Breaking Ranks: Dignity for All

Rank-based abuse, or rankism, is as old as time, and takes its toll on everyone, some much more than others. In personal relationships, rankism takes the form of disrespect, disregard, insult and humiliation. When one nation pulls rank on another, demanding subservience or surrender, the result is often war. This is a timely and long suppressed topic that Robert Fuller addresses with deep insight, and, in doing so, radically alters our worldview.

Fuller is president emeritus of Oberlin College and the founder of the Mo Tzu Project, and has traveled extensively in communist countries and troubled spots around the world. He earned a Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University and taught at Columbia University before becoming the president of Oberlin College. He served for many years as chairman of the global nonprofit media organization Internews. He is the author of Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank (New Society Publishers 2003) and All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (Berrett Koehler 2006).

Topics explored in this dialogue include: how you can stop the exploitation of rank, ways to address rankism in your life, how rankism relates to freedom and democracy, why rankism is often unconscious behavior, and how rankism connects to addiction.