HBS Culture: A View from the Right

By Aaron Kinsey, Harvard Business School, Class of ‘17 & Harbus Contributing Writer The mood on the Harvard Business School campus last week was incredibly somber. The entire institution appeared to be paralyzed. Undoubtedly, some of this was driven by the fear and uncertainty around what a Trump administration will look like. A substantial portion of the underlying despair was, and still is, driven by disbelief. Disbelief that a race which was presumably “in the bag” was turned on its head by a candidate that almost every news outlet had written off. Personally, I knew many were not expecting this outcome, but I was shocked at the extent of the surprise that Donald Trump would be our next president. Two of my Tuesday classes – one at HBS and one at HKS – asked students for election predictions. I twice predicted a Trump victory, and each time, I received looks that implied I couldn’t possibly be serious. Many of my classmates could not fathom the American public voting Donald Trump in as our next President. In their minds (and per the HBS student election poll published in the Harbus), Hillary would run away with a landslide victory. It was then no surprise that there was absolutely no curiosity around why I could have arrived at such an opinion. So how could a man, down in almost every major poll and written off by a media eager to see him fail, pull off one of the biggest upsets in electoral history? More importantly, how could the pollsters have gotten this so wrong? One can argue that a major contributor to the deviation in predictions was because Trump supporters did not feel comfortable opening up to pollsters. In fact, according to Frank Luntz, a renowned pollster, and CEO of Luntz Global, many people who supported Trump declined to even answer the exit polls, thus further contributing to the skew. This topic brings up a few pertinent questions for us to consider: Why would some of Trump’s supporters refuse to talk to the pollsters? Over the past few years, our country has embraced a culture of political correctness. Viewpoints against progressive thought are swiftly attacked, oftentimes with an “ist” or “ism” labeling attached. These attacks have severely undermined the ability and willingness of those with opposing views to openly discuss their differences. Once a label has been inserted, the conversation takes on a different theme in which one must defend their character instead of debate the political issue at hand. Thus, they never get the opportunity to present and defend their stance. In fact, it causes those who were threatened to check out of future discourse! If their opinion is not even allowed a seat at the table, there is no purpose in voicing it. The result is that even in a society which claims to embrace discourse and differing views, people do not feel free to share their true perspectives. It’s simply not a battle in which most people want to engage. […]

HBS Culture: A View from the Right is republished from CelluliteSolutions.org

from
http://www.cellulitesolutions.org/hbs-culture-a-view-from-the-right/