Exactly One Year Since JB's Passing

Dear Family, Friends, Colleagues, and Students of JB,

It's already a year! Unbelievable.

I recently bumped into a Babson colleague and to his surprise and mine, he didn't know that JB had passed away; especially a colleague who overlapped with JB at Babson for more than three decades. It left me wondering as to how or why this happened. Perhaps those of us who were closest to him on campus did not do a great job of letting the community know. I personally felt a little responsible. While I think of him often when parroting many of his words in class, it is not the same for most. So, a year later, how can we keep JB's spirit alive?

When Vanni, JB's daughter, asked me to speak at his memorial last Oct., I started to think about how best to celebrate his life. So, over the next few weeks, I started to collect JBisms that had percolated into my subconscious, going over my notes when sitting in his classes, collecting anecdotes from students, colleagues, and executives, and also going over some JB memorabilia that I had swiped from his office when he retired. I shared some of this at his memorial. Unfortunately, many of you were not able to attend it. So, for those who couldn't be there, and to reminisce JB, I thought I would share with you all the talk I gave at his memorial service.

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JB Kassarjian’s Memorial, Emmanuel Episcopal Church of Boston, Oct. 1, 2023

Dear friends & family of JB! My name is Jay Rao. I am a professor at Babson.

In academic circles, one cannot get more royal than the power couple – Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson! For those who don’t recognize these names, they are some of the biggest names in anthropology, sociology and cybernetics. JB was married to Mary Catherine Bateson, the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Mary Catherine Bateson was in her own right a great writer and renowned cultural anthropologist.

I will be never allowed into any academic conferences, let alone anthropology or sociology conferences. So, the closest I ever got to academic fame was through JB. I can claim that I was JB’s office neighbor for 24 years at Babson.

I am originally from India. Hindu scriptures are replete with hymns and mantras in praise of the teacher or the “GURU”. Growing up in India, many Hindu kids are introduced to two very common mantras:

The first one is ‘Matrudevobhava, Pitrudevobhava, Acharya devobhava.’ Meaning mother, father and the guru are like God.

In Sanskrit, the word guru comprises two root words: gu and ru — gu means darkness and ru remover. Thus, guru means a teacher who removes darkness and brings enlightenment.

The second mantra goes like this: ‘Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwara, Guru Sakshat, Param Brahma, Tasmai Shri Guravay Namah.’

It means: Guru is the very representative of Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver) and Shiva (the destroyer). The Guru creates knowledge, sustains knowledge and destroys the weeds of ignorance. I salute such a Guru.

In my view JB was a Guru’s Guru!

In my early years at Babson, fresh out of the PhD program, I was struggling in the classroom. A couple of senior faculty had watched me and had given me feedback. Even into my third year, I was still struggling, especially in graduate courses where many evening students were older than me and with more experience. It was at that time, that my department chair, Bill Nemitz, suggested that I ask JB to sit in my classroom and get his feedback. Firstly, I was surprised that Bill would suggest a leadership faculty to sit in my operations class. Also, what feedback would JB give me that I hadn’t already learnt from many others. Oh Boy! I couldn’t have been more wrong. I still cannot forget the day, that JB came into my office after watching me in class.

JB had probably 10+ pages of notes. He had written down each of my questions I posed to students, the student’s responses, my comments, students’ reactions, and even our body language. He went point by point for the next hour or so,….”…. the framing of this question was misleading, that question was too open ended, when you made that comment you lost 3 students….. they sat back in their chairs and did not participate again for the rest of the class,… you cannot reveal you biases too early,…. You were fishing for answers most of the time…. You failed to probe that response further….you lost an opportunity to introduce a follow up challenging question….etc. etc. Firstly, it was devastating to learn how bad I was. At the same time, I knew I was sitting in the presence of an absolute sensei!

Very early on, I recall him saying….. and he would say it often….. Babson attracts a very special kind of student….. the street-smart student….. many of them build great firms or become presidents & CEOs of their family businesses…. So don’t mess them up with your academic garbage, don’t give them busy work or nonsense assignments. This is something that we at Babson have to keep reminding ourselves and make sure that all new incoming faculty know about this.

This type of constant molding, shaping and feedback continued for the next 20 years…. Jay…."Don’t be an absolutist"….."there are no absolute truths"…. "Get rid of that garbage flower-pot academic model of yours"….. "you are confusing logical types" …. "Always hear a story from three different perspectives" …. "Don’t take extreme positions that you cannot back away from"…. "The extremes are toxic"….. many times, he would also tell me where some of the thinking originated….. ?Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Edward Hall, EO Wilson, Herb Simon, BF Skinner, and many many times from his wife Mary Catherine. He loved Jorge Luis Borges.

