First, let me introduce you (if you don’t already know him) to a friend, Joseph C. Phillips. You’ve probably seen him many times, even if you don’t remember: he played the role of, Lt. Martin Kendall, Bill Cosby’s son-in-law, on “The Cosby Show.” More recently, and more relevant to our current concerns, he has become a prolific commentator and author (I recommend his book), and now a regular on Townhall.com.
Which brings me, as I hope to bring you, to his piece today at Townhall, Playing For Keeps. But be careful: as he points out, if you are a friend of Joseph Phillips, you are regarded as an evil enemy of America — and not only by thuggish leftists in the White House or SEIU or ACORN but also by elites with more respectable addresses. He points, for example, to esteemed Harvard Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. Her strategic and practical insights have guided leaders of large and small organizations worldwide for over 25 years, through teaching, writing, and direct consultation to major corporations and governments. The former Editor of Harvard Business Review (1989-1992), Professor Kanter has been named to lists of the “50 most powerful women in the world” (Times of London), and the “50 most influential business thinkers in the world” (Accenture and Thinkers 50 research). In 2001, she received the Academy of Management’s Distinguished Career Award for her scholarly contributions to management knowledge, and in 2002 was named “Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year” by the World Teleport Association….
She has received 23 honorary doctoral degrees, as well as numerous leadership awards and prizes for her books and articles; for example, her book The Change Masters was named one of the most influential business books of the 20th century (Financial Times)….
She is Chair and Director of the Advanced Leadership Initiative of Harvard University, an effort across the professional schools to help successful leaders at the top of their professions apply their skills to addressing challenging national and global problems.
To Harvard’s super-distinguished Prof. Kanter, if you are a friend of Joseph Phillips, or at least a critic of President Obama, you are a virtual (perhaps an actual) Enemy of the State. In a recent Politico discussion of whether Obama’s “offensive” against Fox et. al. is “overdue or overdone,” distinguished chair, director, prize-winning Harvard professor Kanter writes:
President [Barack] Obama is marginalizing not just his enemies but those of the American people. He is attacking organizations standing in the way of progress toward reforming health care or cleaning up the conditions that led to the financial crisis. He is putting on notice advocates of greed — instead of the greater good — that they no longer have public legitimacy.
I don’t like dividing the world into Friends and Enemies with its attendant demonizing of those too evil or dumb to see the rightness of one’s own views, but Joseph Phillips and I are not the ones doing the dividing and demonizing. Since it appears to be our fate to live in such a divided country, however, I am happy to have him as a friend … and to have people like the distinguished, prize-winning Harvard Professor Kanter think of me as an enemy.
