ABSTRACT
This anti-intellectualism may reflect the growing ranks of high school dropouts, non-college educated youth, senior citizens on the brink of poverty and the unemployed precariat class. School is becoming a place for skills training, losing sight of the need for a broad education that produces responsible citizens who can think deeply and expressively. To defeat the shadow, business schools should become light bearers of hope, change, and global community. Business schools and their deans cannot disregard the darkness that threatens to halt the progress most of the world has made since 2008 to rebuild capitalism and strengthen social democracies. The consequences are unparalleled as strong “anti-progress” forces that encompass a variety of evolutionary or revolutionary movements coalesce power. These collectively function to protest, prevent and even sabotage policies and practices that most agree are beneficial to humanity. The chapter presents five elements: the rise of the “precariat”, anti-globalism, anti-intellectualism, extreme inequality and tolerance of greater asymmetry.
