I rarely get excited about a class syllabus, but then I read Rebecca Henderson’s outline for a remarkable course she teaches at the Harvard Business School. She’s an economist and climate activist, and the author of “Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire.” In last week’s Wonder Cabinet episode with Rebecca, I mentioned that I loved the reading list for her “Reweaving Ourselves” class, and several listeners wrote to us to ask if they could see it. So, with Rebecca’s permission, here’s the syllabus. (Note: it’s 19 pages.)

“What does it mean to be alive and to be human right now? To what should we devote our lives?” This is how Rebecca begins her course description.  This is a class with a mission, and the syllabus has two functions. It’s both a detailed reading list and a manifesto of sorts for how to confront the environmental collapse we’re facing.

What I find so inspiring about the reading list is its breadth, including big, provocative books like Kim Stanley Robinson’s sci-fi novel “The Ministry of the Future” and Amitav Ghosh’s history of colonialism and the climate crisis, “The Nutmeg's Curse”; case studies of market economies and protest movements; and philosophical reflections on animism and indigenous knowledge. (It’s not like any reading list I’d expect to see in a business school!)

The syllabus also outlines Rebecca’s pedagogical approach. She believes political change requires personal transformation, and she wants her students to practice this “inner work.” Her class has an experiential component, including exercises in deep listening, holding grief and other difficult emotions, and reading poetry aloud while sitting together. 

The class is geared toward young professionals who are climate activists, and it grew out of a personal crisis that Rebecca faced. (In our conversation, she describes her own struggle to rediscover her sense of hope.) 

“Moral imagination is all about putting yourself in the shoes of not only people in the future, but the insects and the birds and the trees and the children,” she told me. “We really do have the technology and the resources to fix the problems we face.”  

If you haven’t heard this episode, I do hope you’ll get a chance to listen!

—Steve