Ethical Culture is a Lifelong Pursuit for Randy Best

With Enron-corporate greed headlines still fresh in our collective consciousness, ethics is a hot topic these days.

For Randy Best, however, ethics isn't a fad but a lifestyle, and the goal isn't to make headlines but to affect change through ethical living.

Ethics has always been important to some people, said Best, the administrative manager for Duke's chemistry department. During the three years and counting he has served as president of the N.C. Society for Ethical Culture, he has seen the public's interest in ethics and meaningful-life issues wax and wane.

"Some polls showed a spike in interest in religious activity after the Sept. 11 attacks," Best said, "but it has calmed down since. I think people are either interested in [ethics] or they're not."

Best's interest in ethics has been lifelong. His parents raised him in the Society for Ethical Culture as a child in St. Louis, and he continued the practice throughout his graduate study in public administration at Harvard, his decade as deputy director of budget and finance with the New York City Transit Authority and his nine years at Duke in the chemistry department.

"One of Ethical Culture's core ideas is the inherent worth and dignity of all people," Best said. "I always strive to treat others as 'an end not a means,' as Kant said. I try to respect everyone and be straightforward. I also believe you should help everyone develop their full potential."

Responsible, he said, for "the care and feeding of the chemistry department," Best supervises the non-teaching staff -- those in charge of faculty support functions, payroll, purchasing, personnel, grant accounting and network services. He supports the department's teaching mission by working on the programming and budgeting of the laboratory teaching component.

"My religious attitude informs my work by respecting everyone's potential," he said. "One of the beliefs of ethical culture that is very meaningful to me is 'Act so to elicit the best in others and thereby elicit the best in yourself.'"

Jacqueline Hicks, an accounting specialist who has worked for Best for the past four of her 13 years at Duke, knew he would be a different sort of boss on her first day of work in the chemistry department.

"He invited me to lunch," Hicks said. "That's very unusual."

Since then, she has been impressed by his gentleness and pragmatic approach to difficulties.

"His motto about mistakes is, 'Let's fix it and move on,'" she said. "When I make a mistake, I don't feel like he pounds me into the ground."

Janet Rosenthal, a staff assistant, considers Best one of the finest of the "really good bosses" she has had throughout her 19 years with the chemistry department.

"He treats everybody like human beings," Rosenthal said. "He doesn't micromanage; he never yells. It doesn't matter what job you do, everyone is on an equal footing."

The Society for Ethical Culture was started in New York in 1876 by Felix Adler, a son of a Reform rabbi in New York when the Reform Judaism tradition was new. Rather than follow in his father's footsteps, Adler became a philosopher and, over time, gathered other humanists into a congregational model. The nontheistic religion focuses on how to improve human relationships at all levels -- interpersonally, in the community and among nations.

Despite its long history, Ethical Culture has relatively few followers; only about 25 groups exist nationwide. Perhaps because Ethical Culture is missing a theistic component, the tradition doesn't appeal to a lot of people, Best said. Those attracted to the congregation often come from another religious tradition where they didn't find inspiration, he said.

The North Carolina chapter began in Carrboro about 15 years ago and now meets Sunday mornings at the Carrboro Arts Center. In his role as a co-leader of the congregation, he arranges speakers for the Sunday morning gatherings. Polly Weiss, a Duke employee and member of Ethical Culture, said Best aims for balanced perspectives from the lectern.

"We tend to be an organization that leans fairly hard to the left," Weiss said. "He's not afraid of bringing perspectives different from that to open up dialogue. I think that's a pretty remarkable virtue."

Best and his wife, Sarah Howe, are bringing up their four children, ages 10, 14, 17 and 18, in the Ethical Culture tradition, and Sarah home-schools them.

"We our raising our children to be good people, rather than to have mastered some particular set of knowledge," he said. "We allow them to give their natural curiosity free rein. They learn how to learn whatever they need to know. We feel children learn best in an environment where they are wholly self-directed, determining what they need to know and when."

In August, Best, who holds adjunct leader status in Ethical Culture and may perform weddings, completed a three-year program sponsored by the Humanist Institute. That graduate certificate in humanist leadership studies is part of the training he needs to become a "full leader," Ethical Culture's ministerial equivalent. That designation will open new avenues for him, although full-time opportunities in such a small denomination are rare.

Along with other members of Ethical Culture, Best sometimes cooks meals at the homeless shelter in Chapel Hill. He has involved his family in Balkan folk dancing, a hobby he has practiced since childhood. Last summer he participated in the Paper Hand Puppet Intervention performance, manipulating and sometimes wearing a giant puppet in a performance at Forest Theater in Chapel Hill to increase awareness of world environment concerns.

Although peeling potatoes and performing with puppets can't by itself turn back the tides of Enron-style corruption or persuade leaders of nations to beat swords into plowshares, the way Best lives his life matters.

"You have to respect others and you have to realize that no one has a monopoly on truth," he said. "It is the only way I can live a life of personal integrity."

This piece was written by Nancy Oates.