Jonathan Jansen: servant leader

Abstract

These sentiments by erstwhile Stanford University colleagues capture two of the essential qualities of Jonathan Jansen: his courage and his forthrightness. The attribution 'public intellectual' is itself a two-way street, however. Jansen is recognised by others for his public contributions to society, but his own words convey in their recognition of others' contributions to society an essence of hope. 'My South Africa is the working-class man who called from the airport to return my wallet without a cent missing. It is the white woman who put all three of her domestic worker's children through ... the same school that her own child attended', begins an address by Jansen delivered in 2013 that went viral 18 months later, and again in December 2018. But as this chapter will show, Jansen's profile on social media is surpassed by his academic credentials and by the awards he has received, key measures of his profile as a public intellectual.