Good Work, Compromised Work, Bad Work… And Ego

by Howard Gardner

In late July, I received a message from the USIA. For a brief moment, I thought it might be from the United States Information  Agency or Intelligence Agency, but it was actually from an organization that I had not heard of—The United Sigma Intelligence Association.  USIA informed me that , along with linguist Noam Chomsky and mathematician-physicist Edward  Witten, I was the winner of their annual prize. I don’t consider myself to be modest but I was astounded—and humbled—to be grouped with two of the outstanding scholars of our time.

I googled the USIA. I learned little about the organization online but noted that it had many outstanding figures as advisers—including several whom I knew personally. I wrote back to the agency and asked whether there were any requirements in connection with the award. I immediately heard from the director, saying that there were no ‘asks’—the organization hoped that my work would “inspire other talented people and help them further their love for humanity.” I notified a few organizations to which I belong that I had received this recognition and considered that the end of the matter.

In a few days I had occasion to write on several matters to my colleague and friend Steven Pinker (I entitled the e-mail “Sundry on Sunday.”)  I noted that, along with entrepreneur Jeff Bezos and historian Yuval Harari, Steve had received the USIA award the previous year.  He made light of this recognition and his role as an adviser, saying that he often agreed to lend his name to support organizations.

This past week—an unexpected twist. I had  inferred that the USIA award went only to three persons each year. But two individuals whom I also knew were informed that they had also received the USIA award for this year.  And undertaking more due diligence than I had, they had begun to wonder what was the USIA, where was it housed, how and by whom was it funded, and did it in fact issue the books, podcasts, and other forms of publicity that are mentioned on their website.  And not quickly receiving satisfactory answers, my colleagues so far have not accepted this recognition.

As someone who has studied and written about work—and particularly ‘good work’—for many years, I am left with a conundrum:

Could this be good work—in which case, the organization indeed has undertaken legitimate activities, actually makes appropriate use of its advisers, and reaches young people whom they seek to inspire?

Could this be compromised work—in which case the organization may have good intentions, and hopes to achieve its goals, but has gotten off to a slow start and exaggerated its achievements thus far?

Or is this basically a scam (aka ‘bad work’)—an effort to bring attention to an organization which is not legitimate and which may exploit well-known names in ways that are not sanctioned, not legitimate? 

From my grandson, I have subsequently learned the ‘sigma’ is often used online in a frivolous way—which did not give me confidence in this particular brand of sigma!  Perhaps we are being stigmatized!

And I have to ask myself: Did my own ego prevent me from doing the due diligence that I should have done?

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Updated October 2021

Writing in mid October 2021, after consulting with several individuals, I know a lot more about USIA. It is clear that this is not a genuine organization in the sense that American professionals assume. The leadership is new and is not aware of how USIA has operated in the past. There is no recognized process for adding advisers or choosing award winners. What astonishes me is that new award winners are regularly added as are new advisers—I suspect that, like me, these individuals were flattered to be informed of this award and did not bother to ask probing questions. At this point, USIA is best described as a reputational Ponzi scheme.

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Reference

https://www.amacad.org/publication/compromised-work

Questioning Identity and Discrimination with GCI’s Newest Ambassadors

by Lynn Barendsen

In late July, I led a virtual Good Project session for 36 high school students from around the world, participants in the Global Citizens Initiative LEAD Challenge (link here). These students represented 30 different cultural heritages, spoke 28 languages, attended 30 schools, and hailed from 14 different countries. To say it was a diverse group is a bit of an understatement.

The LEAD Challenge Program focused on Leadership, Ethics, Advocacy and Design Thinking, and over the course of one week, students gathered virtually to learn skills and collaborate on an advocacy campaign for a nonprofit organization, APOPO (link here), which fights tuberculosis and works to uncover landmines. Attending sessions with Teaching Assistants, led by experts in a variety of fields, and working in small groups, they were asked to apply their learnings to a real world challenge. Following the program, students are then encouraged to bring what they’ve learned back to their home communities and work to solve local issues of their choosing.

This was the first year for this program, and GCI’s online debut, designed in part in an effort to continue its efforts to build community and global connection in spite of the challenges of the global pandemic. The Good Project team has attended the GCI Summit (an in-person opportunity) for numerous years, both in Cambridge and in Tokyo, so we are familiar with its mission and its methods.

During my short hour with this international group, I offered a brief history of The Good Project and the nature of our research, but we spent the bulk of our time engaged with an ethical dilemma about discrimination (link here). In this dilemma, Elena, a high school student, who immigrated with her family from Mexico at a young age, witnesses discrimination towards her father and others. She wonders if she should hide her ethnicity as she applies for internships in order to eliminate the possibility that she might receive similar treatment at the hands of hiring managers. Ultimately she decides to represent herself truthfully. In small breakout groups, students used a “See, Think, Wonder” thinking routine to further consider Elena’s situation (link here). The question “What do you see?” asked students to focus on and unpack the information and the facts of the story. “What do you think?” asked them to consider Elena’s decision and what they might have done if they faced similar challenges. Finally, “What do you wonder?” asked more far-reaching questions, including additional questions about the dilemma itself and about good work in general.

The breakout groups outlined the relevant information about Elena’s situation thoughtfully. Her choice was described as a decision between hiding her Hispanic heritage or being true to herself. Some pointed out that she assumed that she would be subject to discrimination because of her ethnicity, while others pointed to the existence of discrimination itself as fact. Calling out the inherent injustice of discrimination, one student pointed out that race and ethnicity are not equal to one’s abilities. 

Asked to consider what these facts made them think, students identified with Elena in multiple ways. They asserted that she is at an age where she will begin to question “everything,” and if she is finding herself ready to compromise her values, she should perhaps also ask herself why she is working in the first place, questioning “Is it for money, or for something else?” Some recognized that she and her family might be struggling financially, and if this were the case, some students suggested that hiding her identity might be the more prudent choice. Asserting that the inherent inequities in society made the situation difficult, one student wrote, “In my opinion either option is commendable because they both have their hardships.” Although most students were behind Elena’s decision to be true to herself, several explained that they would understand if she felt she needed to make a different choice.

Finally, asked to consider what Elena’s choice made them wonder, the breakout groups had a number of thought-provoking questions. Not surprisingly, with such an action-minded group, some turned to the possible solutions, wondering “what can companies do to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices” and what steps should be taken to “become inclusive enough so people will not be put in a situation like this?” Some responses asked straightforward, important questions, including “Why are managers still in charge if they are discriminatory?” and “What percentage of hiring managers are white?” Other students became more philosophical in their musings. For example, one participant explained that the word “good” is subjective, and wondered if there are “any universal moral values that hold true at all times?” Another probing question asked, “What makes certain societies give superiority to specific races/ethnicities?” Finally, one student asked, “To what extent can you break technical/legal rules for the sake of remaining on the moral high ground?”

Although our conversation together was brief, it was clear that the discussion prompted some important reflection. Participants recognized that experiences like Elena’s “have a larger impact on our personal view of ourselves and our families.” At the same time, they also questioned the nature of this impact, asking, “Should marginalized people be burdened with the task of being ‘brave’ and ensuring respect for their community? Is that a burden at all? What do we owe to each other and ourselves?”

Using this dilemma as the basis of our discussion, I also encouraged the students to consider larger questions about the nature of good work, its relevance in their daily lives, and how they might learn to reflect upon good work on a regular basis.

The challenges of online gatherings are by now way too familiar to educators, and in particular, the issues of community building across such a diverse group are especially complicated. Our brief hour only scratched the surface, but during that time the group was engaged and shared a passion about the topics we discussed. I look forward to hearing about what comes next for this idealistic and talented group.

Doing Good Work at School in the Midst of the Pandemic

A guest post by Hiya Jain

Hiya Jain is a recent graduate of the Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India. We invited Hiya to write a post about her experience at Riverside during the COVID-19 pandemic and the social good that was still possible during this year. Below, she describes how her understanding of “good work” evolved this year as a result of two programs:

1. The Inner Sanitation Experience (INSANE), in which graduating students engage in self-discovery and personal transformation during a two-day community. Held just two weeks before final exams, students share perspectives about how they are not meant to “compete” with each other but to “complete” each other.

2. Persistence, a community service program in which students partake in initiatives in the local community.

We thank Kiran Sethi, founder of The Riverside School and Design for Change, for connecting us with Hiya and for the opportunity to feature a student’s personal point of view.

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I am Hiya Jain, a 17-year-old recent high-school graduate from India who wants to pursue Media, Politics, and Economics at an institution abroad later this year. After spending close to 15 years as a student at the Riverside School in Ahmedabad, where I was asked to take responsibility for my own education and allowed to make and learn from my mistakes, I am excited, not afraid, to see what the world has in store for me.  

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the single most difficult thing about lockdown was “perspective,” or rather the lack of it. Sitting in the comfort of my own home, I was almost completely cut off from social interaction, save for Zoom calls. This made my outlook on the world very one-dimensional. In essence, I was only speaking with people who had the privilege of owning an electronic device and had a steady Internet connection. This meant that while I heard of the disparities created by the pandemic, and I saw news reports of an extensive crisis so many people faced, it became so much easier to compartmentalize them away.

