Tag: Duke University

A Message of Complexity and Humility    

Frank Bruni, a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, offers us all a useful message of complexity and humility. [1]

As a professor and writer, Bruni says he is not “an ambassador of certainty or a font of unassailable verities but as an emissary of doubt. I want to teach  . . . how much [each of us] always [has] to learn. A lesson of humility and “respect for tradition, which is a force that binds  us, a folding of the self into a greater whole. . . [W]e share the stages of our communities, our countries, our worlds, with many other actors and should conduct ourselves in a manner that recognizes this fact. And ‘it’s complicated’ is a bulwark against arrogance, purity, zeal.”

Bruni cites Charlie Baker, a former Massachusetts governor, as a frequent advocate of humility who frequently quoted Philippians 2:3 from the Holy Bible as a lodestar for governing: “Do nothing our of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourself.”

Or as he stated in his co-authored 2022 book Results:

  • “Snap judgments—about people or ideas—are fueled by arrogance and conceit. They create blind spots and missed opportunities. Good ideas and interesting ways to accomplish goals in public life exist all over the place if you have the will, the curiosity, and the humility to find them.”

Bruni concludes the New York Times column with the following words: “While grievance blows our concerns out of proportion, humility puts them in perspective. While grievance reduces the people with whom we disagree to caricature, humility acknowledges that they’re every bit as complex as we are — with as much of a stake in creating a more perfect union.”

This blogger thanks Frank Bruni for these important reminders.

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[1] Bruni, The Most Important Thing I Teach My Students Isn’t on the Syllabus, N.Y. Times (April 20, 2024); CFrank Bruni, Biography, N.Y. Times.

Pandemic journal (# 25): Pandemic Showing Weaknesses of Free Market Capitalism                 

This is the conclusion posed by Dirk Philipsen, Associate Research Professor of economic history at the Sanford School of Public Policy and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.[1]

Free market capitalism, he says, “rewards competing, positioning, and elbowing, so these have become the most desirable qualifications people can have. [On the other hand, this system] does not value “empathy, solidarity, or concern for the public good, . . . social stability, health, or happiness. As a result, . . . the market system has depleted and ravaged the public sphere — public health, public education, public access to a healthy environment — in favor of private gain.”

This system also “fails to recognize the obvious: every private accomplishment is possible only on the basis of a thriving commons — a stable society and a healthy environment.”

In addition,. many “successful” corporations in the U.S. version of free market capitalism seek and obtain government bailouts, tax  breaks and subsidies. One example, during this pandemic, is the recent adoption of the CARES Act to provide stimulus to the economy. Yet more than $5 billion was disbursed, under this Act, to 20 large hospitals that had more than $108 billion of cash on hand and whose lobbyists helped the Department of Health and Human Services devise formulas for such disbursements.that did not include hospitals existing financial resources.[2]

Here are two other recent examples of such exploitation by the wealthy.  “A package of $170 billion in federal tax breaks . . .will go overwhelmingly to many of the country’s richest people and biggest companies. A program to rescue small businesses initially directed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to publicly traded companies while many smaller firms were frozen out.”[3]

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[1] Philpsen, Private gain must no longer be allowed to elbow out the public good, The Week  (May 25, 2020).

[2] Drucker, Silver-Greenberg & Kliff, Wealthiest Hospitals Got Billions in Bailout for Struggling Health Providers, N.Y. Times (May 25, 2020).

[3] Ibid; .Drucker, The Tax-Break Bonanza Inside the Economic Rescue Package, N.Y. Times (April 24, 2020).