No, B-school Dean R. Glenn Hubbard has not quit his day job. Michael O’Rorke ’06BUS (pictured) and the B-school Follies cast are in fact satirizing Hubbard’s continuing employment at Columbia. The student comedy revue spoofed the music video “Every Breath You Take,” by the Police, to lampoon Hubbard’s chagrin at losing out to Ben Bernanke for the position of Federal Reserve chairman.
A perennial fan of the Follies, Hubbard “was very amused and enthusiastic at the show,” O’Rorke said. “I seem to recall him giving a standing ovation when it finished.”
More remarkable than Hubbard’s appreciation of O’Rorke’s spot-on performance or the Follies’ econ-savvy lyrics is the attention garnered by the video. Quickly circulated around the Internet (tallying more than 500,000 hits on the Web site YouTube), it has been featured in such media outlets as The Wall Street Journal and CNBC and was well received in Washington.
According to O’Rorke, Bush Senior Adviser Karl Rove sent Hubbard a note, applauding the video and “those ‘culprits’ responsible.” Even Chairman Bernanke sent his compliments via e-mail to the dean.
“I think it’s safe to say that this is not the 15 minutes of fame I anticipated for myself,” Hubbard quipped in response to the parody’s surprising popularity. “But the video showed the world what those of us at the B-school already know — our students are not only bright, but also creative, engaged with the world, and quite funny.”
