2024 Best Undergraduate Professors: Jason Brennan, Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business

 

Jason Brennan
Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business

“I loved Professor Brennan. He taught my first-year seminar, a class called ‘Managing Flawed People’ that dealt with the inherent flaws we share as humans. The class also had a final project that was really memorable. We were given a $1000 budget and told to ‘do something good.’ The open-ended nature of the project really pushed us to innovate and problem-solve from beginning to end. We had to give presentations of our projects at the close of the semester, including a moral dilemma we faced during the process. I learned a lot from the project and believe it would be incredibly valuable at any level of study. As a first-semester freshman, it was the perfect introduction to group work, business, and morality.” – Zella O’Malley

 

Jason Brennan, 45, is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business.

He is the author of seventeen books in business ethics, democratic theory, and the moral foundations of markets, which have been translated thirty-two times into seventeen languages. He is also the author of over sixty peer-reviewed articles, over thirty peer-reviewed anthology chapters, and over fifty articles for trade and popular audiences.

He is the editor-in-chief of Philosophy & Public Affairs, editor-in-chief of Public Affairs Quarterly, and an associate editor of Social Philosophy and Policy. He recently completed a $2.1 million project on “Markets, Social Entrepreneurship, and Effective Altruism,” funded by the John Templeton Foundation. He chairs the Designing the Future(s) Committee at Georgetown and serves on the Georgetown Faculty Senate. 

In 2022, Brennan was awarded the Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Award for his development of the Ethics Project, an experiential project which asks students to “Think of something good to do…and do it.” Planning and implementing the project requires students to use principles from economics, philosophy, and management theory. One group raised over $300,000 for charity, another starting a business that made tens of thousands of dollars in profit, and another starting a service club that was later adopted by seven other universities. 

BACKGROUND

At current institution since what year? 2011.

Education: PhD in Philosophy, University of Arizona, 2007.

List of Undergraduate courses you teach: Moral Foundations of Market Society, Managing Flawed People, Ethical Values of Business, Business-Government Relations 

TELL US ABOUT LIFE AS A BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR

I knew I wanted to be a business school professor when …

I realized that traditional liberal arts education has a serious problem. We want students to learn to apply abstract principles to novel real-world situations, but research in educational psychology shows us that most students do not engage in spontaneous transfers of learning. Instead, most students learn a particular skill only by practicing that very skill. Business schools create a better environment for real learning: Instead of training students to become future graduate students (as liberal arts schools do), we can ask them to deliberate, to act, and then evaluate what they learned from their actions. Instead of having them think through hypotheticals, we can help them learn from real-world challenges. 

What are you currently researching and what is the most significant discovery you’ve made from it?

I just finished a new book defending a secular conception of grace. Grace is the policy of overlooking or looking past other people’s moral flaws, treating them as better than they are and pre-emptively forgiving them for their mistakes. We live in an era and culture inclined to judgment. We prefer to throw stones at our enemies and ensure everyone sees how unforgiving we are. I argue that the reason we should be gracious toward others (in business, politics, or daily life) is that we all tend to be bad judges. We are inclined to throw stones when we should not or to issue harsher punishments than others deserve. We make ethics a status competition. Since we can’t be trusted to judge each other, we should forbear from passing judgment except in special cases where we can’t afford to turn the other cheek. 

If I weren’t a business school professor, I’d be … 

A lawyer who wished he’d stayed in academia. 

What do you think makes you stand out as a professor?

My classes focus on what students do outside of class. All my students complete the Ethics Project—a project where they must decide what’s worth doing, do it, and then bear full responsibility and accountability for their choices. In addition, I’ve followed the University of Richmond’s Jessica Flanigan in assigning what she calls “Purpose Projects”. Each Purpose Project asks students to do something and then reflect upon what they’ve learned. Example activities include spending 12 hours being completely honest, asking someone for forgiveness or forgiving someone who has wronged the student, reconnecting with a long-lost friend, or trying to turn a $1 item into $100 through a series of trades.

One word that describes my first time teaching: 

My first time teaching was as an undergraduate teaching assistant in a symbolic logic course. Most students didn’t care about logic; they were just hoping to find an easy way to complete the gen end math requirement and were horrified to discover they would instead need to learn a new form of math. Despite that challenge, I found teaching exhilarating, because I love finding ways to make complex ideas seem obvious and intuitive. I love seeing students’ eyes light up when they “get it”. 

