Leadership as moral act

Gravestone for “Bart’’ Giamatti and his wife in New Haven

“Management is the capacity to handle multiple problems, neutralize various constituencies, motivate personnel….Leadership, on the other hand, is an essential moral act, not — as in most management — an essentially protective act. It is the assertion of a vision, not simply the exercise of a style.’’

— A. Bartlett Giamatti (1938-1989) in “An Address to School Administrators’’ . Born in Boston and a Renaissance literature scholar, he served as president of Yale University in 1978-86, as National {baseball} League president in 1986-89, and for only five months as baseball commissioner in 1989, before suffering a fatal heart attack at his summer home, in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha’s Vineyard. He was a lifelong Red Sox fan.