A local pastor.A long-standing member of not-for-profit board.A former president of a university.These three authors share their wisdom and experiences from decades of board leadership. With specific areas of expertise, they bring 3 distinctive voices and perspectives to the 12 essential principles every leader needs to develop and maintain a healthy governing board.Best Practices for Effective Boards challenges your board to become the most effective, God-honoring body to ever serve your organization. Regardless of the size of your board or the organizations that you serve, you can benefit from the principles outlined in this book. The starting point is clear and the path is systematically laid before you, helping to transform your vision, strategy, and future. No matter where you start, you can develop your board into a strong and effective body working toward a future of growth and development.Reviews'Board development is one of the most important, if not difficult tasks for any organization or leader. Without an effective board an organization is unstable and its leader is unaccountable. These three gifted and respected leaders offer some of the best advice available for grounding and advancing a mission through the development of effective boards.'-Tom Nees, President of Lead to Serve'There is no question that any leader will benefit from the thoughtful Best Practice compilation. Looking back on my own career there are many places where I could have applied the principles and ended up more effective and productive. We all should be thankful for the diligence of the authoring team.'-Richard Schubert, Executive VP, Executive Coaching Network, Inc.

While dramatic changes taking place in the Middle East offer important opportunities to the Kurdish century-long struggle for recognition, serious obstacles seem to keep reemerging every time the Kurds anywhere make progress. The large Kurdish geography, extending from western Iran to near the eastern Mediterranean, and a century of repression and denial have engendered various Kurdish groups with competing and at times conflicting views and goals. The Kurds in the Middle East: Enduring Problems and New Dynamics, with an emphasis on continuity and change in the Kurdish Question, brings together a group of well-known scholars to shed light on this complex issue.

The failed states of Iraq and Syria plus the rise and fall of ISIS have helped lead to near Kurdish statehood in Iraq (the KRG) and Kurdish autonomy in Syria (Rojava). In Turkey too-as illustrated by its negotiations and temporary cease-fire with the PKK and the rise of the HDP as the first pro-Kurdish party to be elected to the Turkish parliament as a party and not as mere independents-the Kurds have reached new heights of recognition. These major developments and much more are prominently reflected and developed in this new third edition of Historical Dictionary of the Kurds. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of the Kurds contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture of the Kurds. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Kurds.

New Public Management and the Reform of Education addresses complex and dynamic changes to public services by focusing on new public management as a major shaper and influencer of educational reforms within, between and across European nation states and policy actors. The contributions to the book are diverse and illustrate the impact of NPM locally but also the interplay between local and European policy spheres. The book offers: A critical overview of NPM through an analysis of debates, projects and policy actors A detailed examination of NPM within 10 nation states in Europe A robust engagement with the national and European features of NPM as a policy strategy The book actively contributes to debates and analysis within critical policy studies about the impact and resilience of NPM, and how through a study of educational reforms in a range of political systems with different traditions and purposes a more nuanced and complex picture of NPM can be built. As such the book not only speaks to educational researchers and professionals within Europe but also to policymakers, and can inform wider education and policy communities internationally.

Many accounts of climate change depict disasters striking faraway places: melting ice caps, fearsome hurricanes, all-consuming fires. How can seeing the consequences of human impacts up close help us grasp how global warming affects us and our neighbors? This book is a travelogue that spotlights what a changing climate looks like on the local level-for wherever local happens to be. Michael M. Gunter, Jr. takes readers around the United States to bear witness to the many faces of the climate crisis. He argues that conscientious travel broadens understanding of climate change and makes its dangers concrete and immediate. Vivid vignettes explore the consequences for people and communities: sea level rise in Virginia, floods sweeping inland in Tennessee, Maine lobsters migrating away from American territorial waters, and imperiled ecosystems in national parks, from Alaskan permafrost to the Florida Keys. But Gunter finds inspiring initiatives to mitigate and adapt to these threats, including wind turbines in a tiny Texas town, green building construction in Kansas, and walkable urbanism in Portland, Oregon. These projects are already making a difference-and they underscore the importance of local action. Drawing on interviews with government officials, industry leaders, and alternative energy activists, Climate Travels emphasizes direct personal experience and the centrality of environmental justice. Showing how travel can help bring the reality of climate change home, it offers readers a hopeful message about how to take action on the local level themselves.

