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Wharton, We Have a Problem.

It all started back in the ‘eighties, with Donald Trump’s alma mater producing so many financial criminals that newspapers started keeping track of the ever-growing Wharton “Hall of Shame.” (Type WHARTON in my search engine for all the gory details.) The tradition persists today, with Wharton featuring prominently in articles with titles like Do Business Schools Incubate Criminals? and The Wharton Mafia. It’s positively embarrassing.

The Wharton School of Business has deified Donald Trump, boasting in its alumni magazine of his greatness and influence. It can’t get enough of him. It’s pleased as punch and bursting with pride to have spawned him…. or at least it was until around 2007. In a recent article about him in the U Penn paper, people are beginning to sound less enthusiastic.

A Wharton spokesperson said that the leadership of the alumni office and magazine have turned over since the publication of the article, and declined to comment further on Trump.

Hm. A bit snippy there… But, you know, it’s one thing to go the silence route (Trump? Trump who…?); it’s another thing – especially given Wharton’s cultural role as National Fraternal Order of America’s Great Insider Traders – actually to come out and repudiate “the worst human being who has ever won a Republican primary.”

UD doesn’t mean revoke his degree or anything. She means that given Wharton’s already filthy reputation, and given Trump’s incessant dropping of the Wharton name alongside his name, the school might consider issuing a statement distancing itself from its most famous graduate.

Margaret Soltan, March 4, 2016 3:26PM
Posted in: beware the b-school boys, democracy

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7 Responses to “Wharton, We Have a Problem.”

  1. charlie Says:

    A few years ago, David Horowitz came out with something resembling a book entitled, “The Professors: 101 Most Dangerous Academics.” Funny thing, he never got around to the business/law schools which were pumping out the well trained crooks that were fleecing their customers. For all that Ward Churchill said, he never once lent his name to a for profit loan mill, among other things….

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    charlie: I think it’s a very important point you’re making, one that I’ve touched on now and then on this blog: From what I can tell over years and years of reading and writing about what goes on in American universities, engineering and med school professors are far more dangerous than humanities types, and b-school guys are fuggedaboutit.

  3. charlie Says:

    UD, thanks for clearing up my lack of context. Horowitz was/is an odious tool for the hacks that wanted to attack the liberal arts departments. He went after folks like Eric Foner, bell hooks, John Bellamy Foster, who have never, to my knowledge, had their efficacy questioned. But as you point out, the STEM folks are the ones cramming as much ill gotten NSF/NIH money as they can into their LLC accounts. As far as the b-school dudes are concerned, all yazz needs is one word. Enron….

  4. Derek Says:

    I got called out by one of his minions on Horowitz’s website! I was the equivalent of all content that isn’t quite good enough to get into print but for which there is room on the internet!!!

  5. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Derek: That’s gotta hurt.

  6. JND Says:

    Engineering undergraduate here. Business MBA and Ph.D., with the MBA from . . . Wharton. Somehow, I’m missing out on my share of the money.

    All alumni rags are too quick to worship at the altar of financially successful graduates. Years ago, my undergraduate alumni magazine did a cover story puff piece on Chainsaw Al Dunlap. If it ever ran a mea culpa, I missed it.

  7. Margaret Soltan Says:

    JND: Had to look up Chainsaw Al Dunlap — such a great name! And quite a story.

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