Harvard Portrait: Meg Rithmire

Meg Rithmire

Assistant professor of business administration Meg Rithmire, Ph.D. ’11, spent the morning of October 5 shepherding Chinese scholars around campus. That afternoon, she got married. “I’ve never envisioned having a wedding,” she says of her civil ceremony. “I can’t imagine caring about wearing a white dress.” Dinner at a Chinese restaurant with her new husband, John David Hampton ’00, and their families, followed. “My life is about research and teaching that encourages people here to think about China in a dynamic way,” she says. “It’s still a foreign place. I don’t want people to be afraid of China.” In high school, she read Ha Jin’s Waiting, a bleak book about a man seeking a divorce amid the Cultural Revolution. The Atlanta teenager was captured by “the couple’s inefficacy and the impact a culture has on individuals.” She went on to earn dual degrees in Chinese and international studies at Emory University, along with a master’s and a doctorate in political science. Now at the Business School, she is writing a book on the commodification of land in China and helps teach a spring favorite: “Business, Government, and the International Economy,” crafting the section on the “success” of the planned city of Chongquin. “Is it real growth? Debt-financed? Or a propaganda bid on behalf of political leaders?” she asks. The school wants more intrepid thinkers—and Asian experts.“You can’t be a wallflower here,” she says. “I have M.B.A.s who are basically my age [30]. They think I’m a big China nerd.” Happily, she says, the HBS culture “is not as stodgy as people think.” Professors must teach in full suits. But on a Friday, Rithmire sports grasshopper-green silk pants and an Egyptian-style gold necklace. “I do own pearls,” she admits. “But it’s just not me.”

Click here for the November-December 2012 issue table of contents

You might also like

Plans for a Faculty Senate Move Forward

And annual awards for excellence in teaching, advising, mentoring, and scholarship

Harvard Discloses Top Administrator and Investment Manager Compensation

Investment pay drops—top six managers’ earnings total a little more than $25 million

Radcliffe Institute Announces 2025-2026 Fellows

Scholars pursue projects ranging from reducing ethnic violence to searching for an undiscovered super-Earth.

Most popular

Rebecca Henderson: Does Capitalism Need to be Reimagined?

How to reform capitalism to confront climate change and extreme inequality, with economist and McArthur University Professor Rebecca Henderson

The New Gender Gaps

What to do as men and boys fall behind

An Original Magna Carta, Hidden in Plain Sight

A rare original surfaces at Harvard at an “almost providential” moment. 

Explore More From Current Issue

Harvard Commencement and Alumni Events 2025

Harvard Commencement and Alumni Events 2025

Publications by Harvard Authors Spring 2025: New Releases

Operatic counterculture, a Passover graphic novel, James Joyce’s biographer, and more

Filmmaker Salvador Litvak's Jewish Movies

The “Accidental Talmudist” on making Jewish movies