Welcome to the Kallion International Camp for Democratic Leadership 2021! In this program you will receive an introduction both to the facilitators and their workshops as well as some tips for sketching leadership, to help you get the most out of your leadership development, before, during, and after the camp.
Kallion’s Commitment to Democracy
Kallion is an organization dedicated to understanding and promoting the ways in which the study of the humanities may be used for leadership development. We are an organization that believes leadership is not something only a few people can practice but that everyone may practice in different ways and at different times. As such, we are an inherently democratic organization.
Kallion believes that communities function best when their members are using their talents, ideas, creativity, character, motivations, and energies at full capacity in service to that community. Cast positively, this would mean that the members are aware of their talents, know how to activate and employ them, and are motivated to contribute to the well-being of all. It would mean that those in the community, including those in leadership roles, are equipped to recognize the potential of others and work to activate, encourage, and train it. It would mean that there are also rules, customs, institutions, and resources in place to encourage a state where everyone is realizing their potential. Cast negatively, this means that no one in the community is being excluded, dehumanized, or otherwise discouraged from living up to their potential.
Cultivating Your Own Democratic Leadership
In practice, you may develop your democratic leadership in a host of different ways across your many communities. The first step is to identify and take stock of your communities, including your family, your neighborhood or residential community, your workplace, your classroom, any organizations you belong to, any online communities you participate in, and of course your city, state, country, and the global community. Are the members of your community giving their best? If not, what is your theory for why that is? What is your theory for change? Do others need inspiration, appreciation, a vision, or access to education? Are there policies and common practices that would enable greater participation from everyone? Is everyone aware of the systemic obstacles that keep some members of the community at the margins of the discussion and action?
As you develop your theories about how your communities could better activate and utilize the best in all of us, you can then ask yourself what can you do to lead in these situations:
- What do you need to do to understand and appreciate the challenges facing your communities? What do you imagine leadership would need to look like to handle these challenges?
- What leadership behaviors could you exhibit more often and better?
- What could you do to form more collaborative relationships with those in your community? Do you need to cast off old relationships and form new ones?
- What decisions could you make that would allow you to show even more democratic leadership? Do you need to study new subjects, take new courses, pursue a new career, create/join/improve new organizations? Could you decide to reconceptualize your own identity?
- What can you do to improve your reputation for democratic leadership, so that people look to you to lead when the time is right?
- How will you improve your judgment as you work on the above?
Rich and Varied Pathways to Development
The ICDL is dedicated to helping you think through your development in several ways. The process will begin with your use of this manual leading up to the workshop. In it you will be able to identify the workshops that seem most relevant to you and the facilitators you would like to connect with more. You will also begin your practice of leadership sketching, guided by prompts from the facilitators (see more below). During the camp you will come to know the facilitators and your fellow participants through the workshops and in the “virtual cabins” you will be assigned to. This will be an opportunity to engage in intergenerational and international dialogue about democratic leadership.
Strengthening Global Democracy
How, then, does your development in democratic leadership strengthen global democracy? First, by embodying democratic leadership you become a spokesperson and a model for others to follow. Secondly, you become a more astute critic of what is and what is not democratic about the communities you belong to, including the political ones. You are thus poised to speak out when democracy is threatened anywhere. Thirdly, by participating in the ICDL you become part of a new community–the Kallion community!–whose members derive continual strength by staying in touch and supporting one another, such that when you hear disheartening stories about the rise of authoritarianism across the globe, you can feel buoyed by the hope that you are doing your part to stop it and have many allies in that mission.
Sketching Leadership: A Core Kallion Practice
A leadership sketch is simply a short or long writing sample that is used for recording, appreciating, and reflecting on your own leadership development. You may consider the sketches of others or create your own. You may even share your sketches with others as a way of sharing where you are coming from in terms of what you think leadership should and should not look like. This is a very old practice that was popularized by writers like the Athenian Xenophon (4th century BCE), who wrote dialogues about his friend Socrates in order to provide his contemporaries with a different kind of leadership to emulate. Five hundred years later the Greek biographer Plutarch elevated sketching to a high art, informed by research and vivid prose. He explains here how sketching worked for him:
“I happened to undertake the sketching of the lives on account of others, but I am continuing and enjoying it now for my own sake too, attempting to use historical inquiry like a mirror in some way or another to arrange my life and make it resemble the virtues of those people…By spending my time in historical inquiry and by my habit of sketching, since I welcome the memory of the best and most worthy characters in my soul always, I have prepared myself, if ever my associations by necessity toss something foul or wrong or disgraceful at me, to drive it away and reject it, and instead gently and calmly to turn my attention away towards the most beautiful of examples.”
