I recently had some experience with a business course taught at the relatively prestigious business school in Barcelona, IESE. It was a couple day course on negotiation and was quite good until the last day. On the last day, a new teacher walks in and more or less out of the blue starts spouting off about how being gay was could be cured and the sanctity of marriage, etc. I suppose this was the mandatory Opus Dei service announcement. Everyone was looking at each other with a WTF look, but everyone was too chicken to say anything.
I think Opus Dei are kind of like the Mormons in the US. Cliquish, with aggressive missionaries, conservative, and very successful in business.
Something I find interesting about Opus is that they have a class of people that are called “Cooperators”, who don’t even have to be Christian, but provide various kinds of assistance to Opus. I assume there’s some kind of mutual back-scratching involved.
Financial Times had a good story about the school last year.
Update: I had some comments from a reader that IESE doesn't proselytize in their MBA program. From what I've heard as well, this is generally true. I'm not sure what was going on in this particular instance.
3 comments:
Sorry to be picky, but it is ESADE here in Sant Cugat. IESE is in Madrid I believe!
My mistake, I hadn't realised that IESE had a campus here in Barcelona too.
IESE is Opus Dei, and one of their missions is to recruit new members, in my opinion. Now, as you mentioned most students do not experience this, yet every year a handful are chosen as targets.
I was one of these targeted a decade ago, and it was absolute hell - I developed an ulcer during my studies trying to manage the manipulation, lying, love bombing, and organized effort by several professors and staffers in their effort to recruit me. I ended up blacklisted from the career service and alumni association.
Opus Dei is quite real at the school, and they are dangerous to students who appear pious or religious. Opus Dei professors leave the gay students, Muslims, atheists, etc. alone, but if they catch you meditating or praying around the chapel, there is a high likelihood that they will attempt to recruit you. This is how I speculate that I was targeted.
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