Needed: Leadership for Liberation--A Global Portrait Painted in Shades of Brown

Societal leadership in general and educational leadership in particular, in all parts of the world, requires persons of high moral character with ethical values that favor people of color. The United States and other countries throughout the world are in desperate need of leadership that results in social justice. As part of the growing socio-economic mandate to provide meaningful opportunity to the low social economic/typically people of color populations in the U.S., South America, Africa, Europe, the Far and Middle East, formal education is the starting point. In the U.S. education sector, a parallel need is for educational leaders who can produce systemic change. In other countries, the need is for persons who can re-define and/or re-invent schools for indigenous student populations and for in-migrating students from foreign countries. In this short essay, the author discusses primary forces that call for enlightened leadership across the world. This essay is the result of his 35 plus years as an educator in various roles throughout the continuum of K-12 public schools and higher education institutions. This comprehensive domestic view is augmented into a global perspective by way of the author's travels and formal review of education in nine countries. (Contains 4 footnotes.)