Dan Duckworth Editor

A memo went out across campus. At a critical moment for the department, the chair was stepping down.

In the weeks that followed, faculty meetings grew tense. Emails got more careful.

Everyone had ideas—but no one moved. They postured. They positioned.

Junior professors hesitated—they had vision, but not tenure. Senior faculty whispered in private, but stood erect in public. Everyone angled toward the dean. Everyone waited to be chosen—or curried favor with whoever might be.

And while the decision stalled, while the department held its breath, nothing changed.

Students slipped through the cracks. Adjuncts carried unsustainable loads. The curriculum stagnated. The culture calcified.

Whenever a power seat opens up—whenever formal authority is up for grabs—aspiring leaders begin to drift.

Not toward the work, but toward the throne.

But here’s what no one tells you while you wait to be chosen, promoted, endorsed:

You’re not preparing to lead. You’re preparing to rule.

You’re learning the logic of the system that doles out authority: how to perform legitimacy, how to speak without saying too much, how to defer to hierarchy, how to read the room before you act.

You may tell yourself it’s strategy. But the system sees what it really is: the need for validation.

And the longer you wait, the more fluent you become in a language that doesn't serve the people you're supposed to serve.

By the time you get the role, you’ve been shaped to preserve the system—not to disrupt it.

The system will offer you tools—credentials, titles, frameworks—but they’re built to preserve the very order you’re trying to disrupt.

You can’t fight systemic oppression—in your workplace, congregation, family, or school—using the same tools, values, and frameworks that uphold it.

Real change demands new ways of seeing, being, and leading. It requires different tools—rooted in love, truth, creativity, and lived experience outside the dominant logic.

What tools have you been handed—and what will it cost you to lay them down?