Sublime

JEFF BEZOS Founder and CEO, Amazon; Owner, the Washington Post

“He takes contrary positions to create more discussion, because it may lead to a better result. So if you don’t feel comfortable disagreeing, then you’ll never survive.”

Realize, too, the damage media have done to the public conversation, setting us at each other’s throats, pitting red vs. blue and black vs. white, simplifying the debate, erasing nuance, damaging communities, and amplifying the already powerful.

The historical demand of the oppressed is inclusion as equal citizens in all the institutions of American life. With identity politics, the demand became different: not just to enlarge the institutions, but to change them profoundly.

Jobs also attacked America’s education system, saying that it was hopelessly antiquated and crippled by union work rules. Until the teachers’ unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform. Teachers should be treated as professionals, he said, not as industrial assembly-line workers. Principals should be able to hire and fire the

if ever there was someone who could play the victim card,

Like at CN, nose-to-nose encounters with the new chief had a way of resonating throughout the organization.