An artful perspective
In Harvard Business School’s (HBS) popular elective course “The Moral Leader,” students use great literature to explore ethical decision-making and leadership. Writings as diverse as “A Man for All Seasons,” the play about Sir Thomas More, the adviser to King Henry VIII who refused to accept him as head of the Church of England, and the autobiography of Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal, help students to understand the reasoning behind difficult ethical choices. They also study abstract artist Jackson Pollock. In collaboration with Harvard Art Museums’ education department, the students rove the Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum’s galleries during a workshop for the course, observing, discussing, and writing about the work they encounter, like a provocative piece by Pollock or a somber self-portrait by German painter Max Beckmann. “It’s a method to help people to distance themselves from their immediate moral judgments and allow them to...