Kathleen Fitzpatrick on Leading Generously: Tools for Transformation
October 24, 2025
In her 2019 book Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, University Distinguished Professor of English and associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University, makes the case for a humanities that privileges building above negation, collaboration above competition––what she calls “generous thinking.” In the conclusion, she acknowledges that a bigger task remains: “Okay, so what do we do?” In her new book, Leading Generously: Tools for Transformation, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2024, she sets out to answer her own question with concrete steps to reimagine and restructure university leadership.
Leading Generously is not a conventional leadership guide. Fitzpatrick is not interested in fostering new individual leaders but in “building cohorts and collectives, groups of grassroots leaders.” The hierarchies that structure universities often, she observes, stand in the way of a kind of leadership from below, in which governance is “distributed” rather than concentrated at the top of the org chart.
Leading Generously is a sequel to Generous Thinking. The sequel to Leading Generously is Fitzpatrick’s new job. Last spring, she was named the new associate dean for research and graduate studies in CAL, after a year serving in an interim role. “And in that, there is,” she says, “lots of work ahead!”
