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Continued from previous page
Anti-war,
anti-business
Wharton students in the '60s and
early '70s were just as eager to build
careers as Curley and Jones were in
the '50s. The difference, though, was
that many Penn students during the
Vietnam era took a hostile view of
business.
Hoffman says his four years on
campus were as quiet as the '50s. It
was the calm before the storm of the
anti-war movement.
"It was sports and fraternities and
parties," he says. "There was a very
modest interest in politics. Most people
were concerned with making the
transition from high school, getting
into a fraternity and doing what you
wanted to do. Vietnam changed that."
Hoffman, president of I. Levy Sons,
Inc., a New York marketing company,
and a former president of Wharton's
Alumni Board, says he began to hear
of political ferment at Penn only after
he had left to study for a master's at
the London School of Economics.
Hoffman also remembers early
murmurings of the environmental
movement. "There was a big save-our-open-
space campaign. When I first
went to campus they were still building
the new library [Van Pelt], which
took up all that space on Walnut
Street, and they were knocking down
a lot of the old buildings."
Frank Fountain, WG'73, a senior
vice president at DaimlerChrysler in
Michigan, remembers some protests
affecting Wharton. One occurred
when representatives of Playboy magazine
visited the School.
"In the early '70s, [Playboy] was
doing quite well financially, and they
had even begun to recruit MBAs. In
the auditorium in Dietrich Hall, the
whole meeting was taken over by a
protest group from the broader
University, who took control of the
microphone." Fountain says there
was also "a nervousness about some
companies, like chemical companies
and defense companies involved
in the Vietnam War, being visible
on campus. It was that kind of an
atmosphere."
Ross Webber, emeritus professor
of management and former vice president
for development and university
relations, has met countless alumni.
He says the '60s and '70s were pivotal
years in many ways.
"When I met with alumni, I found
that the older alumni, in reminiscing
about their experiences, seemed to
identify with the great teacher, the
great lecturer, they had – the Sol
Huebners and the George Taylors,"
says Webber, who began teaching at
Wharton in 1964. "What struck me
was the memories and admiration for
somebody bigger than life, particularly
somebody who had strong personal
positions on issues and who were idiosyncratic
in their lectures. That whole
style today works for very few people
because the whole classroom style is
participative."
(Solomon S. Huebner, who earned
a PhD at age 22, founded the world's
first academic program of insurance
instruction and research at Wharton
in 1913. During World War II, management
professor George W. Taylor
served as chairman of the federal War
Labor Board, which had the power to
regulate wages in all industries.)
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