Previously, top business schools trained managers capable of reading a balance sheet, understanding a market, implementing a strategy, and sometimes even generating wealth. At ESSEC, clearly, they're innovating: they're now training minds… but minds that are managed.
The school's latest internal communication is a masterpiece of its kind. With the trembling seriousness of grand managerial ceremonies, we learn that ESSEC has decided to take a decisive step in the history of humankind: to integrate the F/M/X+ in its job postings.
Inclusive capitalism has thus found its magic formula. Previously, skills were recruited. Now, typographical virtue is highlighted. The addition of a X+ It becomes an act of institutional courage, a kind of three-part strategic plan. One can already imagine the candidates overwhelmed: finally, a school where they can be assessed not only on their academic record, but in an environment color-corrected by the HR department.
But ESSEC doesn't stop there. It also intends to institutionalize Pride MonthThe word is splendid. Institutionalize. In other words: finally, annual conformity, with a calendar, buttons, a Moodle module, and dedicated communication. June thus becomes the mandatory month of structured spontaneity, woke style.
Because there's a Moodle platform. Of course. Contemporary consciousness is expressed through modules. We click. We no longer debate: we follow a training course. We no longer meet people: we learn the "right reflexes." All of this, naturally, in that lamentable and depressing jargon where we never actually say what we're doing. Instead: we "open up spaces," we "nourish reflection," and we "make lasting progress for the collective."
The pinnacle is reached with their new POP HRIS, which now integrates the name of use and "gender identity," in order to better reflect "the reality of each and every one." Each and every one, really? And what about "each and every one," "each and every one," or "each self-identified talent in its inclusive potential"? No? Out the window? Too complicated after all? Even Newspeak sometimes has its prudishness.
And to top it all off, the school announces its selection of content: readings, articles, podcasts, a glossary, a guide for allies, an AGIR guide, and the Teale series for "developing tolerance." Tolerance is thus becoming a continuing education product. A soft skill. An HR badge. An awareness-raising item. Perhaps soon a line on LinkedIn: "Intermediate-level tolerance — ESSEC certification." I'm definitely not passing level A of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), that's it.
The most striking thing isn't that ESSEC is communicating about inclusion. An institution can reiterate that it rejects discrimination and respects individuals. The opposite would be criminal. But why the need to put on such a show? It all starts as a farce and ends in tragedy: it's the transformation of equality into bureaucratic theater, of individual freedom into protocol, of respect into mere posturing, of human diversity (the real kind, the only kind that matters—but which doesn't actually characterize the ESSEC student body) into a communication toolkit. We thought business schools were supposed to learn to distinguish reality from storytelling. ESSEC shows us that it has chosen storytelling over reality.
Go woke, go broke?
