Asha Rangappa on Leading with Conscience and Courage
Long Life Learning
Challenges in Academia and Media
This chapter explores the struggles of academia and media as they face pressures that threaten their integrity and roles in democracy. It emphasizes the importance of collective action over individual interests and calls for solidarity in responding to these challenges.
In our second episode of the season, Kavitha is joined by Asha Rangappa, former Special Agent and current Assistant Dean and Senior Lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Her work today is informed by years spent with the FBI specializing in counterintelligence, national security, and U.S. drug policy in Latin America. Together, Asha and Kavitha unpack what it means to lead with moral conscience in an increasingly divided world, and to embrace impact in the realms of academia, business, and public service.
Asha’s recent research, culminating in a forthcoming book project, advocates for the urgency of change when leaders succumb to moral disengagement and fail to challenge authoritarian bids for power. She encourages listeners, students, and her own daughters to embrace fear and resilience as two sides of the same coin, and to combat collective apathy and social disengagement by empowering the voices of dissenters and whistleblowers. The latter group, she argues, is characterized by their commitment to higher principles, empathy, and a willingness to take risks in order to make a difference.
Kavitha and Asha discuss the importance of supporting academia and media as two “critical institutions in a democracy,” citing these institutions as sources of a free exchange of ideas and truth-telling. Central to discussion is the question of how today’s leaders can develop and practice a strong moral conscience, which Asha contends is done by developing a code of values and principles, exercising habitual muscles which allow them to reject societal pressures of shame and conformity, and embracing the courage it takes to put themselves in the spotlight.
Transcript
Links and Resources
Information on YGELP and Yale SOM Executive Education:
Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
- On Tyranny by Tim Snyder
- Quantico starring Priyanka Chopra
- Going Infinite by Michael Lewis
- Loving What Is by Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell
Where to Find Asha:
- The Freedom Academy, Asha’s Substack
- It’s Complicated, Asha’s podcast with Renato Mariotti
About Today’s Guest
Asha Rangappa is an Assistant Dean and Senior Lecturer at the Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs and a former Associate Dean at Yale Law School.
Prior to her current position, Asha served as a Special Agent in the New York Division of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations. At Yale, she teaches courses on national security law, Russian information warfare, and leadership and ethics. She the author of The Freedom Academy, a bestselling online Substack publication about disinformation and its impact on democracy, and also co-hosts the legal podcast, It’s Complicated, with Renato Mariotti.
Asha graduated cum laude from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study constitutional reform and U.S. drug policy in Bogotá, Colombia. She received her law degree from Yale Law School where she was a Coker Fellow in constitutional law, and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Juan R. Torruella on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Asha is a former legal and national security analyst for CNN and currently a legal contributor for ABC News. She is an editor for Just Security, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project.
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