This edited volume, comprising chapters by leading academics and experts, aims to clarify the complexity of Turkey's Kurdish question. The Kurdish question is a long-standing, protracted issue, which gained regional and international significance largely in the last thirty years. The Kurdish people who represent the largest ethnic minority in the Middle East without a state have demanded autonomy and recognition since the post-World I wave of self-governance in the region, and their nationalist claims have further intensified since the end of the Cold War. The present volume first describes the evolution of Kurdish nationalism, its genesis during the late nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, and its legacy into the new Turkish republic. Second, the volume takes up the violent legacy of Kurdish nationalism and analyzes the conflict through the actions of the PKK, the militant pro-Kurdish organization which grew to be the most important actor in the process. Third, the volume deals with the international dimensions of the Kurdish question, as manifested in Turkey's evolving relationships with Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the issue regarding the status of the Kurdish minorities in these countries, and the debate over the Kurdish problem in Western capitals.

The relationship between education and democratic development has been a growing theme in debates focussed upon public education, but there has been little work that has directly related educational leadership to wider issues of freedom, politics and practice. Engaging with ELMA through the work of Hannah Arendt enables these issues of power to be directly confronted. Arendt produced texts that challenged notions of freedom and politics, and notably examined the lives of people, ideas and historical events in ways that are pertinent to the purposes and practices of education. This significant volume examines the main texts in the Arendt library and explains each of the key ideas and how they can enable critical thinking about knowledge production and practice in educational leadership. The analysis draws upon a range of exemplars and empirical projects from the field of educational leadership, investigating utility issues regarding Arendt's ideas, and engaging with the debates concerning her insights and contribution. Included in the book: -using Arendt to think about ELMA -the relationship between policy and practice, and organisation and leadership -critiques of the vita activa and vita contemplativa -thinking with and against Arendt. Gunter uses the work of Arendt to challenge the purposes and practices of intellectual work, with a view to developing perspectives on the responsibility for research and ideas. The book will be of value to all those working and researching in the field of Educational Leadership, Management and Administration.

This edited volume, comprising chapters by leading academics and experts, aims to clarify the complexity of Turkey's Kurdish question. The Kurdish question is a long-standing, protracted issue, which gained regional and international significance largely in the last thirty years. The Kurdish people who represent the largest ethnic minority in the Middle East without a state have demanded autonomy and recognition since the post-World I wave of self-governance in the region, and their nationalist claims have further intensified since the end of the Cold War. The present volume first describes the evolution of Kurdish nationalism, its genesis during the late nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, and its legacy into the new Turkish republic. Second, the volume takes up the violent legacy of Kurdish nationalism and analyzes the conflict through the actions of the PKK, the militant pro-Kurdish organization which grew to be the most important actor in the process. Third, the volume deals with the international dimensions of the Kurdish question, as manifested in Turkey's evolving relationships with Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the issue regarding the status of the Kurdish minorities in these countries, and the debate over the Kurdish problem in Western capitals.

While dramatic changes taking place in the Middle East offer important opportunities to the Kurdish century-long struggle for recognition, serious obstacles seem to keep reemerging every time the Kurds anywhere make progress. The large Kurdish geography, extending from western Iran to near the eastern Mediterranean, and a century of repression and denial have engendered various Kurdish groups with competing and at times conflicting views and goals. The Kurds in the Middle East: Enduring Problems and New Dynamics, with an emphasis on continuity and change in the Kurdish Question, brings together a group of well-known scholars to shed light on this complex issue.

