"In our first two weeks, you have read two articles, seen several videos and been engaged in several discussions related to the concept of academic leadership. At this point, and in your own words, what does the concept mean to you? What subjects or interests do you have a sophisticated, intellectual understanding of that you may want to turn into a major academic project in this class? How do people sometimes abuse academic knowledge to manipulate others? How would you feel if someone used your work to manipulate others (as Jared Diamond claims Mitt Romney has)? How can creating academically sophisticated, intellectual leaders help prevent such people from taking advantage of others the way they do? How can this create a stronger democratic society?"
The principal purpose of this class, named after Academic Leadership, is to teach individuals how to
take talents to an advantage and how to take leadership over it. For example, if you are good in
technology, this course will help you eventually get better at it and make you assume leadership and
use your knowledge to manipulate or teach other people. It also means how to take leadership over a
weak spot and turn it into something that you will use later on in the future flawlessly. What I am good at and what I wish to flourish and turn it into an academic project is any kind of technology, either related to computers or other sorts of technology. I am pretty good at computer science, video making and maybe some very basic server (or what you call what is related to the Internet) knowledge.
I would expect from this academic class for me to flourish this strong spot of mine into good use where I could make my life easier by using it to help me with different points or simply by the sake of it. Sometimes, people use academic knowledge to manipulate others by simply using his or their knowledge to make other people understand better that knowledge, or simply using their knowledge to their advantage for whatever reason. For example, I could use my technology knowledge to make people visit my blog and read my post by simply sending them messages or hacking into their devices and forcing them to look at it, which would be something I would probably would never learn how to. Also, people could just be fascinated by my knowledge and simply decided to visit my blog because I made a good impression on them, which might not really be the case right now.
If someone would ever use my work or knowledge to manipulate others, I would be pretty angry at that someone because I was supposed to be the one demonstrating all my knowledge rather than somebody else which simply decided to steal my hard work. I would also feel utterly tired for working so hard to get to a point until a certain someone stole my work.
Academically sophisticated and able leaders could help prevent people using other people's knowledge as an advantage by assuming responsibility over their own work. Such leaders would have the mind to know that what they have worked for is theirs, and not somebody else, so that would really reduce the amount of people using your work as an advantage because you will be able to show that the knowledge truly comes from you and not others, since you assumed leadership and you know its yours. This can create a stronger democratic society because you will be able to assume leadership and know what you will be doing, so you will be able to moderately manipulate or teach people about your knowledge as your own work. This will fortify democracy, since the idea of strong academic leadership is applied.
