And while Green speaks of the Business School as having "a different mindset" from the rest of the University, he adds. "They play ball in a lot of ways that people don't think."
For McArthur, playing ball means using the Business School's resources in the service of the community, particularly in terms of providing opportunities to those without.
That, he says, is one of the reasons why underprivileged high school students have access to Shad Hall.
And it is why the dean becomes so animated when he talks about public education--one of the five new interfaculty programs and an issue close to McArthur's heart.
"I think it's a cancer--the public education system. It just doesn't work," he says. "You just look around Boston or any other big city and there are just lots of kids that are totally left behind, they have no chance at all...It's something that's got to get fixed."
Students at the Business School are encouraged to work in public education, he says.
And McArthur says he might work as a public school teacher one day after he retires.
It is important, he asserts, for people who have been as lucky as he has to return something to the community. That notion--with the premium it places on public service--may seem strange coming from the dean of the Harvard Business School and the leader of a symbolic stronghold of free market capitalism.
But coming from the John McArthur who once worked in a sawmill and who never dreamed of going to college, the notion is not that strange at all.