Add to the situation the perceived struggles of coping with online school and the many other comparatively insignificant problems of a senior year in lockdown, and doing “good work” became an afterthought. But at the end of the day, “good work” is a choice, as is making the “right decision,” and sometimes even the most well-intentioned people need a reminder of that. Thankfully, I experienced two particular processes at Riverside that served as a reminder for me to do “good work” in the world and that gave me much needed perspective.

First, there was INSANE (link here), an experience that truly lives up to its name. Two weeks before our final senior secondary leaving examinations, my entire class spent a day going through six carefully planned activities for the sole purpose of setting priorities before we graduated. The day started at about 6AM with a bunch of sleep deprived individuals, but by the end, we were more awake and aware than we had ever been. We spent time at a cemetery, picked up trash on the roads, rolled incense sticks, and reflected over our inability to convey the magnitude of our problems to others in the world.

Even with the challenges posed by the pandemic, even if we only got a modified version of the true “inner sanitation” experience, it was still worth it. Why? Because each one of us left asking so many questions, including, “What is stopping us from doing good work?”

The second process, one we undertook for the duration of the year, is called “Persistence.” The name is again fitting because it is something every student participates in during the entirety of high school at Riverside. In the simplest of terms, Persistence is student-driven community service. It can take lots of different forms, but the one that I lead was called “Inclusion,” an attempt to help students under the Right to Education Act reach their target class level academically.  

This was the first time I saw opportunity inequality during the pandemic. Each week, as my student buddy and I struggled through another session with poor technology connection, I realized the importance of the Internet in learning. Despite the challenges, she showed up every class ready to make it work, and I knew I had to at least attempt to match her efforts in doing my best “good work.” 

So, what does “good work” mean? Personally, I find it very difficult to explain or define it because I think that “good work” is often just the result of being a “good person.” And as I reflect on the processes I just described, it is clearer to me that the objective of both Persistence and INSANE was to help us become better people. INSANE showed us the purpose of making morally sound choices, while Persistence illustrated how our actions affect others, thus demanding quality “good work” from us.

In a funny and clichéd way, while I set out to write about learning during the pandemic, I think it turned out to be more like learning from the pandemic. I understand that “good work” is a choice, which seems more obvious and achievable when the little bit of empathy and whole lot of perspective I learned at Riverside.

Why not donate a kidney to a stranger?

by Courtney Bither

On June 1, 2021 I donated a kidney to a stranger. Most people want to know, immediately, “Why? Why donate a kidney to a stranger?”

 The screening process for kidney donation is thorough, and there are several psychological and social screenings for non-directed (or altruistic) donors. Throughout the process, and in speaking to others about my decision, I’ve come to realize that donating a kidney, while certainly a sacrifice and a very big decision, always felt within the realm of possibility for me.

In my experience, most people who aren’t confronted with organ donation have not spent much time thinking about it. I certainly did not consider myself a candidate for organ donation until a history professor of mine shared with our class that he would be donating a kidney and asked if we had any questions about the process. This conversation prompted me to think more about organ donation: the risks, the benefits, the requirements. And I decided to submit myself as a candidate not long after.  

We return to the why: Why donate a kidney to a stranger? The answer is simple: because I wanted to. Because it made sense to me. I decided if I made it through all of the screening, I would be at such little risk for the surgery, and able to contribute so much to someone. So why not?

“Why not?” gave me much more pause than, “why?” Why not give a kidney to a stranger? Because I cannot know anything about the intended recipient, and I cannot choose to whom my kidney is donated. My kidney could go to a child, or a loving parent, or a justice-seeking teacher. Or my kidney could go to a white supremacist—a person’s whose actions I find not only questionable, but evil—a detriment to the wellbeing of others. And my kidney would extend that person’s life. 

So how, nonetheless, did I choose to go through with it?

I looked at my options: donate, or not. And I talked through my reasoning with close friends and family—people who understand me and my values, who could help me talk through what felt right for me. Talking out my concerns with each option clarified for me what I was most concerned with: doing good and doing no harm.

I realized, in self-reflection, that I would rather take a chance on doing good, even if it meant harm might result from my decision. It’s uncomfortable to think about, but it’s important to consider. In general, I tend to think that those in need should be given priority over those might take advantage of systems for those in need. I’d rather take a chance on a “good” person receiving my kidney than a bad one. And, beyond this, I can only do what is within my control—the decision to donate is within my control, not the past or future decisions my recipient makes.

Understanding my values here—to do good, to prevent harm, to fulfill what I believe my moral and social obligations are—helped me decide, with confidence, to proceed with kidney donation.

