BLI Fall Speaker Event
To Stop a Tyrant: How Courageous Political Followers Make a Crucial Difference

October 1, 2024
Event: 4-6 PM
Keynote begins at 4:30 PM
Weiser Hall, 10th floor

Overview:

In the past twenty years, the world of leadership studies has been challenged to acknowledge its inseparable counterpart: Followership. Leadership programs now increasingly incorporate followership theory, practice and development in their curriculum. Our speaker, Ira Chaleff, has been in the forefront of this movement with his classic work, The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders. Having spent much of his career in the political sector, he is now applying the lens of followership to understanding one of humanity’s most intractable phenomenon: the rise of tyrannical political leaders on both the political left and right. In his new book, To Stop a Tyrant, rather than focus on the leader, or lament the blight they bring to freedom, Chaleff walks us through a new way of understanding the power of followers to interrupt the toxic trajectory. In a politically polarized climate, he brings a refreshing non-partisan voice that invites us to better understand the dynamics of how we can create political leaders that use appropriate power for the public good.

Speaker:

Ira Chaleff is well-known in the followership community. He is a founder of the movement to elevate followership studies to their rightful importance as the inextricable counterpart to leadership studies. His classic book, The Courageous Follower, is in its third edition and appears in many languages. Building on that work, his award-winning book Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You Are Told To Do Is Wrong, has added a new and critical dimension to our understanding of the follower role. Mr. Chaleff is chair emeritus of the highly regarded, non-partisan Congressional Management Foundation in Washington, DC. He has served as a two-term board member of the International Leadership Association and the Visting Leadership Scholar at the Moller Institute, Churchill College, Cambridge University. His forthcoming book, To Stop a Tyrant, scheduled for release in September 2024, examines the role of courageous followers in disrupting an autocrat’s consolidation of political power.

Hosted in partnership with the Ford School Leadership Initiative, CEW+, and Sanger Leadership Center.