By Shauna Simkin
Professors Joseph (Joe) Badaracco and Suraj Srinivasan are co-chairs of the Classroom Culture and Standards Working Group. The four working groups, established by Dean Srikant Datar in the fall of 2023, including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arabism, freedom of expression, and community values, aim to address issues that have arisen on campus following the events of October 7. With Badaracco and Srinivasan about their priorities and ongoing work to ensure that students across academic disciplines at Harvard Business School (HBS) engage in respectful and productive dialogue inside and outside the classroom.
What are the main issues that your group addresses?
Joe Badaracco: Our community values and other aspects of our educational programs were stress-tested after the October 7 attack and its aftermath. We wanted to see what we could learn from a variety of different parties about what they had observed during that time and make recommendations about how we can improve the ways in which we create and support learning conditions. We take a broad look at how we promote community values – looking at the Red Cross, European Commission and Executive Education – to see if there is a better approach.
Suraj Srinivasan:Our learning model (case method) is discussion-based and relies on productive conversations. Students also interact in social situations, and in pedagogical settings but outside the classroom such as course spaces. In the MBA programme, projects in which students work in groups are a large part of the learning experience, especially in the EC (elective curriculum) year. Some groups self-select, but we need to think about all the ways in which groups are formed and how people can interact productively with a cross-section of their classes.
How are you doing about this?
JP: Last fall we began conducting an online survey of department leaders and faculty who were teaching in the RC (required curriculum) at the time. We asked them what problems they encountered, what was helpful in dealing with these problems, and what recommendations they had for moving forward. We wanted to capture their ideas while they were still fresh. We have done similar work for EC departments.
We're now interviewing about 20 different people and they're asking the same questions: What have you noticed and what would you recommend, either more focused on fall events or more broadly?
We learned a lot from the survey and had some excellent discussions in the working group. We've distilled this into a very rough draft of recommendations that we continue to refine with the input of some of the people we interview – asking what did we get right, what should we change, and what should we add.
SS: One of the main things we've done is collect information about everything we're currently doing, which is very important. Many of them withstood the stress test last fall. We've had department standards and classroom standards for a long time—everything from attendance to punctuality to how to participate in class. It is important to prove that the baseline and baseline are indeed high, we study and learn closely, and find specific cases where there may be an opportunity to do better.
What are some examples of societal values and norms that we already have?
JP: Before MBA students arrive on campus, we have a system in place that enables them to understand and adhere to our community's values. Once here, they spend their first week in the START program, which emphasizes the importance of these values and helps students develop their own versions within their departments. The faculty then works during the fall to instill these values. We've been refining this approach for decades; it's truly all-encompassing journalism. We have some remarkably dedicated people working as department heads who help individual students and work to build departments that are strong learning communities – which includes getting all kinds of values and behaviors right. We've worked hard to achieve this, and it's something we've been doing and doing well for a long time.
Harvard Business School is arguably the premier case method institution in the world, and we must set high standards for open and honest educational dialogues about difficult issues in our classrooms. We talk about areas where we can do better, areas that might need correction, and other areas where we have to raise our aspirations to a higher level and help students learn how to have these kinds of dialogues.
What results are you hoping for?
JP: We would like students, under normal and stressful circumstances, to do a better job of treating each other with respect, listening to each other, and making efforts to learn from each other. We want students to engage and develop the skills to have productive conversations – skills they can use here and in the workplace. We have a distinguished group of students and participants in Executive Education, all with their own identities and life experiences. When difficult issues arise, it is important to have the skills to express yourself clearly and respectfully, listen to others, and maintain a deeper dialogue. This work builds on our values and takes learning the case method to a higher level.
SS: All the cases we discuss in the classroom deal with stress, we learn best from issues on the edges, not from routine as usual. What happened in the fall pushed everyone out of their normal comfort zone. So it's very useful to think about how society as a whole has responded and what we can learn from it. How did we function inside the classroom, outside of the classroom, and under different identities? Are we creating enough opportunities to learn to share despite differences? These are longer term things we might ask the school to think about.
What are some of the unique challenges and opportunities that Harvard Business School has faced up to this point?
JP: We typically look to one academic program when addressing a concern. But here we have students in the MBA program, the executive education programs, the comprehensive leadership programs, the doctorates—they all have common characteristics as learning environments, but there is a very different collective experience, and we learn across all of them.
I would not be surprised if we made recommendations about carefully examining our community values across all of our classrooms and programs, including digital classrooms, and how we help students get better at discussing difficult issues. We have some real-world expertise and experience in how to prepare our students at RC, and this may serve as a basis for guidance on programs and other participants.
SS: There is a layer of similarity between all programs and a layer of difference, even in the first and second years. What can we learn and transfer between them? It can be as simple as reinforcing some of those values and norms ingrained in the first-year experience for the second year. It is an opportunity to reconsider, even if just a reminder, what is similar and different. In an EC year, students are no longer in the same group, but the same case method and the same community.
Our working group includes people from across the school and in different leadership roles, and we continue to gather information, share our knowledge and have fruitful conversations.
How do you measure success?
JP: Measuring success is difficult. You end up achieving goals like “better, more thoughtful personal dialogue” — but how do you know that's happening, and how will you measure it? One measure of success will be the extent to which we are able to provide some practical recommendations for starting points or initiatives that would move us in this direction. For example, how can we try new things and focus more deeply on the upcoming START program in August. I believe we will find some degree of success through the quality and scope of the initiatives. It is difficult to define and evaluate the results.
Our mission includes the word “classroom,” but as a boarding school, the actual classroom is only one piece. If we do this right, we're not just thinking about what happens when students are in the classroom for 80 minutes, 12 times a week—that's just the most visible part of what we're doing. There is increasingly a digital classroom and experience, and then there is the entire campus. We don't have walls surrounding Harvard Business School, so if things are challenging, disruptive, or troubling elsewhere in the world, the country, or even across the river, there will be reverberations here.
SS: One of Brigadier (Srikant) Datar's requests was that we not only communicate what needs to be done in the long term, but how we can make immediate improvements and changes even if they are small. I think we've already had some success with that.
When MBA classes began this spring, the topic of values, norms, and culture was brought to the forefront for every faculty member. We have always had high standards of values, but the process we are undertaking now, including extensive surveys and conversations, means everyone is actively thinking about what they can do to promote a more productive campus. At the beginning of the European Commission meeting, we talked openly about the problems that come our way, or things that we assumed went well, and we are revisiting them and making sure they continue. We discuss values and norms every semester to remind ourselves that this is a work in progress, and we cannot allow it to simply be an unspoken aspect of our culture. Standards are strengthened by repetition, by celebrating what works and being fully aware of what doesn't. This is an opportunity for us to continue to reflect on it.
One measure of success is the process itself. Success is having a group, thinking about these issues, and engaging the community collectively and individually.