Understanding the gravity of the situation for those waiting for a kidney also helped me decide to donate my kidney: 12 people die every day waiting for a kidney transplant. In 2020 in the U.S., about 100,000 people were waiting for a kidney transplant, and only 22,817 people in the U.S. received one. Not everyone can or should donate a kidney. However, considering the manifold aspects of the issue, more people can and perhaps should think about kidney donation—and other “big solutions”—and where and how they fit in the process.

 I am very fortunate to be in a situation where I can donate a kidney: I have very supportive colleagues at work who encouraged me throughout the process; I have enough paid time off for my recovery so I won’t have to struggle financially; I live with my partner and two very supportive roommates who help with recovery while I cannot drive or make food. And for me, kidney donation never felt impossible. But for some people, it does. And that’s alright—even good. Donating one kidney involves much more than one person—each person involved in my recovery made this donation possible. Each “big decision” and “big solution” requires a team—yes, only I donated a kidney, but I couldn’t have done it alone. And what’s more, it’s something that felt right for me, with my values, it was something I wanted to do.

I must admit, at times I feel uncomfortable with the shock I hear from people questioning my choice to donate a kidney. I know people mean well—and I don’t deny, donating a kidney to a stranger is an unusual thing to do—but because donating a kidney was something I wanted to do, I don’t always understand the shock. My favorite responses have come from folks who tell me that they have family on dialysis, so they understand the gravity of the situation, or from those who appreciate that this sort of decision is brave—it certainly required courage. But it isn’t an impossibility—it was a choice I made, and I made it happily.

Everyone can have a role in making the world a better place—in doing good work—and, in my opinion, it’s a good thing that people have different roles in the process. Rather than focus on how impractical another’s role would be for you, perhaps it would be more helpful to reflect on what it is you want to do and what it is that you can do.

You might start by asking yourself, “What do I want to do to make the world a better place? What makes sense to me? And what kind of team or community do I need with me to take action?”

Perhaps will you feel inspired to look into kidney donation (link here), or maybe you’ll sign up to donate blood (link here). Or, maybe you will challenge yourself and a friend to work with an organization like Food for Free (link) or Meals on Wheels (link), working to ensure everyone has access to adequate food in your community.  

There are many ways to do good work—to work for a kinder, more equitable world. Find what makes sense to you, what you want to do, and start there.   

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• Not sure what you value or how to make a decision? In my own life, I have found both the Value Sort (link) and the 5 Ds of Good Work (link) useful in my own discernment process (including in my choice to donate a kidney). Be sure to check them out.

• Would you like to learn more about kidney donation? I recommend this video and article (link here) from Dylan Matthews at Vox.

May Round-up: Top Five Articles

by Kirsten McHugh

As we gear up for a long holiday weekend in the U.S. and the unofficial kick-off to summer, our team at The Good Project would like to share content that has inspired discussion and deeper thinking amongst our group in recent weeks. We hope you find these ideas a compelling way to wrap up your month.

1. As the end of this very strange academic year draws to a close, many graduates will leave their institutions to join their respective professional ranks in a bit of a fog. Earlier this month, Harvard Law Today published a piece on the 2021 Last Lecture Series (link here). Select faculty were asked to share their words of wisdom with the graduating class in this annual tradition. This year’s group of faculty did not disappoint in their offerings of hope and motivation for the future.

2. In more of a “listen” than “read” mood? Check out this recent podcast episode from NYT’s The Ezra Klein Show in which Ezra interviews Anna Sale of Death, Sex, and Money (link here). The two discuss how to best approach “difficult conversations”—how to be a good listener and a good communicator. 

3. In case you missed it, our colleagues at The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues recently hosted a panel discussion on “Virtues in the Professions” (link here). The panel featured Dr. Sabena Jameel from the University of Birmingham, Professor David Bogle from the University College London, and Major Dr. Scott Parsons from the United States Military Academy West Point. Together, the group discussed ethics and dilemmas across engineering, the military, and medicine. Want more? Don’t miss the upcoming conference “Character and Virtues in the Professions” (link here). 

4. An unprecedented number of American women made the difficult decision to leave work during the pandemic in order to care for their families. Now that the country is starting to reopen, how do these women return to the workplace? Check out this short segment from NPR to learn how one group aims to help women reverse course and get back to the office (link here). 

5. When we talk about supporting our outermost Rings of Responsibility (link here), we often find ourselves discussing civics and citizenship. The Good Project Director Lynn Barendsen has thought a lot about this sector over the years. In her most recent blog (link here), Barendsen describes her connection to the Civic Collaboratory (link here), shares highlights of the impressive work being done in this realm by some Collaboratory members, and announces The Good Project’s Good Civics series (link here).