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Articles by Debora Spar
Does Marriage Have a Future?
Sign in or Subscribe Now for audio version In the fall of 2018, a man named Akihiko Kondo married a doll named Hatsune Miku — not a doll in the figurative sense of a beloved woman, to be clear, but an actual plush doll, with long turquoise hair. The doll was the physical version of a computer-generated pop star created in 2007, who performs online, and “live” on real stages as a hologram. The bride wore white, and Mr. Kondo a matching tuxedo.
‘Willing to Seek and Revel in the Magic that Education can Bring’
To begin with, I would be remiss not to note that the core of our financial model, the model that has existed ever since the birth of American higher education in the 17th century, has simply become too expensive for many Americans to afford. This isn’t necessarily the result of bad people making bad decisions. It isn’t all climbing walls or lazy rivers.
Essay: What will we take with us into a post-COVID world?
Opinion // Outlook What will we take with us into a post-COVID world? Earlier seismic human shifts — the Agricultural Revolution or the Industrial Revolution — occurred over relatively long stretches of time. Now the pandemic is accelerating our already rapid digital revolution, crashing us into a future that is simultaneously as radical and mundane as our endless meetings on Zoom.
Love in the time of Zoom: Why we’re in the midst of a dating revolution
By Debora Spar6 minute Read It’s nice to believe that love comes always as a magical thing, a proverbial bolt of lightning across a crowded room. It’s comforting to imagine that this most human of emotions has been with us forever, ageless and unchanging. Yet the history of romance reveals something very different; something driven by the technologies that define our era as much as by the chemicals that fuel our brains. Yes, we human beings have been falling in love since time began.
Viewpoint: Genetics is revolutionizing baby making and what it means to be a family
Humans are reproducing in ways that would have been truly unimaginable just several decades ago: Two men and a surrogate. Two women and a sperm donor. An older woman using genetic material from a much younger egg. Each turn of the technological screw has been generated by the same profound impulse — to allow people to conceive babies they desperately want and to build families with those they love.
Today’s Awkward Zoom Classes Could Bring a New Era of Higher Education - EdSurge News
The fall semester of 2020 is like nothing we have seen before in higher education. Most colleges and universities in the United States are conducting classes either partly or fully online. Many students have chosen to defer or to forego their education completely. Many colleges and universities will suffer extreme financial stress; some–up to 345 colleges, according to one recent estimate–could be forced to close.
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
Documentation and Additional Reading Part Part The Briefing Tuesday, August 25, 2020 Tags: Audio Transcript Transcript has not been added yet. Check again soon.
From the Plow to the Pill: How Technology Shapes Our Lives
For centuries, the creation of innovative technology—from steam engines and automobiles to computers and smartphones—has dramatically changed the nature of our work. Less deeply understood has been the impact of technology on the inner currents of our personal lives, according to Harvard Business School Professor Debora Spar.
Opinion | The Poly-Parent Households Are Coming
We’re on the cusp of a technological revolution in baby making. What it means to be a family could be next. Aug. 12, 2020 CreditCredit...Annie Jen By Debora L. Spar Ms. Spar is the author of the forthcoming “Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny.” Consider the following scenario: Anna and Nicole, 36 and 39 years old, have been close friends since college.
Good Fellows: Men's Role & Reason in the Fight for Gender Equality
In 1689, John Locke published his First Treatise of Government, positing, as part of a broader argument against patriarchal monarchy, that the rights of mothers should be taken as seriously as those of fathers.1 “The Husband and Wife,” he noted, have “different understandings … [and] different wills.” But with regard “to the things of their common Interest and Property … the Wife [has] full and true possession of what by Contract is her peculiar Right, and … the Husband [has] no more power...
What Men Can Do to Help Women Advance Their Careers
Over the past few weeks, I have been talking — a lot — about the themes of women and work. About how women haven’t even come close to reaching the heights of professional power that many of us once predicted would shortly come to pass; about how women today remain oddly chained to an expanded and wholly unrealistic set of expectations. And I have also been talking, more than I had imagined I might, about what men can do to address this set of issues.
At women's colleges and after, girls rule
Debora L. Spar is president of Barnard College. Spar is the author of numerous books, including Ruling the Waves and The Baby Business. Prior to coming to Barnard, Spar was the Spangler Family Professor at Harvard Business School and Senior Associate Dean, Director of Research. In her recent piece, Selena Rezvani makes an intriguing observation about the state of women's colleges today. They shouldn't make sense any more, she notes, but they do. They shouldn't be thriving, but they are.
Letter to the editor: President Spar responds to student and faculty concerns about Commencement
Thank you for taking the time and energy to share your thoughts with me regarding our slate of medalists and speaker for this year's Commencement. Like many of you, I was also deeply impressed by Mariam's powerful editorial in Spectator, and was moved by her passion and thoughtfulness. She and I met yesterday and were able to speak at length about her concerns.