-Plutarch of Chaeronea (46-120CE), Life of Timoleon 1.1, 5 (trans. Mallory Monaco Caterine)
Sketching leadership still exists today in many forms of biography and it is arguably most common in our films and miniseries about fictional and historical agents of leadership. For example, Ryan Coogler’s The Black Panther sketches contrasting figures: one who takes the counsel of others (T’Challa) and one who instead keeps his own counsel (N’Jadaka, a.k.a. Killmonger). Season Four of The Crown offers up three sketches contrasting figures of what “caring for others” might look like in an agent of leadership through the examples of Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth, and Princess Diana.
Using the analogy of painting, you can analyze or create a leadership sketch using any number of “palettes”, each one of which can be your window into a deeper appreciation of leadership and a point of reflection and emulation for your next stage in leadership development:
- the sensorial palette: How does your subject look, sound, dress, and move?
- the narrative palette: What is your subject’s story? What are their major accomplishments? What was their education, formal and informal? What were their defining experiences?
- the psychological palette: What are the defining character and personality traits of your subject? Do they have a familiar personality type?
- the comparative palette: Who or what is your subject like? Here you could consider comparisons to other people, other kinds of leaders, animals, and even physical objects. Try to unlock your inner-poet!
- the subjective palette: How does your subject make you feel? What is your relationship to your subject and how does that affect your impression? Do you identify with your subject?
- the evaluative palette: What human needs is your subject good at meeting? What limitations do they face to their leadership?
The journey of developing your democratic leadership is an exciting adventure, but it may also feel daunting. Where do you begin? What should you focus on first? We’re all here to connect, learn, and develop together as equals, each of us bringing our own talents, experiences, insights, and aspirations to the table. Below is a selection of the aspects of democratic leadership that you — the participants and facilitators of the 2021 ICDL — have identified as areas where you hope to grow:
Becoming better at listening and at speaking up (and figuring out when to do either)
- Confronting ignorance and counterproductive behavior in others
- Advocating for minority voices and participation
- Engaging in civil and constructive dialogue about problems both concrete and abstract Being a non-authoritarian authority
- The ability to clearly communicate and unite people around a shared sense of purpose
Increasing one’s knowledge base and appreciation for leadership
- Understand how to recognize values central to a community to develop a more democratic practice
- Understand how leaders balance between individual rights and the collective good Understand the optimal balance between authority and autonomy
- Understand how to develop structures for helping others meet their needs Improving self-awareness, developing greater moral sensibility and better judgment
- Improving the balance between words and actions
- Treat others more as full-fledged humans and less as skill-possessors
- To improve upon my ability to empower myself and others
- To embrace a philosophy of continuously learning, specifically learning from others, regardless of authoritative position
Challenging, encouraging, and empowering others, building relationships
- Empowering and including others by encouraging, honoring, teaching, or mentoring them, and by setting a good example
- Cultivate spaces for intellectually challenging discussion among my students
- Building networks of trust and understanding
May this list be a source of inspiration and connection as you move through the camp and beyond. Now, with your Kallion Leadership Sketchbook in hand, you are poised to reflect on the sketches of others and to develop your own, beginning with the resources in this guide. We in Kallion wish you all the best in unlocking your full leadership potential and the potential of others!
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Meet the Facilitators
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July 1: Welcome and Opening Session
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July 2 Session 1A (9 am EDT): Jason's Journey to Leadership and the Golden Fleece
This workshop will examine emotional intelligence by looking at specific sections of Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica (usually called Jason and the Argonauts). You will see how Jason practices his skills and can think about how to use your own emotional intelligence skills to develop your own leadership.
