50books_poc | 22: Ethical Ambition by Derrick Bell

22: Ethical Ambition by Derrick Bell

Derrick Bell has been a professor of law at Harvard (among other universities) and before that was a civil rights lawyer for many years; he has a lot of experience of trying to live a life that is good both in the sense of being satisfying and in the sense of being ethical. Ethical Ambition is his attempt to distill that experience for the sake of readers, especially young people, who wish to succeed in their careers, but also to live an ethical life, a life of doing good.

It's taken me several months to read it (in between reading other books) and not because it's long -- it's less than 200 pages long -- or because it's particularly hard to read. (Bell's style is sometimes a bit overly formal, perhaps because of his legal background, but it's never unclear.) Rather, it's because it's chewy, and every paragraph gives me something to think about. A lot of the things he says are quite straightforward and unmysterious -- that honesty pays off, that taking risks makes you feel more alive as well as often being the right thing to do, that you have a responsibility to the people you have close relationships with as well as the people you're trying to help -- but getting these messages in such a concentrated dose is unusual.

Bell maintains that "an ethical life is not a life of sacrifice. It is, in fact, a life of riches"; of course, that doesn't necessarily mean monetary riches, but despite repeatedly taking firm and public stands against a lack of hiring diversity in the institutions he worked in, Bell himself is doing pretty well, and he's not the only one. The gist of the book, overall, is that doing the right thing doesn't have to mean starving in the gutter clothed only in your sense of self-righteousness; it can mean succeeding in your chosen field on your own terms and without having to compromise your moral standards. There's a lot of food for thought here.