How to Be Ambitious Without Being a Jerk | Yale Conversations with David Brooks | Yale University
What separates ambition that elevates from ambition that corrupts, and how do you know which one is driving you? In the second installment of Yale Conversations, Presidential Senior Fellow David Brooks delivered a wide-ranging talk at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs on the nature of ambition, desire, and what he calls "the gleam": the fervent, luminous drive he has observed in everyone from Boys and Girls Club finalists to Tina Turner to Paul Cézanne. Drawing on philosophy, memoir, and decades of observation, Brooks traced the forces that crush passion — overintellectualization, the spirit of calculation, technological sloth, and loss of faith — and laid out the internal wrestling matches that determine whether ambition lifts us toward our better selves or pulls us toward resentment, ego, and hollow striving. A Q&A with students and faculty followed. Yale Conversations is a public forum presented by Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs in collaboration with the Office of the President. Recorded March 31, 2026.