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July 2 Session 1B (9 am EDT): Words that Hurt, Words that Smile
This experiential workshop aims at combating hate speech through human rights education. Participants discuss the issue of verbal violence, identify the psycho-emotional and social factors that trigger such behaviors, practice verbal violence management strategies and become familiar with alternative “Smiling words” to define diversity with respect for the particularity of the Other.
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July 2 Session 2A (1 pm EDT): Don't Become Caesarified!
Why should we put up with others with whom we disagree? And how do we cultivate the virtues that enable us to endure the pain of disagreement? Through selected readings of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, this workshop will explore the lessons that ancient Stoicism can offer us for conceptualizing, and problematizing, the idea of tolerance.
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July 2 Session 2B (1 pm EDT): Control or Create
While the ‘negative’ or ‘freedom from’ demands of popular sovereignty are considerable, the ‘positive’ or ‘freedom to’ demands are no less important; and while ‘power over’ others is exercised as control, ‘empowerment of others’ is exercised as creative action. We will examine how good democratic leadership demands exercise of creative activity not simply control over humans (e.g. voting or official public service).
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July 2 Session 3 (6 pm EDT): Campfire Mixer!
Spend some time getting to know your fellow campers and facilitators around a virtual campfire. Using design-thinking games and techniques, we will strengthen our network and learn more about each other’s talents and aspirations as we embark on our own journeys to democratic leadership.
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July 3 Session 1A (9 am EDT): Democratic Agency, Freedom, and Utopian World-Building
We will consider the rejection of individual democratic subjectivity and its pluralist reimagination by examining Aristophanes’ ancient utopian comedy, The Assemblywomen (391 BCE). Aristophanes’ work playfully critiques traditional Athenian democracy’s elevation of the individual at the expense of the collective and its neglect of positive liberty. This utopianism has serious implications for our own conceptions of agency and freedom.
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July 3 Session 1B (9 am EDT): Creativity and Imagination in Democratic Education
Lateral thinking, problem solving, and creative thinking techniques for teams can empower common efforts and give a positive feeling of co-creating change for the better. We will work in teams and explore how we could solve in different ways serious social problems of our time.
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July 3 Session 2A (1 pm EDT): Storytelling and Public Life
How do public figures “control the narrative” to shape their images, advance their careers, and establish their legacies? We will study the role of storytelling (in various forms) in the career of US Senator John McCain, with the aim of becoming critical readers of the stories that surround us.
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July 3 Session 2B (1 pm EDT): Let's Kill Caesar (and Then Bury Him)
This workshop will examine a portion of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar through some active learning activities. You will participate in an activity that will let you practice problem-solving, active-listening and other leadership skills. Then you will learn about crowd and mob mentalities as you listen to the speeches that Antony and Brutus give at Caesar’s funeral. Come join the mob!
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July 3 Session 3A (6 pm EDT): The "Leaders" of the Dance
This workshop is designed to work through inconspicuous kinds of leadership. Communities more often than not require leaders who are aware of their own limits and limitations. All humans are imperfect and vulnerable; we are all mortal and ignorant of many things. Leaders who forget this run the risk of overstepping and harming their communities and themselves. Instead, they should be bound to their companions through regular expressions and routines of mutual respect. Sometimes, these expressions involve compassion, silence, and composure. Aristotle notes that the skills of the leader of a singing and dancing chorus are not the same as those who follow, and yet no one who would perform louder or more beautifully would be allowed to join (Politics III). Leaders of a chorus, as Aristotle has it, must lead while performing the same steps in the same way as the other dancers. Good choral leaders are skilled in ways that do not outshine their companions, and the success of all of the dancers requires an awareness of and training around this principle. The experience of all chorus members, whether leaders or followers, as they trained to move together in time must have been of great reverence and fellow-feeling. In this workshop, we will use the songs of dramatic choruses to think about and experience inconspicuous kinds of leadership.
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July 3 Session 3B (6 pm EDT): Democracy on Trial (Ancient Drama)
Through a selected reading of Aeschylus’ Eumenides and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar this we will explore how theatre can promote and problematize aspects of democratic leadership.
