Professor of Corp Comm @ Tuck School of Business @ Dartmouth | Coach to the world’s top executives
When I started as a student at Columbia, I was certain that I hated the Vietnam War. My cousin had been killed by a landmine there. I myself narrowly avoided the draft - my lottery number was 14, close enough to feel the war's breath on my neck before Nixon ended conscription. A decade later, I visited Vietnam because I wanted to be one of the first people to go there after the war. Standing in Danang, where my cousin died, I expected to feel resentment. Instead, I had the oddest feeling - like I had missed something. I wondered if maybe I should have been there, and who I might have become if I had experienced fighting in the war. Years later, I returned with The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth to launch Vietnam's first English-language MBA program. During that trip, I met General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the military commander who had defeated both the French and the Americans. Here was the architect of everything I'd opposed as a young man. Giáp surprised me by describing Vietnam's deep admiration for American democracy and Thomas Jefferson. The man I had been taught to see as our enemy spoke about democratic ideals and expressed genuine respect for American principles. My carefully constructed worldview began shifting in ways I hadn't anticipated. These moments taught me something essential about the difference between youthful certainty and experienced understanding. At twenty, I saw the world in stark moral terms: clear heroes and villains, obvious right and wrong. Experience revealed layers of nuance that ideology couldn't capture. Today's students arrive in my classroom with the same fierce certainties I once held. My job is not to replace their convictions with mine, but to expose them to enough complexity that they develop the intellectual humility to see beyond their initial assumptions. Certainty has its place, but cultivating the patience and perspective to question our assumptions is what turns learning into understanding.
Thank you Paul, for sharing this. What an amazing experience and I appreciate how it shaped your focus. The Dartmouth way of teaching ‘how to think’ instead of ‘what to think’ is so critical in this era.
This is one of the most powerful, insightful, humble, sensitive, helpful and intellectually aware posts I’ve seen here. Thank you for all of that Paul. The lessons you share here are not limited to your students. Given the complexities of today’s world and events surrounding us, these are lessons all of us can (and should) benefit from.
I think this is so very insightful…. As a parent, I wonder what my response will be if/when our children express interest in the Army. The majority of my 20s were spent preparing for war - or going. I know what that was like and how it shaped me… but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I never hated Vietnam, Paul Argenti, but the war. I, too, recently visited Vietnam--Saigon--and reconciled with my Other Self.
Leading with openness, curiosity and humility ~ while using our own experience as one context for framing ~ will serve us and our world.
Paul Argenti your gift is making us constantly examine the things we assume to be true. I’m happy I was your student for a short time, and I hope I carry forward what you taught me
What a powerful experience-- and reflection-- and exactly the kind of openness and conversations we need to be willing to have today. Thank you for sharing this, Paul Argenti.
Cool thoughts !!!
This wonderfully thought out and told. Beautifully wise.
Chairman, Board Director, CEO, IPO CMO for High Growth Companies | F&B Investor
3w👉 “My job is not to replace their convictions with mine, but to expose them to enough complexity that they develop the intellectual humility to see beyond…”. So well put. As a mom of two young men, I feel that this is the job of a parent as well.