The culture of smartness, according to Karen Ho, is central to understanding Wall Street’s financial agency, how investment bankers are personally and institutionally empowered to enact their worldviews, export their practices, and serve as models for far-reaching socioeconomic change (167). Ho suggests that smartness is more closely connected to power, elitism and what she calls hegemony than to traditional notions of intellectual ability. What are the implications of this redefinition of smartness, according to Ho? What happens when students accept Wall Street’s notion of smartness? Does Ho herself accept this notion? How do you know?

For your first essay, consider the following questions: What does smartness signify in the world Karen Ho describes? What other concept of smartness does Ho seem to value? How does she enact this alternate notion in her career€”and in the essay we are reading? Are the two conceptions of smartness mutually exclusive? What kind of smartness should a university education help students achieve?