Campus Chronicles: The Harbus
Hello and welcome to this week’s Campus Chronicles, where we scan the headlines of top business school newspapers to find out what’s new on campus. This week we take a look at The Harbus, run by students at Harvard Business School.
It has been fifty years since women were first admitted into HBS’s full-time MBA program. This Tuesday, noted academic and Goldman Sachs board member Deborah Spar kicked off the celebration of “50 Years of Women at HBS” by addressing students and faculty in Spangler auditorium. Spar, a former HBS Professor and the current President of Barnard College, condemned the modern social expectation that women can, and should, “do it all” in terms of work and family, weighing in on a hot contemporary debate that was recently stirred by Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department, who speaks at HBS today. This debate is perhaps particularly salient for women at HBS, as the percentage of women enrolled in top business programs lags significantly behind the percentage of women in professional programs such as medicine and law—39% of Harvard’s class of 2013 are women, the second highest percentage of any leading business school.
Last Friday, HBS Dean Nitin Nohria announced a $40 million gift from the from the Dr. James Si-Chen Chao and Family Foundation, $35 million of which will go towards the construction of a new building, the Ruth Mulan Chu Chao Center, to replace the Kresge Hall dining facility. Harvard University President Drew Faust, Boston Mayor Thomas Merino and Elaine Chao ’79 made remarks at the event. Dean Nohria said that construction will likely break ground on the new building in 2014, and drew attention to the connection between the donation and the “50 Years of Women at HBS” theme; famously, the Chao family is the first to have four daughters attend HBS. Elaine Chao, who became the first Asian American cabinet member when she served as Secretary of Labor under President George W. Bush, spoke about her mother, for whom the building is named, saying that the gift represents her altruistic spirit.
Finally, last week HBS hosted JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, a 1982 HBS alum and Baker Scholar, who spoke to students about leadership, politics and the role of women in his organization. After the surprise resignation of Citigroup chief Vikram Pandit earlier this week, Dimon is one of only two Wall Street CEOs of large investment banking institutions who have retained their position throughout the financial crisis (the other is Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein), and is well-known for his outspoken opinions on regulatory reform. Fielding a series of student questions, Dimon emphasized the importance of humility and listening skills when running an organization, and gave a somewhat mixed assessment on the topic of American economic competitiveness, saying that the American economy remains a world leader but struggles in terms of energy, education and immigration policy. In response to a question about women in the workplace, relating to this week’s “50 Years of Women at HBS” theme, Dimon conceded the challenges posed by balancing a banking career with raising children, but noted that there are many jobs at JPMorgan that accommodate this balance.
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