An Ethical Compass: Coming of Age in the 21st Century

by Elie Wiesel, Thomas L. Friedman

In 1986, Elie Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his victory over “the powers of death and degradation, and to support the struggle of good against evil in the world.” Soon after, he and his wife, Marion, created the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. A project at the heart of the Foundation’s mission is its Ethics Prize—a remarkable essay-writing contest through which thousands of students from colleges across the country are encouraged to confront ethical issues of personal significance. The Ethics Prize has grown exponentially over the past twenty years.

“Of all the projects our Foundation has been involved in, none has been more exciting than this opportunity to inspire young students to examine the ethical aspect of what they have learned in their personal lives and from their teachers in the classroom,” writes Elie Wiesel. Readers will find essays on Bosnia, the genocide in Rwanda, sweatshops and globalization, and the political obligations of the mothers of Argentina’s Disappeared. Other essays tell of a white student who joins a black gospel choir, a young woman who learns to share in Ladakh, and the outsize implications of reporting on something as small as a cracked windshield. Readers will be fascinated by the ways in which essays on conflict, conscience, memory, illness (Rachel Maddow’s essay on AIDS appears), and God overlap and resonate with one another.

These essays reflect those who are “sensitive to the sufferings and defects that confront a society yearning for guidance and eager to hear ethical voices,” writes Elie Wiesel. “And they are a beacon for what our schools must realize as an essential component of a true education.”

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

424 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 9, 2010

About the author

Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.
In his political activities Wiesel became a regular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He also advocated for many other causes like the state of Israel and against Hamas and victims of oppression including Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, the apartheid in South Africa, the Bosnian genocide, Sudan, the Kurds and the Armenian genocide, Argentina's Desaparecidos or Nicaragua's Miskito people.
He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes and human rights causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Wiesel was awarded various prestigious awards including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He was a founding board member of the New York Human Rights Foundation and remained active in it throughout his life.

Reviews

[Marks54 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays that have won the Elie Wiesel prize for Ethics, awarded by Wiesel's foundation to the winners of a competition among undergraduate essay writers over the past two decades. The writers are tasked with drawing on their own experiences or those of their family to reflect upon an ethical issues, especially current, unresolved, and highly visible ones. I started this because I am assisting in developing some educational materials on ethics and wanted to broaden the scope of materials that I considered. I must admit to mixed expectations, however. These are very difficult issues and it is seldom the case that undergraduates - even very smart and even wise ones -- can make much progress in sorting them out. This is not to denigrate these authors but only to note that the professors, policy wonks, theologians, or journalists writing on these topics were also once very smart undergraduates too.

The essays as a whole are extraordinary - both well written and insightful. It is hard to pick out favorites, although the conflict-focused essays at the start are very sharp. The other sections also have terrific works, for example the essays on the Mothers of Plaaza del Mayo, the Enola Gay, and the young women who work in Chinese factories. I must reiterate that all the essays are worthwhile and my choices for favorites reflect my interests as much as anything else.

The range of ethical issues is also broad, ranging from identity issues in ethic conflicts to medical ethics to how we think about the victims of epidemics. Some essays even talk about general approaches to ethics and navigating difficult life situations.

I think what I found most interesting about this book, however, was seeing how the winners turned out - since these prizes go back to the early 1990s. These people have gone on to careers that are already influencing our intellectual life. There are some academics, writers, and journalists. Some went on to graduate school while others did not. It is a very distinguished group and the foundation has done well in picking their winners.

It is not the last word in ethics, but then what is? It is certainly worth a read.

[Stuart Berman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book to understand perspectives on ethics and morality. It is a collection of essays by college students. The biggest problem is that most of the 30 essays neither define ethics nor seem to understand what ethics are. Most of the authors write about their feelings and what they perceive as right or wrong. In some cases they prescribe solutions that are purely wishful thinking (people should do this or that).

Most of the essays, while reflecting an honest point of view, are disappointing or in some cases interesting. How they are considered prize winners is hard to fathom. I give many a pass for their youth and the difficulty of these topics with which a Socrates would struggle.

Notable essays that I feel broke through the veil of mediocrity or wordiness or moralizing, are these:

[Illness section]
Suicide and Public Speaking by Kelly Daley (2004)
She articulates her own struggles with a serious illness that has brought severe pain to her everyday since birth. Her insights are profound and her candor disarming. Ultimately she wrestles with God much as Job did, going from rejection to acceptance and self pity to strength.

[On God section]
The Duty of Cock-Eyed Angels by Zohar Atkins (2009)
He looks at acting ethically with our own instincts for selfishness, how does the angel see the train wreck of the past and not stop to awaken us to our actions while heading into the debris of the future? He is Talmudic in his perception seeing the importance of freewill with how what is unfolding can be looked at through various prisms.

Muhammad is Not by Alamdar Murtaza (2009)
Another very personal story about the impact of obtaining his freedom to study in the West and the cost to him in terms 0f having to repudiate his community upon leaving Pakistan.

Ultimately this collection is hardly the 'Ethical compass' promised in the title by a collection of feelings and at times very self righteous moralizing. I would look for some of these essays online to skip the time wading through the rest.

[Chris Gorycki · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read.