A Harvard forum for self-promotion?
By Alex Beam, Globe Staff, 11/06/98
The Harvard Business School seems to be out of the business of selling
$6,000 videotapes with Rosabeth Moss Kanter droning out platitudes
like ''Great companies are focused in their approach to doing
business.'' (They will, however sell you a $495, 30-minute video on
''Managing Future Performance.'') Now the B-School has a brand-new
bag: flacking for the ''personal development'' seminar known as The
Forum.
The San Francisco-based Forum came into being when Werner Erhard (John
Paul Rosenberg to his parents) sold the ''technology'' for Erhard
Seminars Training - est - to his brother Harry. The Forum, formally
known as the Landmark Education Corp., has enjoyed considerable
success with the self-actualization crowd, and with the Cambridge
intelligentsia. That success is now chronicled in an HBS case study so
sycophantic that Landmark has been using it - improperly, Harvard says
- as a promotional tool.
The document, originally written for classroom discussion, is also
sold to the public. Last revised in April, it reads like a 22-page
advertisement for Landmark's ''breakthrough in paradigm thinking.''
Authored by professor Karen Hopper Wruck, the case breathlessly quotes
Forum executives who compare their work to that of Galileo and
Socrates (!). The study also quotes from a Forum-sponsored Daniel
Yankelovich survey of graduates. Surprise! All six veterans of the
Forum's weekend training quoted by Wruck loved it!
Wruck quickly dismisses critics who call the Forum a cult. The Forum
is listed on the Internet FACTnet database of ''cults, groups and
individuals that are alleged to be using coercive persuasion mind
control techniques,'' but they have sued people who call them a cult.
In an appendix, she quotes at length from four experts who insist the
Forum is not a cult, but cites no contrary opinions.
Had Wruck been seeking to find anyone critical of the touchy-feely
Forum she needed only to cross the campus and chat with Radcliffe
public policy fellow Wendy Kaminer. The Forum is the subject of
acidulous commentary in Kaminer's best-selling book, ''I'm
Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional.'' ''If you want to experience or
`process' New Age's heady combination of pseudoscience, religion, and
money,'' writes Kaminer, ''visit a session or two of The Forum, the
new incarnation of est.''
In her defense, Wruck told me: ''I understood that it was a
controversial company, but I wanted to study a company that directly
addressed issues around human behavior. A case study is a pedagogical
vehicle, not a position paper or an endorsement.'' Harvard has affixed
an unprecedented disclaimer (''Please be aware that ... the school
does not endorse this company or any other company'') to the document.
Mark Kamin, a Landmark spokesman, said his company ordered several
thousand copies of the document after it was published. He adds that
Landmark signed an agreement with Harvard not to use the case for
promotional purposes, ''and we've endeavored to keep that agreement.''
When I told him that a recent seminar attendee said the case was being
used to puff Landmark, Kamin said, ''I can't guarantee that people who
led seminars didn't say, `Hey, there's this case study.'''