It is no surprise that the issue of leadership is a compelling topic for students of management and the American public at large. According to the second annual National Leadership Index taken by the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, more than 7 in 10 Americans (70.8%) agree or agree strongly that there is a leadership crisis in the United States today (see http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/leadership/research). Despite hundreds of authors writing vast numbers of books and scholarly articles on leadership, despite so many precollegiate, collegiate and postcollegiate leadership courses, programs, think tanks, institutes, and centers offering leadership development and training, Americans nevertheless acutely feel a leadership vacuum. Leadership has become the biggest buzzword in management education, in what is an obvious effort to fill that vacuum. In this article, the author talks about the crisis of leadership and the not-leadership event at her own campus which echoes the crisis at the national level. To address the crisis, the author suggests that Americans must redefine their notions of leadership. She adds that it is up to them to identify their own and others' mistakes in judgment, in ethical awareness, in decision making, in managing personnel, in taking leadership and to create from these the teachable moments that lead to authentic learning and to realistic definitions of leadership.