\n| \n We are currently working on a virtual import project with our
\n foreign business students, in which they choose a product from their
\n home market they think would sell well in Boston, and via the internet go
\n through all of the steps involved in purchasing, packaging, shipping,
\n paying
\n duties
\n and
\n fees, and distributing said product, to see if there really is a profitable
\n business in there somewhere. We first tested a version of this project
\n way back in 1989, before the WWW, purely via email, between a class at
\n Boston
\n University and one at Hebron University in the occupied West Bank between
\n Israel and Jordan. Things were really getting interesting, with
\n some serious inquiries from NGO’s about possibly funding some of the
\n Palestinian students’ project products, when the university was shut
\n down as part of the first Intifada But the idea lives on.<\/p>\n In the first
\n stage the students just brainstorm what products are produced in their
\n home region and which ones might find a market here in Boston. We emphasize
\n that not all ideas are good ideas, and that not even all good ideas make
\n good businesses. As an example, on the spur of the moment, we asked them
\n if they remembered "honestlawyer.com".<\/p>\n Well, do any of YOU remember honestlawyer.com? We thought
\n not. But this started us thinking about why this idea wouldn’t fly. The
\n legal profession is an example of a job with a built-in dichotomy of
\n values, a Janus-like schizophrenia in roles, and a psychological difficulty
\n little appreciated or discussed among practitioners.<\/p>\n Our lawyers are our surrogates in a very vicious arena
\n of public confrontation, where the course of lives can hang in the balance.
\n Everybody wants a mean unscrupulous bastard for a lawyer, who knows all
\n the tricks and when to use them, without, of course, transgressing on
\n the law itself. At the same time, we want a lawyer we can confide in
\n and trust not to screw US. The lawyer is required to have one personality
\n when facing the opposition – crafty, shifty, ingenious, dangerous, opportunistic,
\n merciless,and a completely other one when facing the client – honest,
\n straightforward,
\n trustworthy, friendly. The strain must be incredible.<\/p>\n The position of President of the United States is in
\n many ways similar and presents unique psychological challenges to those
\n who aspire to it. This is the essential dichotomy in modern democracy;
\n we want a mean bastard as our President, a guy who will hunt down and
\n exterminate the vermin who prey on Americans, a cutthroat negotiator
\n who knows all the tricks and won’t be out-tricked or outsmarted by some dastardly
\n foreign dictator, but at the same time we demand a principled saint
\n on the home front, an honest and straight-shooting man of firm moral
\n values and a patriarchal love for his people.<\/p>\n We learned what happens when we elect a genuinely moral
\n man when we voted Jimmy Carter into the Oval Office. History may judge
\n differently but current consensus seems to be that his was the most unsuccessful
\n Presidency since Warren Harding. He just wasn’t a mean enough son of
\n a bitch to fend off the jackals in Washington, let alone the international
\n mad dogs who were crazy enough to want to mess with the U S of A.<\/p>\n Luckily, this time it looks like we have a couple of
\n pretty evenly matched sleazy unscrupulous political infighters
\n ready to go toe to toe, no holds barred, which should provide for some
\n entertaining
\n mud-slinging
\n and dirty tricks over the next 2 months, as well as produce a President
\n who can allow Americans to continue to stride the world and declare "Our
\n bastard’s meaner than your bastard."<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We are currently working on a virtual import project with our foreign business students, in which they choose a product from their home market they think would sell well in Boston, and via the internet go through all of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |