News – Page 5 – Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism

Former Minnesota Commissioner of Public Safety and former St. Paul Chief of Police Joins Board

John Harrington, former commissioner of public safety for the State of Minnesota and former chief of police for the City of St. Paul, has been elected to the board of the Caux Round Table.

As issues of moral government come more and more to the fore in our global community, John brings special insights to the work of the Caux Round Table in implementing its Principles for Government. A fundamental duty of any government is to provide personal and community security with justice for the well-being of those it serves.

We need to ask, “Can there be moral capitalism where public governance is immoral?”

The institutional challenge in achieving and sustaining moral governance is: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? – “Who will guard the guardians?”

John graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor of arts in religion and a minor in Chinese/Far Eastern studies. He also received an MA in public safety from the University of St. Thomas and is now completing the doctoral program in criminal justice administration at Walden University.

His publications are: In Their Own Words: Why Kids Join Gangs – A Report to the MN Legislature, 1998; Partnerships for Public Safety; Minnesota Police Chief, 2007; Eyewitness Identification Protocol Reform; The Police Chief, 2009; Above and Beyond the Call of Duty, 2015; Minnesota to Mogadishu; Minnesota Police Chief, 2016.

John has been an adjunct professor at St. Mary’s University and St. Thomas University teaching community policing, gangs and juvenile delinquency, 21st century policing, diversity and policing, public policy and training. He was also an assistant professor/community faculty and project director at the School of Law Enforcement at Metropolitan State University from 1985 to 2014.

Internationally, John twice traveled to Mogadishu, Somalia, to consult and teach with the Somali Police Force on community policing and has completed two supply campaigns for the Somali Police Force, including delivery of emergency medical supplies and an ambulance.

In 2011, John cofounded Ujamaa Place, a non-profit organization in St. Paul, with the mission to transform the lives of young African American men who have been incarcerated or in gangs, serving as the chair of the board and interim executive director. Ujamaa Place has worked with over 5,000 men, with only five returning to incarceration.

John has been sought out for his community leadership:

·       Member of the Minnesota Senate
·       Co-founder of the Asian American Police Officer Association
·       Co-founder of Hand and Hand Inc.
·       Justice Research Center
·       National Association of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE)
·       Treasurer of Northstar NOBLE
·       Police Executive Research Forum
·       Somali Police Officer Association
·       Board member of St. Paul Intervention Project
·       Board member of Alina Hospital Foundation
·       Board member of Battered Women’s Justice Project
·       Board member of Circus Juventus
·       Board member of Interfaith Action

John was also chief of police of the Metropolitan Transit Police Department in Minnesota from 2012 to 2018.

During his tenure as chief of police in St. Paul, the city saw violent crime drop yearly, with gang and domestic homicides reduced by 50-90%. Several innovative initiatives were created, including:

·       St. Paul Domestic Violence and Intervention Project
·       Operation Shamrock
·       St. Paul Police Foundation
·       2008 Republican National Convention – oversaw and managed security for the event
·       St. Paul Police Department Gang Unit
·       Safe City Initiative
·       Department diversity – offered the first Hmong Citizen Police Academy in the U.S.

We are looking forward to getting his wise counsel as a new member of the board.

July Pegasus Now Available!

Here’s the July issue of Pegasus.

In this edition, we honor one of the leaders of the Caux Round Table, Frank Straub, by republishing ten essays from his book, Culture Time at BLANCO.

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

Please note: Because we were unable to edit the individual essays, we weren’t able to delete the original page numbers and add new ones.

Statement of Conclusions: Caux Round Table 2023 Global Dialogue

Participants in the Caux Round Table’s 2023 Global Dialogue convened at Mountain House in Caux, Switzerland on July 26 and 27 for round table sessions on 1) where are we at as a global community, 2) where are we headed and 3) where are our leaders?

Participants from Asia, Europe and the U.S., rather quickly and agreeably, came to certain conclusions:

1) Our human community is at an inflection point: something is past and something different is coming. We are in a juncture of developments, provoking dysfunctions, exacerbating differences, precipitating separations and bringing on anxiety-inducing uncertainties.
2) Leaders up to our challenges and worthy of our respect are in short supply everywhere.
3) A recovery of commitment to personal responsibility is most needed.

This statement, drafted by participants, sets forth their conclusions and recommendations.

Please feel free to share the statement with your friends, colleagues and networks.

Preliminary Summary of Key Conclusions from Global Dialogue

The Caux Round Table 2023 Global Dialogue concluded last Thursday with participant agreement on two observations and one recommendation:

First, our global community systemically lacks leaders. Many have power over others in government, business and civil society, but too few use their power to advance the common good.

Secondly, our global community is in a disorderly transition from a past coherence to an uncertain future. We are experiencing aggressions and potential aggressions, dissolutions and divisiveness, all leading to a global disempowering anxiety arising from worrisome uncertainty and mistrust of institutional authority.

Thirdly, our global community can rise about our time of troubles with a re-commitment to comprehensive personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility implies relationship – with those to whom we are responsible or for whom we are responsible. Responsibility is at the apex of social capital. It balances individuality with collective well-being. Taken to extremes, assertion of our personal rights encourages egocentricity and so can undermine the common weal. Where we impose on others and they on us, there is no justice.

But when responsibility gives moral guidance to rights, society can achieve balance and equilibrium conducive to justice and happiness for all.

