Harvard Business School

HBS said it would "evaluate and revise [its] current need-based formula for financial aid to account for parental income and assets in addition to student income and assets" to "offset societal racist policies and practices that have historically prevented Black and other Americans from accumulating wealth across generations and have left such families disproportionately unable to afford graduate education for their children." HBS said this change will apply to all students and will "therefore also benefit all entering students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that it would "attract" more black students by "reaching more thoroughly into talent pipelines and pools, confronting current practices that impede diversity, and making HBS a place where talented Black individuals can thrive."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that the Admissions & Financial Aid team of the MBA Program would focus on "increasing the pool of talented Black applicants to the MBA Program, as well as other underrepresented minority groups, through trusted partnerships with the HBS African American Alumni Association and organizations such as Management Leadership for Tomorrow, outreach to Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other Minority Serving Institutions, and HBS programs like the Summer Venture in Management Program."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that HBS would "enhance our existing faculty development programs so that all faculty members are better prepared to lead sensitive discussions about race in the classroom."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that the "program chair of the MBA Required Curriculum will be tasked to work with course heads and leaders of relevant student groups to produce a document that explains how the first-year MBA curriculum develops the knowledge, skills, and mindset to contribute to a more just world, with a focus on racial equity." Additionally, "[a] task for the leaders of our educational programs, as they document their programs’ DEI approaches, will be to teach a global student body about a form of anti-Black racism that is uniquely American...we will teach about anti-Black racism in America as a particularly reprehensible example of a global phenomenon that every leader, everywhere, must understand."

In its action plan, HBS has asked every faculty unit to "redouble efforts to recruit outstanding Black and other underrepresented minority (URM) faculty with a broad range of research interests." HBS has also encouraged faculty units to "expand the breadth of their offerings" by hiring scholars who study race, diversity, inclusion, and inequality.

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that HBS would "include development opportunities in diversity and inclusion, racism, anti-racism, bias, and cultural competency as part of a holistic talent management and performance measurement program for all staff."

The school's summary to its "Two-Year Action Plan" on racial equity states the following: "We are resolved to take action to promote racial equity and diversity. We take seriously our responsibility to make business a force for good in our society. We know that structural racism has been ignored for too long. We hear the calls for the School to move swiftly to address the impacts of racism on our campus and in higher education."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that "[o]ur action plan begins with a clear position: Harvard Business School rejects racism in all its forms, and anti-Black racism in particular, as wrong and fundamentally inconsistent with our mission and values." The plan goes on to read as follows: "Four centuries of anti-Black racism in America have left many Black Americans facing steep, systemic barriers to opportunities and outcomes—for instance, with less family wealth, fewer influential connections, and worse access to education. Legal compliance alone will not dismantle such barriers."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states, "Our action plan begins with a clear position: Harvard Business School rejects racism in all its forms, and anti-Black racism in particular, as wrong and fundamentally inconsistent with our mission and values." The plan goes on to read as follows: "Four centuries of anti-Black racism in America have left many Black Americans facing steep, systemic barriers to opportunities and outcomes—for instance, with less family wealth, fewer influential connections, and worse access to education. Legal compliance alone will not dismantle such barriers."

HBS has stated it would "create, fund, and staff a set of visiting positions for scholars of race, diversity, inclusion, and inequality." The school will invite visiting scholars of four levels: doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows, junior faculty, and senior faculty, and aims to have 8-10 visiting scholars in residence.

HBS Doctoral Programs commits to continued investment in and expansion of the Program for Research in Markets and Organizations (PRIMO), a summer program at HBS that "aims to expose talented undergraduates, many of whom are underrepresented minorities, to business research and an academic career." PRIMO aims to foster greater diversity in the doctoral applicant pool and eventually in the faculty pool.

HBS plans to create a new "complementary fellowship", the Recognizing Individuals Seeking Equity (RISE) Fellowship, to support students who have demonstrated "exemplary commitment to serving Black / African American, Hispanic / Latinx, and other marginalized communities of color prior to enrolling at HBS." RISE Fellowships—each totaling $20K over two years—would be awarded on top of need-based tuition scholarships and would be modeled after existing HBS complementary fellowships for students with "outstanding impact in the nonprofit and healthcare sectors before enrolling at HBS."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states the following regarding its racial equity research: "Develop and disseminate research and course material that advance racial equity. We will do this by making the Initiative a vibrant place to conduct research, extending our networks to reach Black case protagonists, and leveraging Harvard Business Publishing’s strong distribution platform."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that as part of its "Initiative" focused on racial equity, HBS would "commit $25 million of internal funding over the next decade and aim to raise additional resources from alumni donors."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that it would "create, fund, and staff a set of visiting positions for scholars of race, diversity, inclusion, and inequality" and that "outreach for these positions will emphasize scholars from schools outside our usual peer schools and a requirement that the search include underrepresented minority scholars."

The Race, Gender & Equity Initiative at HBS "brings together a global, multidisciplinary community of Harvard Business School faculty, alumni, and students to champion projects and programs that advance understanding, generate tools and solutions, and grow a network of leaders who are advancing equality in business and society at large."

