US business schools largely exclude moral philosophy from required curricula

Evidence

It is both striking and suggestive therefore that mainstream departments of economics and business schools—which is to say, their constitution as paradigmatic domains—generally have no course offerings on moral philosophy and ethics worth mentioning. It would be, for example, a rare exception, if it exists at all, to find a business school in the United States that requires as an essential part of the student’s education the completion of a course of study on such subjects as Aristotelian ethics or Kant’s moral philosophy or even a general introduction to the history of ethics or of moral thought. It is less conceivable that such a course offering includes subject matter on “Oriental” philosophers, such as Hindu, Buddhist, or Islamic moral philosophers. My point is that the modern academic domains of economics and business (and, as in the case of Orientalism, there never was any equivalent in premodernity) exclusively and intensively operate within the single-minded frame of reference in which a large degree of moral neutrality is a prerequisite, and in which the exploitation of matter and people for the single but highest goal of profit is a discrete yet mandatory category. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 364

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle on how disciplines encode values by what they refuse to teach — comparing economics/business and Orientalism as parallel domains that exclude moral philosophy.
• XREF: Connects to critiques of value-free economics and the professionalization of business education as ideology rather than neutral technique. — connects to: American business schools were academically weak until the late 1950s — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 321