History can teach us valuable lessons, especially regarding leadership. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Memphis, I wrote my dissertation on the politics of New York City during the administration of David Dinkins, the city’s first African American mayor. My dissertation focused on a series of political flashpoints and the 1989 and 1993 mayoral elections.
The process of writing my Ph.D. dissertation included many trips to the libraries of New York City, as well as an interview with Dinkins in October 2019. Dinkins was in his nineties at the time, and he was surprised and delighted that his time in office justified scholarly inquiry.
Why I Chose David Dinkins and NY City Politics as a Research Subject
Over the years, I have been repeatedly asked why I would spend years exploring Dinkins, who many New Yorkers have dismissed as “one of the city’s worst mayors.” While some people have questioned the prudence of spending years exploring the term of a single-term mayor of New York City, my research sought to examine the nature of liberalism and the Democratic Party in a transition period.
Dinkins, who broke racial barriers, confronted a series of crises. For instance, he navigated an AIDS crisis, a crime epidemic, a secession in Staten Island, racial unrest, the aftereffects of white flight and recession. His time in office overlapped with the end of the Cold War and apartheid in South Africa, as well as the 1992 Democratic Convention in New York that featured the emergence of a new brand of Democrat, Bill Clinton.
On a personal note, Dinkins’s time in office overlapped with my high school years in Brooklyn, New York. I became deeply interested in history and politics, largely due to the events occurring in New York City and the world at the time.
They helped to shape my career trajectory. So, revisiting the Dinkins years has special relevance to me.
The most important lesson that I learned is that the exploration of Dinkins’ time in office provides valuable lessons for today’s leadership. Modern leaders are still dealing with the same issues as Dinkins 30 years later, justifying the need to review the mistakes he made during his time in office.
Scholarship Provides an Opportunity to Reflect and Grow
One of the best things about teaching at a digital university is that I can travel and do academic research while I’m teaching.
Over the past year, I have gradually converted my dissertation into a monograph that is in the publication process at a university press, with the help of a research grant from our school. My writing required me to go to New York City to do research at Columbia University, where the papers of David Dinkins are located.
Spending time in the archives, writing, and fielding questions from reviewers and editors has provided me with unique insights. I have received insights not only into Dinkins, leadership and liberalism, but also into the Democratic Party during an era of transition.
The publication process has also taught me valuable lessons about making historical debates accessible to a broader audience beyond New York City’s five boroughs or academic circles. I’ve also learned how my selection of each of the book’s topics in the book and my subject David Dinkins reflects my background and biases.
Over the past six months, I have revised my manuscript in response to the reviewers’ comments and suggestions. This information also has provided valuable insight into the publication process.
Many people view Dinkins as a failed political leader, especially at the polls, but studying him can provide leadership lessons for politicians and any leader who must balance the needs of conflicting constituencies. But with the benefit of time, historians may view him differently, and my book aims to accomplish the same goal.
Transforming a Dissertation into a Book Is Hard Work
A dissertation as a part of a degree program differs from a book written for the public in style and substance. While a dissertation seeks to impress a candidate’s Ph.D. committee sufficiently to earn a degree, a book written for a general audience aims to entertain and inform the public.
In addition, academics also must weigh into scholarly debates. Academic writers must walk a tightrope as the publication process requires demonstrating that there is an audience for a book in both scholarly circles and the public.
My book, “David Dinkins and New York City, 1989 – 1993: Political Coalition-Building and Governance at the Dawn of the Age of Identity Politics,” explores how Dinkins forged a multi-racial political coalition. It also describes how he challenged the Democratic party and toppled the once-popular mayor Edward Koch.
Koch had fallen out of favor among various components of the Democratic coalition and was vulnerable to a challenge. New Yorkers believed that he had inadequately addressed the rising tide of crime caused by the crack and AIDS epidemics and that his actions had inflamed racial tensions in the city.
After ousting Koch, Dinkins faced Republican Rudolph Giuliani in one of the most bitterly fought elections in New York City history. While Dinkins narrowly beat Giuliani in 1989, the two men faced off in a rematch that Dinkins lost in 1993.
The events of the 1989 and 1993 elections provide bookends for my book. A series of flashpoints illustrate several tensions within Dinkins’s political coalition as each chapter seeks to contribute to different historiographic debates.
It was hard work transforming the book. My dissertation was originally written to weigh into narrow historiographical debates and controversies in response to questions from the members of my Ph.D. committee. I had to convert that dissertation into entertaining reading for people who were not familiar with the intricacies of New York City politics in the 1980s and 1990s.
