Buckheit Leadership Series

Shaken by the pandemic, many are reconsidering their jobs with a fresh perspective and revised priorities. Many are quitting, in what has been called the “Great Resignation.” As Ravi S. Rajan wrote in a recent OpEd published in the Chicago Tribune, “Having a job – just any job – appears to be no longer enough. Given that, the old employment-centered argument for a college education now feels about as functional as a typewriter. Ironically, in this historic moment, educators’ greatest offering is precisely what we’ve neglected to herald: the discovery and fulfillment of ourselves.” 

In this talk, President Rajan considered how secondary and higher education can be so much more than an employment path and instead, a journey to a life fulfilled. The talk was followed up by a question and answer panel session. 

Ravi S. Rajan is the president of the California Institute of the Arts. Having studied music and worked with time-based and interactive media since 1993, he is an artist and producer whose work reaches across disciplines. Ravi is also a teacher and a leader with a reputation for developing innovative and visionary initiatives.

Before CalArts, Ravi lived in New York City for 18 years. He held multiple leadership roles at Purchase College, State University of New York (SUNY Purchase), taught students from kindergarten through university at various institutions, and worked with faculty and artists on multimedia projects at Yale University and The Rockefeller University.

Ravi has degrees from Yale and the University of Oklahoma and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (UK) in 2010. He has served on and has led various nonprofit boards supporting media, social justice, diversity, the arts, and education worldwide. He has been a member of the TONY Awards Nominating Committee, and serves on many other selection panels that provide assistance, scholarship, fellowships, and recognition to artists and arts organizations. 

An audio recording of the 2022 talk is available here.