Classmates remember Romney as a man driven by pragmatic, analytical concerns mostly disconnected from the tumultous politics that defined the Watergate era.
“We had many conversations over lunch every day. Very few of them were about politics,” says Serkin. “It was very clear he just wanted to be a businessman. He loved business.”
Several remember Romney as a pragmatist, less interested in the theory taught at the Law School than the hands-on case studies essential to the Business School curriculum.
“I didn’t get the sense that he liked ideas for their own sake—only instrumentally,” says Vagts, who taught Romney in a seminar class on law and business and advised him during his time in the joint program.
Some students, like future Senator Charles E. Schumer ’71, who was one of Romney’s Law School classmates, were noted as markedly political. Romney was not, in spite of his widely known political pedigree. “I think he was just a guy who wanted to make a ton of money,” says Brown.
Like many graduates of the J.D./M.B.A. program, Romney never practiced law, and several of his peers remark on traces of his Business School training in his political style.
Haldeman, who served as CEO of Freddie Mac, says he sees the hallmarks of a Harvard-trained private equity manager in Romney’s record of political negotiation. Attending two institutions as politically different as the Law and Business Schools can have a moderating influence on a J.D./M.B.A.’s outlook, he adds.
“Some political balance comes to someone who’s gone through these two schools at a such a unique time,” says Haldeman.
Given his data-driven, adaptable approach, perhaps it is not surprising that some old classmates see a different Mitt when they turn on the television.
“When I see him on the TV attacking President Obama or taking extreme positions, he doesn’t seem like he’s being natural,” says Brownstein. “It’s an adopted persona.”
—Staff writer Jared T. Lucky can be reached at lucky@college.harvard.edu.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
CORRECTION: Nov. 1
An earlier version of this article misstated the year that Mitt Romney graduated from Harvard Business School. In fact, he graduated from both the Business School and the Law School in 1975.