The revision process required me to change my writing style. Using a type of storytelling that makes arcane academic debates over liberalism and Dinkins’ position in the black freedom movement accessible to the public isn’t always easy.
I often forget that not everyone knows the particularities of each event explored in my book. While those events may have been major local New York City news stories at the time, these events took place just as 24-hour national news networks like CNN emerged, so I had to add more explanation regarding the background of these events.
How Do We Evaluate Political Leadership in a Democracy?
One of the central underlying questions in my book is how political leadership should be judged in a democracy. Clearly, a small majority of voters voted Dinkins out of office in 1993, ending his political career and rendering him a single-term mayor.
While my book deals with the nature of liberalism in a time of transition and provides insight into the changing nature of the Democratic Party, I believe that the book’s most significant contribution is to provide insight into ethical leadership. Unfortunately, there may not be a link between electoral success and moral leadership.
In a democracy, the ballot box is how the public gets to evaluate a leader. However, it is important to recognize that racism, sexism, classism, and a host of other spoken and unspoken biases and prejudices may also impact the electoral process, depriving a candidate of a fair evaluation of their performance.
While the electoral process in a democracy may be flawed, it is better than any other alternative. It allows for peaceful transitions of power and the opportunity to persuade and influence the public without force or violence.
People often focus on whether this or that politician won their election as a measuring stick for whether a leader was a “good leader.” However, such a focus on the polls may downplay other factors.
For example, what if a politician’s opponents used appeals to racism or played on already existing prejudices to win? What if a losing but ethical politician sought in vain to craft a unifying message that was rejected by a majority of the electorate for improper reasons?
Naturally, a historian’s work uses secondary and primary sources to craft an interpretation of the past. Still, history also provides insight into the human condition and how issues like location, class, race, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, gender, and ideology all shape one’s perceptions of historical actors and their decisions and actions.
Dinkins passed away in 2020 but he continues to elicit strong emotions, reflecting the racial divisions of New York City’s past. For many people, Dinkins was a well-meaning man who was in over his head and failed, and they focus on his many perceived shortcomings.
These critics often describe how Dinkins inadequately addressed the city’s many crises. His supporters argue that he failed partly because he was a victim of the racialized environment of the era that prevented New Yorkers from honestly appraising his performance.
Lessons for Modern Leadership
Despite the many criticisms of Dinkins and his leadership style, even his critics concede that he was still a “good man,” which begs the question of whether being “good” is valued in a democracy.
Given his failures, why should anyone spend time reading about or studying Dinkins? Couldn’t it be argued that revising the past just rehashes the past and reopens old wounds that previously divided people?
At times, these types of questions left me wondering whether it made any sense to continue with the project. That’s a common experience in the book writing process.
In response to a series of comments and critiques from reviewers, I have deeply reflected on some of the leadership lessons from my historical research. I also considered how Dinkins’ era guides contemporary leaders struggling to balance the demands of different constituencies, which requires special skills and ideology that Dinkins may have lacked.
For example, modern leaders like the current mayor of New York City are still dealing with many of the same issues that Dinkins confronted, ranging from crime to race relations. an exploration of Dinkins’ time in office that includes his successes and failures is still relevant.
Like Dinkins, contemporary political leaders confront a complex environment. Ultimately, Dinkins failed because his coalition had several internal conflicts, and he could not craft a unified message to consolidate or expand his coalition.
Dinkins may have been well-meaning, but leadership requires more than good intentions. Instead, it requires communication skills and an ideology that is compatible with success and unifies people from differing backgrounds.
Leadership also necessitates getting one’s hands dirty, shaping a clear narrative, combating false narratives from one’s opponents and taking charge when the need arises. In other words, successful leaders must seek common ground, learn from their mistakes, govern ethically and use a joyful manner.
Even then, it is important to realize that even if political leaders attempt to do everything within their powers to be “good leaders,” the public may still reject them at the polls.
Our political system’s beauty is that it provides the people’s will as expressed via the ballot box, even if imperfect, evaluates political leadership.
Historians and political scientists, hopefully with the benefit of at least some degree of detachment from the events they study, have different responsibilities. They must make sense of the past and its politics, drawing lessons to teach future generations about the past.
The lessons learned by exploring and reconsidering Dinkins’s triumphs and failures made all the long days in the library and writing worth the time and effort. I hope that some of you will read the book on Dinkins when it is eventually published sometime next year.
My book reflects on how historical actors like Dinkins struggled in the past with enduring social and political problems. Hopefully, it will also encourage a discussion of the need for and limitations of ethical leadership in a contemporary hyper-politicalized environment.
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