From Barnard College To Lincoln Center: Bucking Expectations And Reimagining Perfection
For the past decade, I have thought intently about expectations. As the president of Barnard College (a post I left earlier this year to become president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts), I often considered the mounting pressure placed on women—both by society and by ourselves—to be perfect. And how this pressure, combined with our relentless efforts to achieve an impossible and impractical standard, is counterproductive.
Can Women Really Have It All?
You know that girl who "has it all"—perfect job, relationship, body? No, you don't, because she doesn't exist, argues Barnard College president Debora L. Spar in her explosive new book Wonder Women . Her radical message to you: Stop trying to be so good at everything. I'm pretty sure I remember the moment I knew I was having it all. On a December day several years ago, I was in the women's bathroom at New York's LaGuardia Airport. I had an hour between flights, so I rushed for the stalls.
Aging and My Beauty Dilemma
When I was 21, I underwent breast reduction surgery, reducing my embarrassingly large chest to something that could at least fit inside a cardigan. Although there was some medical rationale for the procedure, the overwhelming reason was that I was sick and tired of every man on the planet being unable to look above my neck. Their fault, I know, not mine, and symptomatic of the baggage, both physical and psychological, women are forced to carry around with them.
For Chinese Students in America, a Transformative Journey
Never before in history have so many Chinese students studied at so many American universities. As recently as the 2004-05 academic year, only 62,523 Chinese students were studying in the United States; by 2015, just a decade later, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE), that number had grown to over 304,000, meaning almost one in every three international students in the United States hails from China.
Khamenei’s Counter-Revolution Is Underway
TEHRAN — It was, in the words of the Washington Post‘s Executive Editor Martin Baron, “the grimmest” of milestones. On Dec. 3, Jason Rezaian, the newspaper’s Tehran correspondent, spent his 500th day in Tehran’s Evin Prison. He has now been detained in the Iranian capital two months longer than the 52 Americans who were held captive in the U.S. embassy by radical students who stormed the building in 1979, heralding a revolution and the end of Iran’s formal diplomatic relations with America.
The Baby Benefits Club
This past summer, several prominent firms seemed to be competing for the title of America’s most family-friendly company. In August, Netflix announced plans to offer new mothers and fathers “unlimited leave”—that is, as much time off as they want in the first year after a child’s birth. Microsoft countered quickly, promising to increase its own paid leaves substantially.
Human Egg Donation Prices Make No Sense
There’s something funny about the U.S. market for eggs. No, not the kind that spring from chickens and go into making pancakes, but those that come from humans and go into making babies. These eggs – tiny bundles of reproductive DNA – are produced by young women at the peak of their fertility. They are sold in the United States for anywhere between $5,000 and $50,000.
Lean In: Debora Spar, college president
One of my most important Lean In moments occurred very early in my career, during my second year as an assistant professor at Harvard Business School (HBS).I was - from the very outset - an oddity at HBS. I was 27 when I started; the same age as an average student. I didn't have an MBA or even any real experience in business. I had a husband and a toddler son and I wore a pink suit to my interview.
Lean In: Debora Spar, college president
One of my most important Lean In moments occurred very early in my career, during my second year as an assistant professor at Harvard Business School (HBS).I was - from the very outset - an oddity at HBS. I was 27 when I started; the same age as an average student. I didn't have an MBA or even any real experience in business. I had a husband and a toddler son and I wore a pink suit to my interview.
Silicon Fallacy | Foreign Policy
FailCon is a winning endeavor.
Why Cuba Needs to Follow the Singapore Model
Sometime in the next few years, the Cuban people will be faced with a huge decision: how to develop their nation. As the Castro brothers fade from the scene and relations with the United States continue to thaw, a new generation of Cuban leaders will be forced to grapple with the inevitable challenges of political and economic reform.
Do We Need Wonder Woman?
My two-year-old daughter plays on the beach in a tiny red, white, and blue swimsuit, her chest emblazoned with winged yellow Ws that need no explanation. At a glance, the suit appears of a piece with the branded Dora the Explorer and Mermaid Ariel gear sported by fellow toddlers frolicking on the shoreline.
Australia to Johnny Depp: Send Your Dogs Home or They’re Dead
Who would’ve thought superstar Johnny Depp’s dogs would become the focus of an international incident? But here we are, in 2015, and Depp, who is in Australia filming the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film, finds himself in a stand-off with Canberra over the fate of his dogs, which the Australian government argues were brought into the country illegally. If they aren’t sent back home, Australia is threatening to kill the dogs.
How Greece Fell into the Eurozone Trap
Sometime in the early 1980s, my husband’s uncle Nick began to dream. His language school in Corfu was bustling with students eager to learn English or French or German before Greece joined the European Union. So Nick expanded the school. Then, buoyed by his success and the ready availability of drachma-based loans, he borrowed money to build a sleek grocery store; a motorbike rental agency followed.