The A to Z of the Kurds covers the largest nation on Earth that does not have its own independent state. Scholars, government officials who are dealing with the Middle East and the Kurds, the news media, as well as the general reader will find this an accessible historical account about a people who are becoming increasingly important for the future of the geostrategic Middle East. Maps, a chronology of Kurdish history, an introductory essay on the Kurds, a dictionary containing several hundred entries on various aspects of the Kurdish experience, and an extensive bibliography comprise this volume.

Many accounts of climate change depict disasters striking faraway places: melting ice caps, fearsome hurricanes, all-consuming fires. How can seeing the consequences of human impacts up close help us grasp how global warming affects us and our neighbors? This book is a travelogue that spotlights what a changing climate looks like on the local level-for wherever local happens to be. Michael M. Gunter, Jr. takes readers around the United States to bear witness to the many faces of the climate crisis. He argues that conscientious travel broadens understanding of climate change and makes its dangers concrete and immediate. Vivid vignettes explore the consequences for people and communities: sea level rise in Virginia, floods sweeping inland in Tennessee, Maine lobsters migrating away from American territorial waters, and imperiled ecosystems in national parks, from Alaskan permafrost to the Florida Keys. But Gunter finds inspiring initiatives to mitigate and adapt to these threats, including wind turbines in a tiny Texas town, green building construction in Kansas, and walkable urbanism in Portland, Oregon. These projects are already making a difference-and they underscore the importance of local action. Drawing on interviews with government officials, industry leaders, and alternative energy activists, Climate Travels emphasizes direct personal experience and the centrality of environmental justice. Showing how travel can help bring the reality of climate change home, it offers readers a hopeful message about how to take action on the local level themselves.

Western politicians consider that leadership is essential for the delivery of educational reform. This important and timely book examines how leaders, leading and leadership became the dominant theme in education. It presents an analysis of the relationship between the state, public policy and the types of knowledge that New Labour used to make policy and break professional cultures. It is essential reading for all those interested in public policy, education policy, and debates about governance and will be of interest to policymakers, researchers and educational professionals.

This book is a comprehensive study into and about consultants doing consultancy, and having influence in ways that generate concerns about an emerging 'consultocracy', with privileged access to governments and public services. It presents a detailed mapping of consultants and consultancy in education as a site of change and modernisation in public sector service provision. It considers consultancy at a macro-level of globalised policy, at a meso-level of national government policy, and at a micro level with vivid descriptions and analyses of consultants at work. The rapid rise of 'edubusinesses', combined with the restructuring of public services in western style democracies, has generated new types of 'knowledge actors' within education policy. Three main developments that have led to this change are: the entry of education policy and service consultants from within major companies into the public education market place; the emergence of 'celebrity' entrepreneurial actors and private businesses who make interventions into Universities and schools; and the rapid growth of small businesses based on individuals who have relocated their work from the public to the private sector. Such knowledge actors and the complexities they bring to public education are as yet under described and largely un-theorized. Based on current research and drawing upon a range of theoretical tools, this book fills the gap. Gunter and Mills provide an invaluable contribution to scholarship on the neoliberal restructuring of public education by mapping and analyzing the under-examined yet central role of corporate education consultants. Their thoughtful and thorough discussion expands our understanding of how consultants promote and trade in the ideologies of corporate culture. Gunter and Mills show how consultants are integral to both knowledge making practices in schools and a radical reform agenda for schools in the UK and around the globe. This is an accessible and important volume for not just policy and politics scholars but anyone concerned about defending public forms of education and associated living at a moment when they are increasingly being positioned for pillage by profiteers. Kenneth J. Saltman, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA

At a time when public education and reform agendas are changing the way we approach education, this book critically examines the key issues facing the public with implications for education policy makers, professionals and researchers. Drawing on empirical evidence gathered over 20 years, Helen Gunter confronts current issues about social justice and segregation. She uses Arendtian ideas to help the reader to 'think politically' about education and how and why public services education can be reimagined for the future.

