Prolific Faculty Adding to Leadership Studies Literature 

When they weren't teaching, Jepson faculty members were logging away hours in front of their computers last year, attending conferences and presenting papers. The result: a wide array of new scholarship that will further enhance the literature in the field of leadership studies.

Dean Sandra J. Peart's latest book, "The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism," was published in June by the University of Michigan Press. Peart co-edited the book with her longtime collaborator, David M. Levy, a professor of economics at George Mason University.

The book is a collection of essays that explore the subject of analytical egalitarianism, which Peart and Levy define as "a theoretical system that abstracts from any inherent difference among persons."

"It's really an attempt to revive an old way of doing economics," Peart said. "Adam Smith wrote that the street porter is inherently no different from the philosopher. The differences we observe are all the result of training, education and luck. This book explores what it means to put the presumption that we're alike into practice."

The book stemmed from essays and transcripts presented at the Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economic Thought, of which Peart is the director, held at George Mason University.

Associate professor Thad Williamson also focused on Adam Smith in a recent article. "America Beyond Consumerism: Has Capitalist Economic Growth Outlived its Purpose?" was the cover story in the May/June issue of "Dollars and Sense."

In the article Williamson argues that the American political economy is failing to foster a comfortable life for most Americans - and that more material goods isn't really what Americans want or need.

"It doesn't have to be this way," Williamson writes. "There is no inherent reason why we could not cease to regard more income as a good in itself, but instead alter our political economy so that it provides what Americans really need and want: greater employment security, stronger protection against the pitfalls of poverty, and more free time."  

Professor Gary McDowell recently took time to write an op-ed on what he believes Obama's Supreme Court would look like. The article was published in June in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

In addition to attending conferences, writing and teaching, Peart also found time to be interviewed by talk radio host Jimmy Barrett on WRVA radio about research indicating that more than half of American girls don't aspire to be leaders and are turned off by the conventional conception of leadership as command and control.

A number of faculty members including Peart, Joanne Ciulla, Terry Price, Doug Hicks, Al Goethals, Crystal Hoyt, Don Forsyth, Thad Williamson and Tom Wren have books due out in 2008 or early 2009.