Emancipatory Leadership
A working paper
Fabiola Bagula, Ph.D. and Zachary Gabriel Green, Ph.D.
“As we analyze, criticize, propose, and strategize, let’s never forget that we are part of a vast mutual liberation society, that as we work to free others, they are also working to free us.”
Susan George
Emancipatory leadership is freedom in action. We often think of leadership conventionally as being associated with a person who shows the way, the traits such persons seemingly innately possess, or sets of behaviors that can be learned and placed into practice. As an area of academic study, the definitions of leadership are legion. While efforts have been made by scholars for decades to identify a unified general theory of leadership, decades later alignment on the meaning of leadership remains elusive (Sorenson, 2011). Emancipatory leadership is offered with an appreciation for the state of study in the field. As the name implies, the primary aim of emancipatory leadership is to integrate human liberation into our scholarly thinking and practical application when it comes to activity that transforms the lived experience of humanity, especially those who are disproportionately subject to past and present patterns of oppression.
San Jose State University is offering a Masters Degree in Emancipatory Leadership (EL), according to…
