Leadership Education and Development for Justice Using the Canonical Framework of John Rawls's - A Theory of Justice - read online free

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by ahduag

Leadership education in higher education is examined through the limitations of justice education grounded in a single conception of justice. The text argues that civic leadership students need skills, dispositions, and habits to manage political contestation among competing claims. It critiques moral intuitionism and emphasizes public justification as the mechanism for bringing claims into public, drawing on John Rawls’s idea of public reason to connect civic values, communication, and consensus formation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time15 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Leadership as responsibility under uncertainty

Limits of justice education grounded in one conception

Critique of moral intuitionism

Public justification and Rawls’s public reason

Leadership Education and Development for Justice Using the Canonical Framework of John Rawls's, A Theory of Justice Brandon Kliewer and Jeff Zacharakis Brandon W. Kliewer, PhD is currently an assistant professor of civic leadership in the Mary Lynn and Warren Staley School of Leadership Studies at Kansas State University and an associate scholar with Points of Light. Brandon specializes in deliberative civic engagement, community-engaged scholarship, collective impact, and cross-sector collaboration and partnership. He is currently working on a series of manuscripts that report the results of civic leadership development programs, deliberative civic engagement forums, and community engagement practices. His scholarship often involves undergraduate and graduate students, community members, and working professionals in ways that create the conditions to mobilize new knowledge in order to make progress on tough challenges. Brandon holds a PhD from The University of Georgia in political science and a master’s degree in political science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He can be reached at[bkliewer@ksu.edu](bkliewer@ksu.edu). Jeff Zacharakis is a professor of adult education in the Educational Leadership Department at Kansas State University. His research focuses on leadership and organizational development, adult literacy, and history and philosophy of education. He is the recipient of 2014 Association of Continuing Leadership Award and was a Kansas Board of Regents Scholar between 2012-2014. Presently, he is lead editor of Adult Education Quarterly. Introduction Higher education that presupposes a specific conception of justice do well in preparing students to make claims of justice from specific perspectives or positions. However, civic leadership students with a strong background in specific conceptions of justice are often not equipped with necessary skills, dispositions, and habits to exercise leadership in ways that can manage political contestation associated with competing claims of justice. Marshall Ganz (2010) defines leadership as “…accepting responsibility to create conditions that enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.”(527) Ganz’s definition of leadership points directly to the limitations of justice education that design leadership education and development around specific understandings of justice. Civic leadership for justice hingeson the ability to create conditions that can maintain and link public relationships to shared values. Maintaining a link between public relationships and shared values is what creates the possibility of an overlapping consensus to emerge around what is required of justice. Higher education that are anchored to a specific conception of justice promote a form of moral reasoning that is unable to resolve contestation and disagreement. Civic leadership education and development, connected to specific conceptions of justice, often, consciously and unconsciously, encourage students to paint a vision of change that relies solely on simple forms of moral intuitionism. Moral intuitionism is a type of ethical and philosophical reasoning that is not guided by universalized principles, but instead “gut feelings,” informed hypothesis, or individualized suspicions. Values connected to moral intuitions fail to produce conditions that support public relationships across disagreement, difference, and political contestation. (See Rawls 1999 for a complete critique of moral intuitionism.) Moral intuitionism provides no mechanism to order conflicting conceptions of justice that emerge from the range of value systems, ideologies, cultures, religions, and political ideologies contained within a pluralistic society. Structuring, 36 Vol. 43, No. 1, Fall 2015 coordinating, and managing public justifications become an essential component of avoiding the limitations of moral intuitionism. As a result, creating the conditions for public justi

FAQs

Why does the document criticize justice education anchored to a single conception of justice?

It argues that such education promotes a form of moral reasoning unable to resolve contestation and disagreement. Students may lack the leadership skills and habits needed to navigate competing claims in pluralistic settings.

What is moral intuitionism, and what problem does it create for civic leadership?

Moral intuitionism is described as ethical reasoning driven by “gut feelings” or individualized suspicions rather than universal principles. The text says it cannot produce conditions for public relationships across disagreement and political contestation.

How does the document connect civic leadership for justice to public justification?

Public justification is presented as the process that brings claims of justice into public. Using Rawls’s concept of public reason, it highlights how civic values, communication, and general methods of justification help overcome contestation and build consensus.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by ahduag