Book Review: Memoir From A Local Academic Offers Blueprint For Leadership

By Glen Mason
Special to the Guide

This memoir is not a journal of accomplishments or pats of self-affirmation of professional and academic achievements. Nor is it a capitalist treatise on leadership to be published as a corporate-sponsored tome for profit.

Academia should take note that despite Dr. Alvin Schexnider’s professional status, “Confessions of a Black Academic: A Memoir” is an unapologetic, well-researched, and life-experienced report on the assets of progressive leadership beautifully rendered with a veneer of perseverance. It serves as a beacon of hope and a blueprint for the next generation of new-age leaders.

However, what would impress the reader the most is that Schexnider’s prose delivers with the voice of a contemporary griot, more wiseman than the proverbial prophet. His ultimate summation examines and culls the finest leadership attributes, making it available to those willing to learn to inspire as many as possible. Achievement is in the planning. In Schexnider’s worldview, self-discipline and voice of self are the only tools needed.

Overall, “Confessions of a Black Academic: A Memoir” should be on the New York Times best-seller list if it isn’t by the time this review is published. And dare I say, if not mandatory reading at every school, college, and school of business curriculum. Great minds are always at work, and this read is as much. What some perceive as “stand-offish, self-absorbed, or as one of Schexniders’ distractors put it, “into himself too much” bares a degree of ignorance, ill-informed, and intellectually insecure at best. To anyone of positive thought or notion that reads professional jealousy and envy, one is too into solving the problems or challenges of an HBCU instead of holding the position in leadership as a mere moniker to wear in an imaginative fiefdom.

If there is a subplot, it is the story of a man at an elevated level of success under very challenging circumstances but continued to serve the educational benefit of others in spite of.

Schexnider’s literary pursuit wasn’t a replication of leadership but rather a well-documented investigation, noted qualities and documented assets that were observed, verified, and then examined with undeniably two distinct higher education milieus, living labs as it were.

He studied leadership qualities that arguably are the best of a generation, but his style is HIS. The inspiring aspect of the memoir is that Schexnider confides that he planned to be a leader. He didn’t have to look any further than his dad and uncle as initial inspiration for interest. Both held administrative or positions of national leadership with the International Longshoreman Association.

This book is one of importance, particularly, for young men. For those who aspire to be leaders, “it is mission critical,” as Schexnider puts it, especially those who want to lead by example. An earlier book, “Saving Black Colleges,” published and reviewed in the New Journal and Guide in 2013, is the result. Case in point, it is a survival manual for HBCUs, educational institutions, and corporate America.

Schexnider studied them all. While poignantly presenting the best leadership qualities and skills for the next half-century. Perhaps beyond.

One is likely to elevate their self-esteem five pages into “Confession of a Black Academic: A Memoir,” by Alvin J. Schexnider. Written with a pragmatic, chivalrous aplomb, it illustrates how one disciplines the mind to stay genuine and unapologetic in pursuit of knowledge.

He clarifies the effects of insularity on HBCUs.

In Chapter 10 on Race and the Academy, it was intriguing that Schexnider noted that solutions are obtainable, and it’s beyond the time to grieve the problem.

I recommend the following. Read, then re-read “Confession of a Black Academic – A Memoir.”

About the Author: Dr. Alvin J. Schexnider served as interim president of Norfolk State University from July 2005 to July 2006. He has held faculty and academic administrative positions at several institutions, including Southern University, Syracuse University, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Winston-Salem State University.