Where Confucius advocated “reciprocity” as the most important word of all, Aristotle advocated following the “mean,” Jesus spoke of each doing unto others as if they were ourselves, the Qur’an advises that we should keep the balance (mizan) and the Buddha advocated following a middle path, we should listen and accordingly assume our due responsibilities. Doing so will naturally position us to do well for ourselves and good to others.

Being responsible implies that there should be limits to our self-seeking. When responsibility is associated with leadership, stewardship results. The leader assumes fiduciary duties to serve the community.

Therefore, to enjoy social justice and happiness, we need a balance of responsible leadership in government, business and civil society. Each sector has its particular responsibilities, all of which contribute to a wholesome community as follows:

I want to send you this preliminary report of my personal takeaways from our global dialogue discussions. Our fellow, John Dalla Costa, is preparing a more comprehensive documentation of the many most interesting points raised in our sessions.

Update from Global Dialogue

The 2023 Caux Round Table Global Dialogue at Mountain House in Caux, Switzerland, opened with notable cross-cultural discussions.

The theme of the dialogue is to begin anew, as our times are new.

Here is a picture of participants and two views from Mountain House:

You may find here my opening remarks on why our time demands new thinking about our responsibilities.

We were joined by Yukihisa Fujita from Japan, who attended the first meeting of the Caux Round Table in 1986, also at Mountain House, and by Bob MacGregor, who was the prime mover of our Principles for Business back in 1994.

June Pegasus Now Available!

Here’s the June issue of Pegasus.

In this edition, we re-publish my article “Capitalism and its Discontents,” which originally appeared in the journal Directors&Boards.

We also include a piece from Michael Hartoonian, our associate editor, on rationality and its discontents.

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

By the way, If you’ve missed any previous issues of Pegasus, you can find them all in the archive here.

Please Join Us for Lunch July 6 to Reflect on Who’s Right and Who’s Wrong: Business in the Crosshairs in Our Culture War

The Wall Street Journal, in two recent articles, brought forward factual realities of our time, where businesses have become parties to our differences of opinion – should they go with the flow of ESG? Should they stick to their knitting? What social/cultural points of view important to their customers and employees should become part of their brand or their products and services?

The controversies are robust and the issues involved both sensitive to all parties and thorny, so that one can easily get pricked trying to get a hand on them.

For example, employees are fiduciary agents of their employers, having assumed duties of due care. Does this mean that they should exercise self-restraint where their personal beliefs and values are concerned to think first of what is best for the company vis-à-vis all its customers and its brand over the long-term?

Please join us for lunch at noon on Thursday, July 6 at Landmark Center, room 326, in St. Paul to help think through this new challenge for all of us living in a free society, where tolerance and respect must be important moral foundations for community.

Registration will begin at 11:30 am.

Cost to attend is $20, which you can pay at the door.

Lunch will be provided by Afro Deli.

The event will last between an hour and hour and a half.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Update On Our Global Dialogue

I am very pleased and honored to tell you that Thai Beverage, a major Thai company most supportive of a Buddhist approach to development – the sufficiency economy principles proposed by His Late Majesty King Rama IX – has agreed to sponsor the 2023 Global Dialogue. With the company’s support, we will have with us at Mountain House several very thoughtful Thai opinion leaders.

Secondly, two of our colleagues from Beijing, professors most conversant with pre-imperial Chinese moral philosophy, have permission to join us.

Thirdly, Klaus Leisinger of the Global Values Alliance, former president of the Novartis Foundation and colleague of Hans Kung, will join us on July 26 to share his concerns and his optimism about what private thought leaders can accomplish in recommending global approaches to our common, shared conundrums.

Fourth, I am especially reassured by notes from a number of colleagues who plan to join the dialogue that our focus on the ethical foundations for our global community, as we move into the 21^st century on a note of stress and conflict, is timely and of fundamental importance.

I hope you will find it possible to come to Caux, Switzerland on July 26 and 27.

I attach a copy of the proposed agenda here and the draft civilizational ethic here.

To learn more or to register, please click here.

Can We Find Grace in Our Lives? Please Join Us June 27 on Zoom

A distinctive act of the Protestant Reformation was to place responsibility directly and centrally on the individual. Ethics and morality thereby became one’s very personal responsibility, part of one’s vocation as a person. And yet, somewhat to the contrary, Protestant thinkers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin placed limits on the effectiveness of one’s being responsible for giving rise to a claim on God for eternal salvation. For that, they said, we could only hope for God’s grace and through prayer invoke his beneficence.

Grace, therefore, became a standard for good.

The word grace also connotes that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm and loveliness. It is an aesthetic, a source of beauty. We think of graceful manners, speech, music and dance.

It might be that the work of the Caux Round Table in promoting principles for business and government is a work of grace – grace coming from those who engage in the work and grace in those who live by those principles.

This reference to grace in business ethics, corporate social responsibility, ESG, social justice and political constitutionalism may be innovative, but also possibly instructive.

If we are to seek grace in ourselves and in our world, such work must spring from within us and be manifested outwardly. It would be more than traditional ethics, either deontological or utilitarian or alignment with moral criteria without much inner authenticity. In politics, it would be the basis for leadership.

Please join us at 9:00 am (CDT) on Tuesday, June 27 on Zoom to reflect with us on the meaning of grace and its possible contribution to better living.

To register, please email us at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

By the way, in May Pegasus, we include a piece on grace by our colleague, Michael Hartoonian, who will be with us on the call.

The event is free and will last about an hour.

Category: News