ABSTRACT

For those of an unduly pessimistic disposition, the juxtaposition of ‘leadership’ and ‘critical thinking’ represents something of an oxymoron. There are certainly grounds for such pessimism, but it is not the case that I wish to make here. On the contrary, I shall argue that for universities at least, leadership is an indispensable concept and that it can only properly be filled out by drawing also on the idea of critical thinking. Critical thinking is a necessary component of institutional leadership, even if there is a utopian strain in such a thought. University managers are now expected to be able to identify and to successfully juggle competing internal and external forces, both material and expressive. And so the call goes up for new kinds of university leaders. In short, the university leader of today, in many jurisdictions around the world, has to be able to move the university forward amid ‘multiplicities’. So far as leadership in higher education is concerned, critical thinking has a much larger part in relation to supercomplexity than in relation to complexity. Leadership of the nuanced and careful, thoughtful and, indeed, values-oriented kind can be glimpsed at all levels of universities, and in this there is the potential for a feasible utopia.