This book is a comprehensive study into and about consultants doing consultancy, and having influence in ways that generate concerns about an emerging 'consultocracy', with privileged access to governments and public services. It presents a detailed mapping of consultants and consultancy in education as a site of change and modernisation in public sector service provision. It considers consultancy at a macro-level of globalised policy, at a meso-level of national government policy, and at a micro level with vivid descriptions and analyses of consultants at work. The rapid rise of 'edubusinesses', combined with the restructuring of public services in western style democracies, has generated new types of 'knowledge actors' within education policy. Three main developments that have led to this change are: the entry of education policy and service consultants from within major companies into the public education market place; the emergence of 'celebrity' entrepreneurial actors and private businesses who make interventions into Universities and schools; and the rapid growth of small businesses based on individuals who have relocated their work from the public to the private sector. Such knowledge actors and the complexities they bring to public education are as yet under described and largely un-theorized. Based on current research and drawing upon a range of theoretical tools, this book fills the gap. Gunter and Mills provide an invaluable contribution to scholarship on the neoliberal restructuring of public education by mapping and analyzing the under-examined yet central role of corporate education consultants. Their thoughtful and thorough discussion expands our understanding of how consultants promote and trade in the ideologies of corporate culture. Gunter and Mills show how consultants are integral to both knowledge making practices in schools and a radical reform agenda for schools in the UK and around the globe. This is an accessible and important volume for not just policy and politics scholars but anyone concerned about defending public forms of education and associated living at a moment when they are increasingly being positioned for pillage by profiteers. Kenneth J. Saltman, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA

For the first time in their modern history, the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey at least are cautiously ascending. In northern Iraq the two U.S. wars against Saddam Hussein have had the fortuitous side effect of helping to create a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The KRG has become an island of democratic stability, peace, and burgeoning economic progress, as well as an autonomous part of a projected federal, democratic, post-Saddam-Hussein Iraq. If such an Iraq proves impossible to construct, as it well may, the KRG is positioned to become independent. Either way, the evolution of a solution to the Kurdish problem in Iraq is clear. Furthermore, Turkey's successful EU candidacy would have the additional fortuitous side effect of granting that country's ethnic Kurds their full democratic rights that have hitherto been denied. Although this evolving solution to the Kurdish problem in Iraq and Turkey remains cautiously fragile and would not apply to the Kurds in Iran and Syria because they have not experienced the recent developments their co-nationals in Iraq and Turkey have, it does represent a strikingly positive future that until recently seemed so bleak.

An analysis of the Turkish position regarding the Armenian claims of genocide during World War I and the continuing debate over this issue, the author offers an equal examination of each side's historical position. The book asks "what is genocide?" and illustrates that although this is a useful concept to describe such evil events as the Jewish Holocaust in World War II and Rwanda in the 1990s, the term has also been overused, misused, and therefore trivialized by many different groups seeking to demonize their antagonists and win sympathetic approbation for them. The author includes the Armenians in this category because, although as many as 600,000 of them died during World War I, it was neither a premeditated policy perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish government nor an event unilaterally implemented without cause. Of course, in no way does this excuse the horrible excesses committed by the Turks.

