Welcome

Prospective and declared LEAD concentrators with questions about the program can contact Professor Williams to schedule an advising appointment.

Leadership Studies Course Offerings for Winter Study 2024 and Spring 2025


Jim BurnsLeadership Studies focuses on the universal phenomenon of leadership in human groups. Leadership Studies asks what leadership means within a wide variety of social contexts – whether in a family, a team, a theatre company, a philanthropy, a university, a multinational corporation, or a nation state waging war. It seeks to understand the dynamics of the relationships between leaders and followers. It studies authority, power, and influence. It seeks to grasp the bases of legitimacy that leaders claim, and followers grant, in all of these relationships.

Founded in 1997, Leadership Studies is an active program on campus that offers several engaging courses in the field of leadership, provides students with the opportunity to concentrate in the field, hosts numerous exciting guest lecturers each year, and organizes wide-ranging conferences on issues of leadership. Leadership Studies also supports a range of initiatives that enable students, faculty, alumni, local citizens, and the college community as a whole to study, experience, or practice leadership inside and outside the classroom. Please browse our site to learn more about Leadership Studies at Williams College.


For information about the Summer Institute in American Foreign Policy, see here.