Leon Panetta (b. 1938)
Filed under the name Leon · January 29, 2026
Leon Panetta's long record of public service, including the country's defense secretary, its CIA director, and its White House chief of staff, represents the kind of sustained institutional competence I find myself respecting regardless of the specific arena, having spent thirty-eight years navigating my own institution's slower, quieter forms of leadership. What strikes me most, reading his profile, is that he chose to close his career by starting a leadership-training institute at the university he attended, aimed squarely at preparing tomorrow's public servants, which mirrors precisely the instinct that shaped my own later years mentoring graduate students, especially women and students of color entering STEM. Institutions rarely improve on their own; they improve because people who have already succeeded within them go back and deliberately widen the door for whoever comes next. I serve on the board of a scholarship fund for exactly that reason, and I recognize the same motivation in Panetta's choice to teach rather than simply retire. That, more than any title, seems like his real legacy.