When Satire Just Won't Do

The Harvard alumni magazine, like its peers, is usually filled with gauzy profiles of academia, student life and the many famous graduates of the Crimson Tide. But the current issue pulls back the curtain just a bit too far on the business school. In a story about all the exciting India-related things happening at the university, there's this tidbit in a photo caption: "A new required course places all 900 first-year M.B.A. students in one of 10 foreign countries for a weeklong project; the largest contingent went to India. In Mumbai, one student team worked with a chain of 'hypermarkets' trying to win business from small neighborhood grocery stores."

This encapsulates why it's so easy to vilify and dislike HBS. That's right: Not only does the school create the next generations of financiers -- who crash international capitalism into the rocky shore -- it also works hard to maximize the dislocating effects of globalization by helping chain retailers take customers away from small, local middle-class business owners! No to independence and the community, yes to strategic growth plans and corporate headquarters! (The accompanying photo shows a generic-looking supermarket.) Typically one wouldn't expect the alumni magazine to be the publication that confirms a school's unseemly stereotypes, yet here it is. The editors might want to add another layer of review for their next issue.

This also makes me wonder what stirs an HBS grad's nostalgia for his years on campus. Usually an alumni magazine has paeans to that great professor, those late nights in the library or stimulating discussions in the classroom, but here it's fondly recalling learning how to be the man.