Intellectual Leadership and Social Justice

• In Event: What's It About Over There? Approaches to Leadership for Social Justice in Different Settings

Abstract

In this essay we discuss the conditions that foment pernicious social narratives and how they affect communities and schools. False premises inform what citizens believe possible within the social relations of production limiting organization for community change. A major issue for potential unification is message manipulation by propagandists to correlate social change with violent struggle. Accepting the narratives becomes symbolic and material justification for educational decision making. Intellectual leadership for social justice then, may be a position through which leaders understand their and guide a movement's trajectory. It involves deconstructing oppression to clearly articulate solidarity, thus expanding how we define community, supporting grassroots organizing by merging educational structure they lack with their change oriented ethos.

Authors

• Kevin Russel Magill, Baylor University

• Arturo Rodriguez, Boise State University