Celebrating USA’s 250th
Dear Smith Community and Friends,
As we commemorate 250 years of America's independence and great experiment, we celebrate a legacy of entrepreneurship, innovation, and wealth creation that has transformed lives around the world. From electrification and space exploration to the internet, mobile communications, and, more recently, artificial intelligence, American ingenuity has helped drive global economic prosperity and expanded opportunities across industries and societies. The reach of these innovations is remarkable. In many parts of the world, Xerox became synonymous with photocopying, and Coca-Cola and Pepsi are available even in places where reliable piped drinking water remains scarce.
At the Robert H. Smith School of Business, we are committed to advancing leadership, innovation, and resilience that have long fueled this spirit of discovery and enterprise. These values continue to guide our work and inspire our community as we prepare the next generation of business leaders.
To commemorate this milestone, I am pleased to share a commentary from Associate Professor and business historian David A. Kirsch. His reflections offer timely insights into both the opportunities and the responsibilities facing business leaders today, and the important role the Smith School can play in shaping what comes next.
I hope you will take a moment to read his message below.
Prabhudev C. Konana
Dean, Robert H. Smith School of Business
In 1776, a group of founders bet that a new kind of republic—built on individual liberty, self-governance, and the freedom to enterprise—could endure. Two hundred and fifty years later, their wager is still being tested.
Today we stand at a moment that demands this same orientation. The challenges ahead—the transformative potential of artificial intelligence, deepening inequality, climate disruption, geopolitical realignment—are as consequential as any the republic has faced. Each carries enormous possibility and enormous risk. History teaches us that such moments have always produced both breakthrough and hardship, often simultaneously, and that the outcomes depend on the quality of the institutions, the ideas, and the people we bring to bear.
The Smith School has long understood that business education is not separate from this larger American experiment; it is embedded in it. When we:
- established one of the nation's first entrepreneurship centers in 1986, now the Dingman-Lamone Center
- launched the first university-based angel investor network
- built the student-managed real capital Mayer and Senbet funds, only the second of their kind in the US
When our faculty helped build the scholarly foundations of entrepreneurship research and financial policy, they did so because these questions matter beyond the academy.
At 250, the question before us is not whether American enterprise will persist. It is whether we can shape its next chapter so that it serves not only those who build ventures but also the communities and societies in which those ventures operate.
This is the work the Smith School takes seriously as its public mission. It is work that will require the continued engagement, imagination and commitment of all who call the Smith School their home.
– David A. Kirsch