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July 4 Session 1A (9 am EDT): Democratic Leadership is Language
What kind of language do democratic leaders use? Through an analysis of speeches by American and Greek politicians we will delve into the discourses of collaboration and commitment, and we will look into the linguistic mechanics and rhetorical strategies, whereby democratic leadership is constructed linguistically.
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July 4 Session 1B (9 am EDT): Promoting Democracy through Public Speaking and Thinking
A public speaker is a person committed to sharing feelings and ideas, trying to unite others under one purpose. Participants of this workshop will look into famous speeches and decode the secrets of Rhetoric, specifically those connected with the triptych of Ethos, Pathos, Logos.
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July 5 Session 1A (9 am EDT): From Political Polarization to Reconciliation
Extreme partisan division appears distinctive to our current moment, as political parties seem to be engaged in a zero-sum game of moral and political domination. This fracturing of political identity, as well as the politics of reconciliation, is familiar to the history of the first democratic polity, Athens. We will consider two key inflection points of political disorder and social collapse in Athenian history, in 411 and 403 BCE. In both of these moments, the Athenian populace was presented with the set of problems associated with reintegrating a citizen body into a political unity, even as it was bitterly divided.
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July 5 Session 1B (9 am EDT): The Authority to Lead
Leadership is necessary for a well-functioning democratic society, yet its practice is prone to the vices of manipulation and pandering, among others. Political leaders who manipulate the people risk weakening the practices of popular sovereignty, while those who pander abdicate the duties of responsible leadership in order to secure political power. This workshop will explore these problems through a selected reading of Jeffrey Stout’s Blessed Are the Organized, which develops a concept of democratic leadership through an examination of the organizing practices of the Industrial Areas Foundation.
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July 5 Session 2A (1 pm EDT): The Teachings of Vanity
How can studying the vanity of public figures help aspiring leaders understand the value of critical reflection? In this workshop we will analyze the story behind two political cartoons of President Lyndon B. Johnson and discuss the intersections between vanity and gender as they pertain to leadership.
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July 5 Session 2B (1 pm EDT): Conflict Resolution - Contradictions in the Good
Free people in groups eventually conflict: the goods of one and another are apparently incompatible. In some conflicts, goods may genuinely and irreducibly conflict; and in other cases the possibility of fitting the conflicting goods together is exceedingly difficult to know. We will consider the five ‘levels’ of conflict and propose ways to approach understanding contradictions in the good.
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July 5 Session 3A (6 pm EDT): Playing the Tyrant
George R. R. Martin has said, “Very few people wake up in the morning and say, ‘Oh, I’m evil. What evil can I do today?’… The greatest monsters of history, as we look back at them, thought they were the heroes of the story.… All of us have it within ourselves to be heroes; all of us have it within ourselves to be villains.” This workshop is designed both to think through and to experience the proximity of villainy to virtue. How do leaders become villains and tyrants? What might have kept them on the paths of virtue? What might we learn from enacting the slide from virtue to villainy? Ancient Greek theater often staged the signs and consequences of leadership going profoundly wrong. Some communities thought it critical that citizens watch and perform reactions to tyranny, whether as spectators in the theater, young members of the chorus joining in the staged action, or in venues where set pieces of villainy might be reperformed. In this workshop, we will explore how ancient critics theorized the effects of enacting tyrannical behavior, and we will theorize the effects ourselves through dramatic performance of leaders behaving badly.
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July 5 Session 3B (6 pm EDT): Democracy on Trial (Modern Drama)
Through a selected reading of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s Inherit the Wind this workshop will examine how dramatic works can reflect the successes and shortcomings of a collaborative and participatory government.
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July 6 Session 1A (9 am EDT): Democratic Leadership is Empathy
With a focus on speeches by female politicians, including Kamala Harris and Jacinda Ardern, in this workshop we will focus on the discourses of connection and improvement, which in unison form empathy, one of the cornerstones of democratic leadership. We will flesh out the sociocultural linguistic mechanisms, whereby these two women connect with their people both on and offstage.
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July 6 Session 1B (9 am EDT): Designing Educational Programs for Active Citizenship
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July 6 Session 2A (1 pm EDT): Don't Become Caesarified!
