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Goodbye to two great men

Jill

The whole of the internet is abuzz with the news that Steve Jobs passed away today, and I also feel strangely sad about his death. Hitting a little closer to home, I found out via Twitter that Derrick Bell also passed today. Bell was a leader in the development and teaching of Critical Race Theory, and one of the most interesting legal thinkers I’ve ever come across. He shaped not only my legal studies and my work, but American law and ideas about race in this country. You should be reading his writing generally, but this section of the Wikipedia entry about his career is worth pointing to:

In 1980 Bell became the dean of the University of Oregon School of Law, becoming the first African American to ever head a non-black law school. He resigned several years later over a dispute about faculty diversity. Bell then taught at Stanford University for a year.

Returning to Harvard in 1986, Bell staged a five-day sit-in in his office to protest the school’s failure to grant tenure to two legal scholars on staff, both of whom adhered to a movement in legal philosophy that claims legal institutions play a role in the maintenance of the ruling class’ position. The administration, not giving an inch, claimed substandard scholarship and teaching on the part of the professors as the reason for the denial of tenure, but Bell called it an unambiguous attack on ideology. Bell’s sit-in galvanized student support but sharply divided the faculty.

Bell reentered the debate over hiring practices at Harvard in 1990, when he vowed to take an unpaid leave of absence until the school appointed a female of color to its tenured faculty. At the time, of the law school’s 60 tenured professors, only three were black and five were women. The school had never had a black woman on the tenured staff.

They were both influential men who struck me, most basically, as good people. They were were visionaries trying to do the right thing. They were builders and creators. Jobs is a bigger name, of course — this piece at Wirecutter is really worth a read, and I’m typing this post on a Mac. But Bell’s influence was deep and wide, even if not as widely recognized. I’m sorry they’re both gone. I’m glad they created what they did.

13 thoughts on Goodbye to two great men

  4. Thank you so much for posting about this. I am a critical race theory student so Derrick Bell’s work has been hugely influential in my education. He will be greatly missed.

  5. Second the rep for Shuttlesworth, but I can’t say I agree that Jobs was a good or great man. He most certainly was visionary and adept at showmanship, but there have been far too many anecdotes of how much an asshole he was in Apple and Pixar to ignore; and he gets too much credit for the actual technical and creative innovation needed to make Apple products. He also tremendously cut down Apple’s corporate philanthropy programs and most curiously, while fellow billionaires Gates, Buffett, and Zuckerberg all pledge to donate vast amounts of money to various causes, he remains silent.

  8. People that do things that change the way we think and do are not necessarily ‘perfect’! They are after all human

  9. People that do things that change the way we think and do are not necessarily ‘perfect’! They are after all human. However they all teach us to ‘think’ outside the box. Thanks for that!

  10. Sid:
    Second the rep for Shuttlesworth, but I can’t say I agree that Jobs was a good or great man.He most certainly was visionary and adept at showmanship, but there have been far too many anecdotes of how much an asshole he was in Apple and Pixar to ignore; and he gets too much credit for the actual technical and creative innovation needed to make Apple products.He also tremendously cut down Apple’s corporate philanthropy programs and most curiously, while fellow billionaires Gates, Buffett, and Zuckerberg all pledge to donate vast amounts of money to various causes, he remains silent.

    I grew up in a silicon valley home, and my mom worked for A
    pple from 1981-1997. During that time, I heard first hand accounts of what a raging bastard he was; like screaming and insulting and humiliating rants on employees who were working around the clock. She told me stories about how there was a person whose job it was to get Steve off of people when he got like that, to take him for a walk around the block to cool him off so things could get done. He would go off on these long and highly personal attacks in meetings when he heard things he didn’t like. I could see in her face, even as a kid, how these experiences affected her. I hated that guy as a kid.

    But as an adult, I really admired his vision and his understanding that slavish attention to shareholder value was only a short term strategy to building a good brand and a good product. He looked far down the road and is one of the very few corporate leaders who believed in success through making a superior product: and superior in every way, even the way it looked. His standard of excellence is what the brand will miss most. His total dismissal of the sustainability issues of production and recycling or the social damage caused by exploitative labor practices will not be missed by anyone. I am fundamentally anti-capitalist: but as I look at the whole thing, I think he was a valuable example to other CEO’s of the need to make quality products or lose the market, and I think his passing will serve to lower, by some unmeasurable or unquantifiable amount, the bar for providing not just a brand but a solid product behind it to consumers.

  11. I don’t think that there is a single individual person who has had as much of an impact on computing and digital technology as Steve Jobs.

    I think that his innovation and vision will be missed.

  12. You realize that his vision and his personality are inextricably linked right? His entire value to Apple was his belief in his own infallibility and superiority, and his constant disregard for other’s feelings and opinions. There is a good reason that people like Jobs are almost invariably douchebags.

    seth: I grew up in a silicon valley home, and my mom worked for A
    pple from 1981-1997.During that time, I heard first hand accounts of what a raging bastard he was; like screaming and insulting and humiliating rants on employees who were working around the clock.She told me stories about how there was a person whose job it was to get Steve off of people when he got like that, to take him for a walk around the block to cool him off so things could get done.He would go off on these long and highly personal attacks in meetings when he heard things he didn’t like.I could see in her face, even as a kid, how these experiences affected her.I hated that guy as a kid.

    But as an adult, I really admired his vision and his understanding that slavish attention to shareholder value was only a short term strategy to building a good brand and a good product.He looked far down the road and is one of the very few corporate leaders who believed in success through making a superior product: and superior in every way, even the way it looked.His standard of excellence is what the brand will miss most.His total dismissal of the sustainability issues of production and recycling or the social damage caused by exploitative labor practices will not be missed by anyone.I am fundamentally anti-capitalist: but as I look at the whole thing, I think he was a valuable example to other CEO’s of the need to make quality products or lose the market, and I think his passing will serve to lower, by some unmeasurable or unquantifiable amount, the bar for providing not just a brand but a solid product behind it to consumers.

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