The aim of this course is to teach critical thinking and analysis skills to students via an assessment of contemporary issues that in reality are all far more complicated than the narratives we usually adopt. The class will be modeled after the Harvard Business School model.  Each week there is a “case”/”topic” and then students need to be prepared to discuss this topic.  There will be much cold calling, but students can also volunteer views in reaction to other’s comments. We will start with business and economics as the less controversial topics: Federal Government spending and the implications on debts/deficits; federal reserve policy; social welfare policy; labor unions; environmental rules; hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas; charter schools; the legitimacy of Supreme Court rulings and the role of courts in setting public policy; gun control.  When students have some experience with the class structure, and feel more comfortable with sharing their views, we will move to more controversial topics: the death penalty; abortion rights; implications of the church/organized religion on society. Students may suggest topics.  There will be guest speakers, experts in their fields. There will be an emphasis on where and how to do research, with assignments focused on the current topic.

Visiting Professor, Andre Kovensky, is the founder and managing partner of Octavia Investments LLC, a global macro oriented investor in public and private securities and assets.Previously, he was the COO and CFO of PGM Holdings, a publicly traded company in Japan. He also spent three years leading corporate buyouts for Lone StarFunds in Tokyo, as well as 10 years as an investment banker, the majority of which with Citigroup based in the San Francisco Bay Area focused on technology companies. Andre received his MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School and a BA from the University of Texas at Austin where he majored in Humanities, focusing on economics and the American Revolution, with his senior thesis addressing how to resolve the savings and loan bank crisis of the late 1980s and prescriptions for preventing future bank crises.