & Power (IJ)
Course Description:

We face cascading global, national, and organizational crises—many of them products of the very leaders and leadership models we continue to embrace. This course treats crisis as a site of learning: moments when the limitations and costs of prevailing leadership paradigms become visible and urgent. Students will examine how crisis of leadership in NGOs, businesses, government, civic organizations clarify what mainstream leadership theories obscure or ignore. Through analysis of leadership theory, case studies, current events, and direct conversations with leaders navigating complex challenges, students develop both the critical capacity to interrogate dominant paradigms and the tools to imagine alternatives. Core questions guide our inquiry: Who defines leadership, and what assumptions ground our mainstream definitions? What does our current approach to leadership produce—and for whom? What do moments of crisis reveal about these models’ fundamental inadequacies? When we acknowledge that existing frameworks are failing us, what alternatives exist?