How would a CEO handle the Gaza protests? Oh, wait ...

College presidents slept through Crisis Management 101. [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, the bottom infrastructure layer of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. On Sundays, we look at the major themes of the week past and how they will define the week ahead. Sign up for the daily newsletter [here](. [Career Opportunities]( What is the most embattled group of chief executives in America right now? Not Big Pharma bosses — their [moment has passed](. Not tech bros, because for every Elon there is a [Satya](. Not bankers because, well, embattled is their [permanent state of being](. Nope, over the last few months the CEOs feeling the big heat have been … college presidents? Wait, you say, most don’t have the actual title of chief executive — they are “chief administrators” or some such. To which I reply, why? And [I am not]( the [only one](. The recently deposed Claudine Gay of Harvard ran a shop with 22,000 [customers]( (what were called “students” in my day), a $6 billion budget, and 1,600 staff and faculty. [Reportedly]( at a salary just south of a cool million — that screams CEO to me. Columbia students have always been fun: In the ’60s, they turned the president’s office into a jungle gym. Source: Bettmann via Getty Archives Yet Gay and many of her colleagues are seeing their careers go down in flames because they can’t please either their pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel customers, and they certainly can’t please Congress.[1](#footnote-1) Sure, there have been plenty of corporate bosses who have botched the public relations side of things. Remember when Gerald Ratner [called]( his company’s sherry decanters “total crap”? Or when Hormel Foods CEO Joel Johnson [tried and failed]( to sue Jim Henson for copyright infringement over a Muppet named Spa’am? Or when Nestlé’s Peter Brabeck-Letmathe [said]( that calling water a human right was “extreme.” In truth, all these situations were more complex than my one-line summaries. BUT THAT IS THE POINT. Chief executives have to be more than correct, they have to be smart. And on that count, the supposedly smartest people in America are failing dismally. Just ask Beth Kowitt. “In some cases, those sitting at the very top of the ivory tower who want to keep their jobs haven’t done themselves any favors,” she [writes](. “Pockets of higher education desperately need more crisis-management training — a surprising revelation considering a university president’s top responsibility is supervising a passionate group of young adults with still-developing prefrontal cortices[2](#footnote-2) that make them prone to risky behavior.” Beth points out that not every leader is as hapless as those at Harvard or Penn or Columbia. The award for sanity in the Ivy League goes to, egad, Brown — a school where you can [opt out]( of getting actual grades. Then there is the usual common-sense suspect: The University of Chicago. “The institution doesn’t make political or social statements of any kind, believing that doing so quells free speech,” writes Beth. “I won’t pass judgment on whether being neutral on everything is the right policy or approach, but I do think having a strong operating framework is. It allows for fast and clear decision making when things reach a boiling point. That’s what keeps everyone playing by the same rules, and during a crisis that’s what’s really needed to keep everyone safe, secure and out of danger.” “Strong operating framework” sounds like the sort of thing one would learn at those elite universities’ business schools, right? A load of tosh, says Adrian Wooldridge. “Management theory is in a dismal state,” he [writes](. “What’s needed is a new management theory that avoids both the deceptive certainties of neoliberalism and the equally deceptive vagaries of stakeholder capitalism. But where can we find the material for such a rethinking? Not in the great US business schools, which are either stuck on hold in stakeholder land or determined to replace the vague rhetoric of stakeholder capitalism with the even vaguer rhetoric of ‘[corporate purpose](’ … I am increasingly persuaded that the answer lies in talking to hardheaded CEOs who run first-class companies in unglamorous bits of the real economy.” What about a hardhead who runs a bunch of companies in more glamorous bits of the economy? “Sometimes a new enterprise needs a helping hand from a bigger player but can eventually thrive on its own,” [writes]( Mark Gongloff. “Musk is about to play a role in another demonstration of that lesson, but this time as the bigger player: Tesla has been necessary for kick-starting electric-vehicle adoption in the US. But the company is not necessary for its future success.” Musk’s new battle isn’t over his cars themselves, but the things that make them go. “Tesla recently [gutted]( the team managing its fleet of fast-charging Superchargers, and [Musk said]( on his personal-grievance platform X that the company would grow the network ‘at a slower pace,’” Mark explains. “If you think fighting climate change is the [same thing]( as wanting communism, then you could do worse for capitalism’s cause than driving a Cybertuck-sized hole in President Joe Biden’s plans to install [500,000]( new EV chargers by 2030. If you are the CEO of an EV maker, on the other hand, then such a move is simply confusing.” Also confused: people making glamorous wheeled vehicles that go absolutely nowhere. “Peloton is spinning backwards again,” Andrea