He was not any different in the classroom. In his classic JB-way he prodded, he encouraged, he challenged, he corrected, sometimes with a stiff JOLT or a small KITA….. many students here will recognize these terms…..

Mannan Bhandari is here….

In Mannan’s words: “JB said the most profound things in such a simple and elegant way and some of the simplest things in the most profound ways.”

David Koren is also here and I remember what David said about JB: “JB thinks that his biggest organ is his brain, while in fact it is his heart.”

JB was a great teacher because he really really really cared about his students and student learning.

But he was also very picky about whom he cared!

JB absolutely didn’t care for prima donnas and academic indulgence. In this house of worship, I cannot use some of the words that JB used, to what he called academic-indulgence – in JB’s more polite words it would be “processing the process” or “self-gratification.” He would even say the self-indulgence word in Greek.

This Calvin & Hobbes cartoon, that I stole from him when he was cleaning out his office, captures JB’s view beautifully:

CALVIN: I USED TO HATE WRITING ASSIGNMENTS, BUT NOW I ENJOY THEM. I REALIZED THAT THE PURPOSE OF WRITING IS TO INFLATE WEAK IDEAS, OBSCURE POOR REASONING, AND INHIBIT CLARITY. WITH A LITTLE PRACTICE, WRITING CAN BE AN INTIMIDATING AND IMPENETRABLE FOG! WANT TO SEE MY BOOK REPORT?

HOBBES READS: THE DYNAMICS OF INTERBEING AND MONOLOGICAL IMPERATIVES IN DICK AND JANE: A STUDY IN PSYCHIC TRANS-RELATIONAL GENDER MODES.

CALVIN: ACADEMIA, HERE I COME!

JB had little tolerance for academic concepts that had no use outside of academic literature and to those that spewed buzzwords often. Again, these are his own words:

“THERE SEEMS TO BE A CURIOUSLY LARGE OVERLAP BETWEEN ADVOCATES OF EMPOWERMENT AND THOSE WHO MAKE THE FREQUENT AND FACILE USE OF THE PHRASE PARADIGM SHIFT. THE FORMER APPEAR TO BE AS ILL-INFORMED ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL REALITIES, AS THE LATTER ARE ABOUT THOMAS KUHN’S SEMINAL IDEAS.

He would mock the pretentious who were trying to punch about their weight, “OH WHAT DELUSIONS OF GRANDUER.” He was often scathing of academic Prima Donnas who touted their academic rigor in inconsequential stuff. He would quote Alfred Whitehead & Bertrand Russell “YET ANOTHER VICTIM OF THE FALLACY OF MISPLACED CONCRETENESS.”

Again, in his own words…. This is a note that I snatched from his office… he had scribbled something on a notepad while watching a faculty presentation.

SO FAR, THIS PRESENTATION IS INTELLECTUALLY PRIMITIVE, PEDAGOGICALLY INCOMPETENT, AND STYLISTICALLY OFFENSIVE! .... a classic JB

Finally, JB never cared for political correctness. On a few occasions, he even got into trouble with the woke police. He was quick to expose mediocre thinking from the so-called experts in academic circles. We all know the proverbial expression “The Emperor Has No Clothes.” JB would always say that he is the “Keeper or the Guardian of the Kings clothes.” At his retirement party at Babson, I asked his permission to take over his role on campus as the “guarding of the king’s clothes.”

JB was a very memorable combination of curiosity, wisdom, wit, and grace. The Babson community is richer today because of JB’s adventures around the world – in Syria, Armenia, Iran, Philippines, Greece, Switzerland, Lebanon, and Slovenia -- that shaped his worldviews, and his beliefs, and his humanity. JB was revered, respected and loved by thousands. JB’s impact at Babson will continue to be felt in many corners of the campus – case writing, the Socratic case teaching method, the mentoring of junior faculty, executive teaching, and most importantly his undivided attention and unquestioned passion to classroom learning.

JB was very close to my family – my wife Clemencia and our two girls Maya and Paloma. In the last 4 years, I have said this to many many people….. I have been saying that I won two mini-lotteries….. what did I mean by that?..... Both my girls Maya and Paloma went to Babson and saved me a ton of money….. I could not have been more wrong….. the biggest and the most price-less lottery I won happened 28 years ago when I was assigned an office next to JB’s.

REST IN PEACE JB! LOVE YOU DEARLY! THANK YOU!

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