This book presents the Turkish position regarding the Armenian claims of genocide during World War I and the continuing debate over this issue. The author illustrates that although genocide is a useful concept to describe such evil events as the Jewish Holocaust in World War II and Rwanda in the 1990s, the term has also been overused, misused, and therefore trivialized by many different groups seeking to demonize their antagonists and win sympathetic approbation for them. This book includes the Armenians in this category because, although as many as 600,000 of them died during World War I, it was neither a premeditated policy perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish government nor an event unilaterally implemented without cause. Of course, in no way does this excuse the horrible excesses that were committed. To illustrate this point, this book uses the recent work of the noted French scholar Jacques Semelin, and such long-suppressed Armenian personalities as Hovhannes Katchaznouni (the first prime minister of Armenia after WWI) and K.S. Papazian (an historian), among others. This book also illustrates how today Armenians have sought to politicize and legislate their version of history in parliamentary and other governmental bodies around the world, damning their opponents as genocide deniers and perpetrators of hate speech. The case of the renowned scholar Bernard Lewis is a prime example of this Armenian misuse and distortion of their politicized version of history. This book also analyzes the hypermobilized Armenian lobbying tactics that have achieved considerable success in politicizing their version of history. Among many other issues, this book also analyzes the recent "soccer diplomacy" between Turkey and Armenia, which has led to their signing treaties that will establish diplomatic relations between them and an historical commission to analyze their different versions of history

For the first time in their modern history, the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey at least are cautiously ascending. This is because of two major reasons. (1) In northern Iraq the two U.S. wars against Saddam Hussein have had the fortuitous side effect of helping to create a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The KRG has become an island of democratic stability, peace, and burgeoning economic progress, as well as an autonomous part of a projected federal, democratic, post-Saddam-Hussein Iraq. If such an Iraq proves impossible to construct, as it well may, the KRG is positioned to become independent. Either way, the evolution of a solution to the Kurdish problem in Iraq is clear. (2) Furthermore, Turkey's successful EU candidacy would have the additional fortuitous side effect of granting that country's ethnic Kurds their full democratic rights that have hitherto been denied. Although this evolving solution to the Kurdish problem in Iraq and Turkey remains cautiously fragile and would not apply to the Kurds in Iran and Syria because they have not experienced the recent developments their co-nationals in Iraq and Turkey have, it does represent a strikingly positive future that until recently seemed so bleak.

Understanding Educational Leadership guides you through critical perspectives and approaches across the world, taking in the global north and south, and explores the ways in which educational leadership is currently understood, theorised, researched, modelled and practised. The book also covers contemporary issues including gender, sexual identity and race, as well as topics such as governance, performativity and corporatisation. It brings together evidence and ideas that illuminate the power structures and relations in educational leaders, leading and leadership and helps you to consider the impact on policy and practice, and to think about changes needed to mitigate the issues identified. The book showcases a wide range of theorists, including Bourdieu, Foucault and Fraser. Its impressive scope includes analyses of collectivist, neoliberal and historical influences on educational leadership. It explores forensically leadership styles, with an explicit focus on distributed, instructional, democratic, autocratic, laissez-faire and organisational forms. Carefully curated by the editors, the world-leading contributors draw on their wealth of knowledge about research and practice to provide you with an overview of educational leadership today, looking at global research, evidence, arguments and conceptualisations. Each chapter is written in an engaging and inspiring way, following a consistent approach to help you to develop your understanding in each of the areas covered. Full pedagogical features throughout include chapter summaries, key questions, case studies, questions for readers and further reading suggestions with questions on key texts. A companion website provides links to open-access outputs, research-project outcomes, and networking seminars, conferences with links to local, national and global events and connections.

The relationship between education and democratic development has been a growing theme in debates focussed upon public education, but there has been little work that has directly related educational leadership to wider issues of freedom, politics and practice. Engaging with ELMA through the work of Hannah Arendt enables these issues of power to be directly confronted. Arendt produced texts that challenged notions of freedom and politics, and notably examined the lives of people, ideas and historical events in ways that are pertinent to the purposes and practices of education. This significant volume examines the main texts in the Arendt library and explains each of the key ideas and how they can enable critical thinking about knowledge production and practice in educational leadership. The analysis draws upon a range of exemplars and empirical projects from the field of educational leadership, investigating utility issues regarding Arendt's ideas, and engaging with the debates concerning her insights and contribution. Included in the book: -using Arendt to think about ELMA -the relationship between policy and practice, and organisation and leadership -critiques of the vita activa and vita contemplativa -thinking with and against Arendt. Gunter uses the work of Arendt to challenge the purposes and practices of intellectual work, with a view to developing perspectives on the responsibility for research and ideas. The book will be of value to all those working and researching in the field of Educational Leadership, Management and Administration.

New Public Management and the Reform of Education addresses complex and dynamic changes to public services by focusing on new public management as a major shaper and influencer of educational reforms within, between and across European nation states and policy actors. The contributions to the book are diverse and illustrate the impact of NPM locally but also the interplay between local and European policy spheres. The book offers: A critical overview of NPM through an analysis of debates, projects and policy actors A detailed examination of NPM within 10 nation states in Europe A robust engagement with the national and European features of NPM as a policy strategy The book actively contributes to debates and analysis within critical policy studies about the impact and resilience of NPM, and how through a study of educational reforms in a range of political systems with different traditions and purposes a more nuanced and complex picture of NPM can be built. As such the book not only speaks to educational researchers and professionals within Europe but also to policymakers, and can inform wider education and policy communities internationally.

This book focuses on Post-Soviet ethnic conflicts and Russia's involvement in them. In light of its significant importance for general ethnic conflict, specifically the post-Soviet Caucasus, along with the most recent war just fought over the area from September-November 2020, this book appropriately argues that it is time to reconsider Karabakh. This project deals with the historical, social and political aspects of the Karabakh issue regarding its origins, development and the current status of the conflict subsequent to the war in the autumn of 2020. Thus, the main themes will stress these points, as well as the importance of the Karabakh issue for the future, by considering its precedents and implications for other secessionist wars. This book also explores how such wars begin and end, the international legal precedents of self-determination versus territorial integrity, its implications for post-Soviet developments and conflicts, and the latest successful weapons developments lessons from the recent war involving drones, among others such as Azerbaijan's rich oil reserves.

Donald Trump betrayed the Kurds, America's most reliable allies in the fight against ISIS, by announcing in a tweet that US troops would withdraw from Syria. Betrayal is nothing new in Kurdish history, especially by Western powers. The Kurds, a nation with its own history, language, and culture, were not included in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which contained no provision for a Kurdish state. As a result, the land of Kurds was divided into the territories of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. In this updated and expanded edition of the 2016 The Kurds: A Modern History, Michael Gunter adds over 50 new pages that recount and analyze recent political, military, and economic events from 2016 to the end of 2018. Gunter's book also features fascinating vignettes about his experiences in the region during the past 30 years. He integrates personal accounts, such as a 1998 interview with the now-imprisoned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader, Abdullah Ocalan, his participation [or attendance if that's more accurate] at the Kurdistan Democratic Party Congress in 1993, and a meeting with the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2012. In 2017, the University of Hewler in Irbil invited him to give the keynote address before a gathering of 700 guests from academia and politics, including the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Nechirvan Barzani. In his speech, Gunter praised the KRG's positive achievements and highlighted continuing problems, such as KRG disunity, corruption, nepotism, and financial difficulties. Within hours, reactions to his address went viral throughout the land. Several TV channels and other news outlets reported that officials had tried to interrupt him. A few months later, this event would prove a harbinger of the Kurdish disaster that followed the ill-timed KRG referendum on independence. As an indirect consequence of the referendum, the KRG lost one-third of its territory. The book concludes with a new chapter, Back to Square One, which analyzes the KRG election in October 2018 and the latest twists and turns in the Syrian crisis.

Western politicians consider that leadership is essential for the delivery of educational reform. This important and timely book examines how leaders, leading and leadership became the dominant theme in education. It presents an analysis of the relationship between the state, public policy and the types of knowledge that New Labour used to make policy and break professional cultures. It is essential reading for all those interested in public policy, education policy, and debates about governance and will be of interest to policymakers, researchers and educational professionals.