Rajan Vs Rajan at Chicago Booth: The new dean has company at the B-school

Come July, University of Chicago Booth School of Business will have a new dean: Madhav Rajan. But as the new dean sportingly admitted at the announcement, he’s resigned to forever being the less distinguished Rajan at the school. Presumably, he was alluding to the presence of Raghuram Rajan at Booth. The former Reserve Bank of India governor teaches at the B-school.

And much like him, the new dean too has a way with words. He set the tone as soon as he opened his speech, revealing that he was asked to limit it to five minutes. “But I feel like this is my Oscars, and unless I’m here by mistake, I’m going through with it,” he said, overshooting the five-minute mark by a little over two minutes. Before Booth, dean Rajan was the former senior associate dean at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He will take over formally, starting July 1. Before that, he plans to take a road trip with his daughter. The trip, he shared, was planned almost a year back. And even in the light of his recent appointment, she refuses to change the plan.