Here’s what I wish someone would’ve told me about being a business school professor:

You’re a philosopher, but don’t teach business ethics the way a typical philosopher would, by focusing on hard puzzles. And don’t teach it the way a typical management professor would, by focusing on buzzwords, vacuous acronyms, and corporate donations. Instead, ask and answer these two questions: Why do ordinary people sometimes do the wrong thing? How can we manage ourselves and others to make it more likely that we do the right thing?

Professor I most admire and why:

I admire my dissertation supervisor, David Schmidtz, not only because he has done groundbreaking research himself, but because everywhere he goes, he creates environments where the people around him can flourish. He’s like an NBA All-Star who can make 30 points and 20 assists every game.  

TEACHING BUSINESS SCHOOL STUDENTS

What do you enjoy most about teaching business students?

I enjoying seeing the impressive things they will do if only we empower them and set them free.

What is most challenging?

Business students are less interested in big ideas than the liberal arts and social science students I taught before moving to business school.

In one word, describe your favorite type of student: Conscientious.

In one word, describe your least favorite type of student: Neurotic.

When it comes to grading, I think students would describe me as … Supportive. I do not care to rank students against each other. My policy is that students may revise their work as often as they want, to get the best grade they can, so long as they don’t waste my time or theirs. My view is that anything worth doing in class is worth doing to mastery.

LIFE OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM

What are your hobbies? I sing and play guitar in a gigging band called Fürst Try, which covers songs from Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Cream, and other hard rock bands from the 1970s-2000s. Like many guitarists, I also collect gear; I have just shy of 30 guitars, basses, banjos, mandolins, and ukuleles, five amplifiers, a drum kit, two pianos, and a full PA system. I’ve been playing rock, classical, and jazz guitar for about 35 years.

How will you spend your summer? After I finish teaching business ethics in Georgetown’s EMBA Dubai program, I vacation in Michigan while my sons attend Interlochen Arts Camp for musical theatre. 

Favorite place(s) to vacation: I enjoy any vacation where I can do a personal tour of a country with a rich history and a promising future. 

Favorite book(s): Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt, which I first read in high school. Hazlitt taught me to view politics without romance. What matters is not what people want the rules to accomplish, but what the rules in fact accomplish. We must look past people’s good (or bad) intentions and instead look at results. We must look past the short term obvious results and instead seek out the unseen, less obvious, long-term effects of what we do. 

What is currently your favorite movie and/or show and what is it about the film or program that you enjoy so much?

The 2013 revival version of Pippin is perhaps my favorite. The music is excellent and so is the message, as the main character must confront and overcome existential despair. This past year, I was fortunate to play guitar in Oakton High School’s production of the musical, which won the Brandon Victor Dixon award for best high school musical in the greater DC area.

What is your favorite type of music or artist(s) and why?

I like any kind of music that combines technical musicianship with good songwriting technique. 

THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS

If I had my way, the business school of the future would have much more of this:

Substituting practical, reflective action for case studies. Case studies are fine for what they are, but they have serious limits. Nothing is at stake, so students don’t feel any real temptation to make bad choices. They can guess what problem will be because they receive these cases in a class covering particular topics. But in the real world, businesspeople walk into charged situations not knowing they are living through a “case,” all while facing real temptation. We need to train students for these real-world problems. As professors, it would be better to help them experience hard “cases” first-hand with just the right mix of safety and risk. We learn more by doing than by role-playing. 

In my opinion, companies and organizations today need to do a better job at …

Doing good rather than signaling their goodness. Many companies and organizations have mastered the art of moral grandstanding, proudly and loudly expressing their fidelity to all the right values, all while doing little to promote those values. They are more concerned to look good than to be good. Companies and organizations should ensure they make ethics a part of all strategic decision-making, rather than something a PR firm does on the side for them. 

I’m grateful for …

working in an environment where we have the freedom to experiment with new ideas, for being surrounded by colleagues and students who want to help each other succeed, and most of all for my loving wife and amazing sons.

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