A Conversation With Venture Capitalist Michael Moritz
Born in 1954 in Wales to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, Michael Moritz attended Howardian High School in Cardiff and studied history at Christ Church, Oxford. After college, he moved to the United States, getting an MBA from Wharton and then working as a reporter for Time. In 1984, he published an early history of Apple Computer, and in 1986, he joined the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
Business books of the decade
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The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
By Iain Martin, James B. Stewart Verified, Ben Horowitz, Amy Wallace, Alan Blinder Verified, Stephen Dubner Verified, James Kynge, Dick Martin Verified, Ruchir Sharma, Brad Stone Verified, Julia Angwin, Andrew Keen, Andrew Ross Sorkin Verified, David Wessel, Daniel Schulman Verified, Thomas Friedman Verified, Nick Davies, Bo Burlingham, Charles Duhigg, John Cassidy Verified, Russell Gold, Bryce Hoffman, Robert Frank Verified, Justin Fox Verified, Kurt Eichenwald Verified, Daniel J. Gross, Bob Lutz, David D. Kirkpatrick Verified, Neil Irwin Verified, Paul F. Roberts Verified, Stephen Green Verified, Ian Fraser, Tim Sullivan, James Robinson Verified, Michael Lewis, Christina Binkley Verified, Bethany McLean Verified, Melody Petersen Verified, Charles Morris, Joe Nocera Verified, ROBERT SHILLER, Walter Isaacson, Carl Cannon Verified, John Browne, Margaret Heffernan, Satyajit Das, Gareth Jones, Mohamed El-Erian, Moisés Naím, Peter Diamandis, William Cohan Verified, Daniel Yergin, Cass Sunstein, Don Tapscott, Jeff Rubin, Hamish McRae Verified, Steven Kotler, Edward Glaeser, Howard W. French, Charles Calomiris, Thomas Piketty Verified, Sendhil Mullainathan, Matt Ridley, Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, Atif Mian, Amir Sufi, Tom Doctoroff, Gary Hamel, Joshua Ferris, Anita Raghavan, Michael Spence, Kenneth Rogoff, Jeffrey Sachs, Roddy Boyd, Steve Coll Verified, Adam Grant Verified, Rita Gunther McGrath, Alan Greenspan, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ian Bremmer, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Raghuram Rajan, Liaquat Ahamed, Ed Catmull, Stephen Haber, Diane Coyle, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Kenneth Cukier Verified, Sheryl Sandberg, Joe Studwell, Eldar Shafir, Angus Deaton, Ray Fisman, John Coates, William Silber, Michael Sandel, Daron Acemoglu, Luigi Zingales, Guy Lawson, Philip Coggan, Christopher Meyer, Julie Kirby, Barbara Kellerman, Richard Rumelt, Sylvia Nasar, Tom Bower, Michael Mandelbaum, Sebastian Mallaby Verified, Sheena Iyengar, Patrick Dillon, Fred Goodman, Anthony Williams, Walter Kiechel, Adam Haslett, George Akerlof, Nandan Nilekani, Frank Partnoy, Rob Goffee, Jim Collins, Carmen Reinhart, Tristram Stuart, William Bernstein, Byron Ousey, Tim Bouquet, Misha Glenny, Alice Schroeder, Clay Shirky, Richard Thaler, Bill Emmott, Joseph Nye, Philip Delves Broughton, Philippe Legrain, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Iain Carson, Richard Bookstaber, Antoine van Agtmael, Phil Rosenzweig, Marc Levinson, Charles Fishman, Daniel Nissannoff, Barton Biggs, Charles Handy, Brook Larmer Verified, Barbara Smit, Debora Spar, Constantinos Markides, Paul Geroski, Steven Levitt, John Battelle, Pietra Rivoli, Corinne Maier, Lucian Bebchuk, Jesse Fried, Sumantra Ghoshal, John Bogle, Philip Augar, Yoshi Sheffi, Paul Ormerod, Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Lawrence Lessig, TED FISHMAN
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Financial Times
Verified
Lean in? Here's why the glass ceiling still exists
Barnard College's president on the new reality facing women in the workplace -- and at home Excerpted from Wonder Women At every women’s conference, in every think tank report, at every celebration of Women’s History Month or International Women’s Day, the same data are repeated. I’ve said them so many times myself that I can reel them off from memory. But they are crucial, and they bear repeating once again. Only twenty-one companies on the Fortune 500 list are run by female chief executives.
Shedding the Superwoman Myth
In 2005, I was teaching a first-year class at Harvard Business School. As usual, slightly under a third of my students were women. As always, I was the only female professor. So one evening, my female students asked me and one of my female colleagues to join them for cocktails. They ordered a lovely spread of hors d’oeuvres and white wine. They presented each of us with an elegant lavender plant. And then, like women meeting for cocktails often do, they—well, we, actually—proceeded to complain.
Women Don’t Need to Lead Better Than Men. They Need to Lead Differently.
In the summer of 2008, I experienced a massive hormonal shift, moving from the largely-male, testosterone-charged environment of Harvard Business School, where I had spent the first 18 years of my career, to the nearly all-female realm of Barnard College, the all-women’s liberal arts college where I now serve as president.
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