Rakesh Khurana

In July 2014 he became Dean of Harvard College. In May, 2016, Harvard announced severe restrictions on undergraduates who belong to fraternities or gender-exclusive organizations not formally affiliated with the College, some of which are known as “final clubs.” Some of these have existed as such for more than 200 years, but Harvard began to admit women undergraduates only in 1977. Dean Khurana had worked with President Drew Gilpin Faust to develop the new policy. Khurana said that the exclusion of women practiced by the clubs has no place in the 21st century. The restrictions on students belonging to these clubs include ineligibility for leadership positions in student organizations affiliated with Harvard, such as sports teams, and ineligibility for required Harvard endorsement for fellowships such as Rhodes and Marshall fellowships.

He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice (2010), published by Harvard Business School Press and the Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing and Being, (2012), published by Sage Publications.

Khurana was born in India and was raised in Queens, New York. He received his bachelor’s degree in industrial relations from Cornell, his AM in sociology from Harvard, and his PhD in organizational behavior through a joint program between the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School in 1998.

Khurana is a founding team member of Cambridge Technology Partners and from 1998 to 2000 he taught at MIT. Khurana is the author of the book, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs and related academic and managerial articles on the pitfalls of charismatic leadership. In 2007 he published his second book From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession (Princeton University Press). The book received the Max Weber prize from the American Sociological Association’s Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section and was the Winner of the 2009 Gold Medal Axiom Business Book Award in Career, Jenkins Group, Inc. and the Winner of the 2007 Best Professional/Scholarly Publishing Book in Business, Finance and Management, Association of American Publishers and the Finalist for the George R. Terry Award from the Academy of Management.

Rakesh Khurana (born November 22, 1967) is an American educator. He is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School, Faculty Dean of Cabot House, and Dean of Harvard College.