Have the Anticapitalists Reached Harvard Business School?
New York Times | Emma Goldberg
Emma Goldberg documents new ways of thinking at business schools, including HBS, where “students are also learning about corporate social obligations and how to rethink capitalism.” On a blackboard, an HBS professor writes a string of words to spark discussion: “Capitalism. Scarcity. Inequality.” Goldberg writes that “assumptions long woven into the syllabus are open for questioning: the wisdom of maximizing profits, the idea that America’s version of capitalism is functioning properly.”
“Top-ranked business schools are stepping into the political arena,” Goldberg writes. In fact, “Next fall, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania will start offering M.B.A. majors in diversity, equity and inclusion and in environmental, social and governance factors for business.”
At HBS, “demand for classes on social impact and E.S.G. had been so high that those themes had been integrated into nearly every introductory class, including accounting.”
The shift goes beyond themes to societal organization. In the summer of 2020, an HBS professor was looking at her planned syllabus and “thought students might be dissuaded by the hefty syllabus she had assembled: Adam Smith, John Locke, Karl Marx, Friedrich Hayek. Instead they ended up asking her to add Thomas Hobbes, Vladimir Lenin and Friedrich Engels.”
