For HBS Professor, Babies and Business Intersect

This week's "Spiritual Life" column in the Boston Globe features the work of Debora L. Spar, the Spangler family professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and president-designate of Barnard College...

This week's "Spiritual Life" column in the Boston Globe features the work of Debora L. Spar, the Spangler family professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and president-designate of Barnard College.

In her research, Spar, whose books include The Baby Business, explores the assisted-reproduction industry in the United States, considering both the numbers—$3 billion a year—and the ethical implications. She examines the attitudes of various religious traditions and the wider society toward treatments such as in-vitro fertilization and prenatal genetic testing, how these attitudes have developed over time, and what texts and historical customs have affected them.

Read more about Spar and her work in the Globe story—In Baby Business, What are the Rules?—or in a Harvard Magazine story from 2006.

Most popular

The Puppet Showplace Theater keeps an ancient art form alive.

Contemporary takes on puppetry in Brookline, Massachusetts

The True Cost of Grade Inflation at Harvard

How an abundance of A’s created “the most stressed-out world of all.”

What Bonobos Teach Us about Female Power and Cooperation

A Harvard scientist expands our understanding of our closest living relatives.

Explore More From Current Issue

Four Labrador puppies—two black and two yellow—sitting in green grass.

What Do Puppies Know?

Canine capabilities emerge early and continue into adulthood.

A diverse group of individuals standing on stage, wearing matching shirts and smiling.

How a Harvard and Lesley Group Broke Choir Singing Wide Open

Cambridge Common Voices draws on principles of universal design. 

Firefighters battling flames at a red building, surrounded by smoke and onlookers.

Yesterday’s News

How a book on fighting the “Devill World” survived Harvard’s historic fire.