Why should we put up with others with whom we disagree? And how do we cultivate the virtues that enable us to endure the pain of disagreement? Through selected readings of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, this workshop will explore the lessons that ancient Stoicism can offer us for conceptualizing, and problematizing, the idea of tolerance.
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July 6 Session 2B (1 pm EDT): Let's Kill Caesar (and Then Bury Him)
This workshop will examine a portion of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar through some active learning activities. You will participate in an activity that will let you practice problem-solving, active-listening and other leadership skills. Then you will learn about crowd and mob mentalities as you listen to the speeches that Antony and Brutus give at Caesar’s funeral. Come join the mob!
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July 6 Session 3A (6 pm EDT): Gender, Identity, and Power
Explore the concept of intersectionality through a discussion of art and the rhetoric of extraordinary women leaders in history. Using the elements of portrayal—visual clues—we will practice reading art objects and analyze how visual culture can help us approach current unique challenges in our communities.
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July 6 Session 3B (6 pm EDT): How to Be a Leader
Does a manual for good democratic leadership exist? In this workshop we explore three essays written by the Greek philosopher and biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea (first-second century AD), all of which aim to instruct readers about the nature of moral and effective democratic leadership. We’ll read critically, to see what we can apply to modern society, but also to understand what Plutarch gets wrong and why.
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July 7 Session 1A (9 am EDT): From Political Polarization to Reconciliation
Extreme partisan division appears distinctive to our current moment, as political parties seem to be engaged in a zero-sum game of moral and political domination. This fracturing of political identity, as well as the politics of reconciliation, is familiar to the history of the first democratic polity, Athens. We will consider two key inflection points of political disorder and social collapse in Athenian history, in 411 and 403 BCE. In both of these moments, the Athenian populace was presented with the set of problems associated with reintegrating a citizen body into a political unity, even as it was bitterly divided.
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July 7 Session 1B (9 am EDT): Human Rights Court
A Mock Trial workshop where participants, inspired by Speak Truth To Power movement, bring much-needed attention to continuing abuses: we will experience the capacity of each individual to create change, by playing out a real case that came before the European Court of Human Rights.
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July 7 Session 2A (1 pm EDT): How to Be a Leader
Does a manual for good democratic leadership exist? In this workshop we explore three essays written by the Greek philosopher and biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea (first-second century AD), all of which aim to instruct readers about the nature of moral and effective democratic leadership. We’ll read critically, to see what we can apply to modern society, but also to understand what Plutarch gets wrong and why.
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July 7 Session 2B (1 pm EDT): Character and Mimesis - Leading By Virtuous Example
We will contemplate the distinction between embodying and constituting the good, and offer exercises to help the democratic leader empower and educate others by virtuous example rather than either self-glorification (including under cynical martyr’s erasure) or command.
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July 7 Session 3A (6 pm EDT): Playing the Tyrant
George R. R. Martin has said, “Very few people wake up in the morning and say, ‘Oh, I’m evil. What evil can I do today?’… The greatest monsters of history, as we look back at them, thought they were the heroes of the story.… All of us have it within ourselves to be heroes; all of us have it within ourselves to be villains.” This workshop is designed both to think through and to experience the proximity of villainy to virtue. How do leaders become villains and tyrants? What might have kept them on the paths of virtue? What might we learn from enacting the slide from virtue to villainy? Ancient Greek theater often staged the signs and consequences of leadership going profoundly wrong. Some communities thought it critical that citizens watch and perform reactions to tyranny, whether as spectators in the theater, young members of the chorus joining in the staged action, or in venues where set pieces of villainy might be reperformed. In this workshop, we will explore how ancient critics theorized the effects of enacting tyrannical behavior, and we will theorize the effects ourselves through dramatic performance of leaders behaving badly.
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July 7 Session 3B (6 pm EDT): Motivations to Lead (What are They? Do They Matter?)
Why might someone go above and beyond to promote democratic ideas of equality? And do these motivations even matter, or only the end result? This workshop will interrogate the varied motivations behind Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and Kennedy’s 1963 televised address on the topic of Civil Rights in America.
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July 8: Closing Session (1 pm EDT)