HBS has a list of recommended reading on DEI and anti-racism to "expand your learning on the Black American experience and allyship."

On July 14, 2023, HBS published an article titled "What You Can Do to Create an Anti-Racist Organization." In the article, Danika Manso-Brown (HGSE '18), founder of an equity and inclusion education consultancy, shared three strategies to be "actively anti-racist" and five ways to promote anti-racism within an organization.

The Baker Library Bloomberg Center at HBS offers "Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Anti-Racism (DIBAR) in Business" resources. Resources are sectioned off based on theme and provide many databases and news sources for the HBS community to research more into DIBAR.

Life & Leadership After HBS is a longitudinal study of the post-MBA paths of HBS alumni that specifically examines the role played by race and gender in the life and career outcomes and experiences of alumni.

HBS has a Gender & Race in Organizations Research Group.

HBS has an "Educator Resources" that provides case collections related to DIBAR. Cases include "Cases with Protagonists of Color," Course Materials to Discuss Racism & Privilege," and "Diversity, Belonging & Inclusion Articles."

HBS has hosted an annual Race, Gender & Equity at Work Symposium since 2013. From May 4-5, 2023, the Symposium was titled "Tools for Humanity: Rage and Love as Acts of Resistance and Renewal." People at the gathering "examined whether and how various institutions and practices in the U.S.--capitalism, gender, companies' diversity-equity-and-inclusion initiatives, and higher education--constitute master's tools."

From 2020-2021, Porter Braswell's "Race at Work" podcast discussing the role race plays in people's careers and lives was featured in the Harvard Business Review, a magazine published by a not-for-profit, independent corporation that is an affiliate of HBS.

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that HBS would "hire its first Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer and support this professional with an appropriately resourced Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Office."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states the following regarding diversity within protagonist cases in courses: "Harvard Business School faculty members write the majority of cases taught in business schools worldwide. Historically, too few of the protagonists featured in HBS cases come from Black or other underrepresented minority communities. As a result, Black and other URM students cannot 'see themselves' in the cases, and students of all backgrounds fail to see and learn from the full range of human talent. Our effort to diversify protagonists will actively reach beyond the networks of HBS faculty and identify potential protagonists from all backgrounds."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that HBS would "leverage Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) to disseminate research and course materials that advance racial equity." Additionally, HBS would "produce content and learning experiences relevant to racial equity in multiple formats, such as articles, books, videos, webinars, cases, digital learning experiences, educator resources, simulations, and podcasts."

The school's "Advancing Racial Equity" action plan states that it would enable and encourage companies "that recruit at HBS to reveal how well they are performing on diversity metrics." HBS is also considering the following action: "Creating a 'playbook' that captures best practices for creating and managing a diverse workforce. This playbook would be a living document, updated as the world evolves. It would help Harvard Business School and other organizations focus on the metrics that matter in attracting, hiring, and retaining a diverse workforce and ensuring their Boards of Directors are equally diverse."

The Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning at HBS provides strategies to improve diversity and inclusion within the classroom. The Center states, "[t]his section addresses some potential missteps around student identities and offers advice on discussing sensitive topics that allow students to engage with their own values and those of others."

On May 18, 2023, the school posted a video which features Professor Stephanie Creary, Racial Equity Fellow at Harvard Business School, titled "(How) Should I LEAP? Power, Anxiety, and Sociocultural Ideals as Facilitators of Cross-Racial Allyship at Work."

The HBS course catalog includes a course titled "Field Course: Scaling Minority Businesses," which focuses in-part on the "Challenges of systemic racism and inequities in business and society." Additionally, the "cases and background readings will examine the range of issues faced by Black businesses including racial discrimination, limited access to capital, and difficulties in establishing government and corporate supplier relationships."

The "Advancing Racial Equity" webpage's Racial Justice Reading List includes Ibram X. Kendi's book "Stamped from the Beginning" (published June, 2023), which is described as follows: "Some Americans insist that we’re living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America–it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history."

The "Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2020" includes "How to be an Anti-Racist" by Ibram X. Kendi and "White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo.

HBS lists its ESG certificate courses including: "Sustainable Business Strategy," "Power and Influence for Positive Impact," and "Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability."

HBS offers an online course titled "Sustainable Investing" where students will learn to "Evaluate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, and measure and manage impact investments."

The Business and Environment Initiative at HBS "educates, connects, and mobilizes business leaders to address climate change and other environmental challenges." One of the goals of the Initiative is to "Educate students to transform organizations to become environmentally sustainable."

HBS states that its sustainability initiatives "focus on implementing energy conservation and waste reduction, integrating environmental justice into our campaigns, encouraging individual behavior change, and supporting the health of our community."

HBS lists its schedule of events for 2023-2024 on the topic of business and the environment which include; "Continuing Conversation - Driving Decarbonization at BMW," "Alumni in Sustainability Panel," and "Careers in Impact Investing."