“What it’s like to take the Aspen Institute Executive Seminar: It’s like the edited highlights of a humanities course at a liberal arts college, apparently. You fill in a Goopy-sounding questionnaire about your “leadership journey”; you discuss texts from Plato, Marx and Hobbes; on day three or four the people in your group start getting on one another’s nerves and breaking down in tears; you stage a potted version of Antigone to round off the week; you go home better-connected. Price: $11,350 all in.”

Linda Kinstler