Najam Leads Workshop on Teaching Leadership and Character
On November 11, 2022, Adil Najam, Dean Emeritus and Professor of International Relations and Earth and Environment at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, led an experts workshop at the Air University in Islamabad, Pakistan on the challenges and opportunities in teaching and developing leadership and character.
The workshop brought together academic, policy, and professional leaders from a variety of areas and was convened by the newly formed Jinnah Centre for Character and Leadership (JCCL) at the Pakistan Air Force Academy Asghar Khan in Risalpur, Pakistan. Najam is an advisor to the JCCL on its curriculum and teaching methods development.
In his remarks, Najam highlighted that developing leadership and character cannot be easy or straightforward exercises, and trying to do so is fraught with challenges; however, there is probably little else that is of greater importance everywhere in the world than helping to develop a new generation of “leaders of character.” The interdisciplinary workshop particularly focused on the expertise, experience, and methods that different disciplines and fields of practice can identify as being effective. Participants agreed that institutions of higher learning have a particularly important role to play in this area and the goal of education has to be more than simply imparting knowledge of certain essential skills.
Adil Najam is a global public policy expert who served as the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and was the former Vice-Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). His research focuses on issues of global public policy, especially those related to global climate change, South Asia, Muslim countries, environment and development, and human development. Read more about Professor Najam on his faculty profile.