Chris Marquis—Cambridge
Chris Marquis has taught at Harvard, Cornell, and now Cambridge’s Judge Business School for more than twenty years. At Harvard, he wrote dozens of the case studies that define business education. On October 18, 2026, he argued in The New York Times that business schools should be shut down. The M.B.A., he wrote, doesn’t just reflect our economic system; it trains the people who design and defend it.
The Work
Marquis’s sharpest critique is of the case study. Students read a short account of a company facing a decision, step into the executive’s shoes, and argue about what to do. He describes how the cases were made: companies reviewed the drafts, unflattering events were softened or cut, and the mess was trimmed until the story arrived neatly at a decision. Failures rarely appeared; winners almost always did.
In medicine and law, a case trains you to look for what’s missing. Business cases train you to act like the boss. The question that rarely gets asked is the one he puts simply: “Whose knowledge is absent?”
Why It Matters
Much of what passes for brand storytelling is written the same way: the clean arc, the founder as hero, the difficult parts edited out. Meanwhile, the knowledge that makes a place irreplaceable lives with the groundskeeper who knows which field floods in March, the cook who knows the week the figs turn, the woman at the front desk who remembers the fire. None of it is written down. If they leave, it leaves with them.
Marquis is also skeptical of the “win-win” story, the idea that doing right by land and people always pays. Sometimes the land says no. A business rooted in a place has to be willing to listen when the place sets a limit.
Support This Work
→ Read The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Cost, by Chris Marquis
→ Read “I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down,” The New York Times, October 18, 2026
→ Read Shut Down the Business School, by Martin Parker
→ Read Beyond Shareholder Primacy: Remaking Capitalism for a Sustainable Future by Stuart L. Hart
Read the full essay → Whose Knowledge Is Absent? On business schools, case studies, and the stories businesses leave out