Felsted [writes](. “On Thursday, the fitness company said Chief Executive Officer Barry McCarthy would step down after just over two years, as it announced another restructuring.” So how can a company whose product stands still move ahead? “Whoever succeeds McCarthy must pedal toward Peloton’s luxury roots,” Andrea suggests. “They should pursue more deals with luxury hotels and apartment developers. I’ve long wondered why Peloton doesn’t forge more heavily into the luxury gym sector. Out-of-home fitness is booming, so why not take more advantage? Physical locations should be complementary to Peloton, not threatening.” In addition to shuttering stores and allowing users to rent its equipment, Andrea says one of Peloton’s biggest flubs was [partnering]( with The Everything Store. Which, speak of the devil: On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that Amazon’s Andy Jassy [said some things]( he shouldn’t have at the Bloomberg Technology Summit (our famed hospitality tends to lower people’s guard). But as for his actual business, things are looking up — after years of [gutting]( scores of projects, grocery stores and tech careers, Jassy has emerged with a pretty solid plan for Amazon Web Services, according to Dave Lee. “Amazon’s message was that while OpenAI may have been grabbing headlines, investors should think of AWS as the Swiss Army knife for AI, one where businesses could run any number of cutting-edge AI models without worrying about shifting their sensitive data from one cloud provider to another,” Dave [writes](. “Unlike Meta, which was [punished]( for saying its spending would increase, Amazon can get away with bigger investments because of its strong presence in multiple layers of the AI ‘stack’: the bottom infrastructure layer for AI model builders, the middle layer of developers working with AI, and the top layer of consumer-facing software applications like chatbots. It all puts Amazon in excellent stead amongst this fiercely competitive AI crowd.” Tell it to the judge, Andy. Bonus [Careering]( Reading: -  In [Jamie Dimon's America](, the Stock Market Has Already Voted — Matthew A. Winkler - Noel Quinn [Quits as Chief]( While HSBC Is Ahead — Paul J. Davies - How Crazy Would It Be If Warren Buffett [Bought Boeing](? — Thomas Black [What’s the World Got in Store](? - King Charles III inaugural anniversary, May 6: [Royalty’s Private Struggles]( Have Public Consequences — Howard Chua-Eoan - Putin’s fifth-term inauguration, May 7: Putin [Isn’t Scared]( of Ukraine’s $61 Billion Boost— Hal Brands - U. of Mich. Consumer Sentiment, May 10: Gen Z [Is Frustrated](, and It’s Not for Nothing — Jonathan Levin [Money Maker]( No discussion of CEOs is complete of course without mentioning, well, this: But at some point, don’t they just have enough? For American CEOs, that probably seems like a dumb question. But in the UK, it’s not only open for debate, it’s not even really about money: “It is what CEOs think is fair,” Merryn Somerset Webb [writes](. “CEOs don’t want or need another £10 million here or there for consumption. It’s about feeling rightly done by. If this is all relative — and it appears that it is (no CEO can complain about their absolute pay) — the right question to ask is not whether UK CEOs are underpaid, but whether the US CEOs they are pegging themselves to are massively overpaid.” But are they overpaid enough for one of these? And if so, why in God’s name would they want one? Woof. Photographer: Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images For some reason, Allison Schrager forged her way through the Whitney Biennial the other day. And its goal of exploring “the permeability of the relationships between mind and body, the fluidity of identity, and the growing precariousness of the natural and constructed worlds”[3](#footnote-3)got her thinking about the growing precariousness of the part of the world constructed by the superrich. “Contemporary art, like other industries, offers big financial rewards [to just a few stars](. For everyone else, it is nearly impossible to make a living,” Allison writes. “In many ways this mirrors what’s happening in the rest of the economy. There are a lot of ways to be successful, but working at a top firm in your field — whether it’s law, technology, consulting, banking or something else — requires institutional buy-in, the right educational pedigree, and the appropriate kind of experience (internships, extracurricular activities, hobbies, that kind of thing). The result is a class of like-minded people acting as gatekeepers for a system in which they themselves are heavily invested.” Well, agree or disagree with the kids on campus, let’s hope they break down some of those gates. Harvard’s not the worst place to start. Notes: Please send [spam]( and feedback to Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net. [1] Gay was more or less taken down singlehandedly by Representative Elise Stefanik, an election-denying MAGA maestro who graduated from Harvard the same year Gay was hired as a professor. [2] Huge props to Beth for knowing that the plural of "cortex" is "cortices." That blew many cortexes around here. [3] Double disclosure: My feelings about contemporary art stem largely from a) having studied Northern Renaissance artists — who could, you know, draw — at the dawn of the Julian Schnabel-David Salle big money era and b) my daughter owning a small art gallery in New York amid a commercial scene Allison wrote about at greater length [here](. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](