Charlotte McAdams, MTS candidate, reflects on her participation in the January Term course “The Spiritual Lives of Leaders”
What is the soul of Harvard?
For one icy week in January, I rose early each morning to cross the Charles River and joined 70 other graduate students in examining questions such as this. The short intensive program (SIP) was called “The Spiritual Lives of Leaders” and took place at Harvard Business School. It was co-taught by John P. Brown, Practitioner in Residence at Harvard Divinity School, Laura Tuach, Assistant Dean for Ministry Studies and Field Education at HDS, Derek van Bever, MDiv ’11 and HBS Senior Lecturer, HBS Professor Nien-hê Hsieh, and Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Howard Koh.
Students came from HBS, HDS, HKS, and the Chan School to participate in the intriguing offering. We were an unlikely mix of future tech executives, public health innovators, interfaith chaplains, politicians, and more, united by an interest in what values underlie ethical leadership. For students, this was a chance to look at the wisdom leaders could share outside of corporate growth strategy and “stakeholder value.” Likewise, speakers shared their excitement to discuss their spirituality and its impact on their work, a topic that is not often broached.
The speaker lineup was impressive. Each day had four to six panels of speakers, discussing topics ranging from “The Dance of Dharma: on the Difficulty of Being Good” to “Spiritual Philanthropy in Emerging Markets.” We were joined by people such as Harvard President Larry Bacow, environmentalist Bill McKibben, physician Rati Godrej and Nadir Godrej of Godrej Industries, Proctor and Gamble India CEO Gurcharan Das, and Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller.
Among these prestigious business leaders, we heard stories of creating caring business relationships, valuing workers, and personal spiritual discernment. However, we kept running into the same wall. Is it enough for a leader to meditate, pray, and care about the spiritual lives of their upper management when their companies cause harm to the environment and workers? What value is there in hearing about the family life of the CEO of Novartis, a pharmaceutical company that charges $2.1 million per patient for a spinal muscular atrophy treatment? Or a CEO of the Aga Khan Foundation, whose founder owns the world’s biggest private jet? Should billionaires even exist?
I believe that there is something to learn from everyone and I benefited from hearing the insights of these leaders. They have worked to create thriving businesses that profit their shareholders and many of them have created initiatives that have helped people. However, my classmates and I kept coming back to the core questions of spiritual value. How much does someone who is invested in their own spirituality or religion owe to the world?
I felt the divide between Schools as we encountered these questions. HDS students brought a unique lens to class discussions by which we recentered conversations onto topics of racial justice, indigenous rights, and systemic inequality. This is not to say that non-HDS students do not care about systemic change. All of my classmates were engaged and excited to think deeply about the nuances of ethical decision-making. With an HDS lens, though, I feel that we become better equipped to ask the right questions. Yet collectively we still have to put in the hard work of finding the answers.
The program led me to reflect on what is special about HDS: long conversations with friends in the Commons, warm check-ins with Professors, classrooms that hold space for grief, love, and everything in between. Nevertheless, HDS is just a small part of the whole. Programs like “The Spiritual Lives of Leaders” bring the goal of “One Harvard” another step closer to fruition.
Building connections across Schools takes continual effort. It happens in the nitty-gritty moments of relationship building. It happens in joining reading groups and attending conferences and frequently responding to “What is Divinity School?” and “I thought you were all pastors.” It means that we need to acknowledge the accessibility issues, structural racism, and unfair pay by which certain members of our community continue to be excluded from the Harvard that seeks to gather as “One.”
The wisdom imparted by guests and students during the course showed me that we have the collective ability to create a Harvard, and larger world, in which equity and dignity can be upheld alongside stakeholder value and corporate growth strategy. The leaders who spoke to us also brought news of a world of people yearning to be seen in their entirety. Angie Thurston, MDiv ‘16, co-founder of the Sacred Design Lab, developed her consultancy in response to the rising numbers of religious “nones” who were searching for new places to meet their spiritual needs. She challenged us to imagine soulful leadership and think critically about corporate opportunities for meaning-making. Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, asked us to find ways to carry on his legacy of treating his employees like family, a method he coined as Truly Human Leadership. The three tenets of this method are empathetic listening, celebration and recognition, and service to others. These Truly Human Leadership ideals reminded me of pastoral care techniques, pointing to a growing connection between ministry and business.
So, what is the soul of Harvard?
The name and crest of Harvard can be recognized throughout the world. It brings incredible people together to receive an extraordinary education. Its history is contained in ivy-covered walls and leather-bound volumes. Yet Harvard’s soul is not bound up in its storied legacy. It is alive and constantly being formed anew because Harvard‘s soul is formed by each of us. The shifting group of undergraduates, custodians, language tutors, proctors, graduate students, and more lend themselves to a living institution that can grow in wisdom as society confronts looming inequities. Harvard’s soul is as much you as it is me. It’s our time, our spiritual lives, that can create “One Harvard.”