University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Woke, Inc.
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Woke, Inc.

Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam

Vivek Ramaswamy
Center Street, 2021
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Controversial
  • Eye Opening
  • Bold

Recommendation

In his scathing and controversial critique of “woke capitalism,” entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy argues passionately that big business cynically deploys progressive-sounding rhetoric and symbols to accumulate more power and sell more products. Many corporations, he believes, promote socially conscious messages as a smoke screen to distract from their malfeasance and enhance their bottom line.While some elements of his argument may be more convincing than others, Ramaswamy’s instant New York Times best-selling polemic makes a strong case for the importance of pluralism in democratic societies.

Summary

Corporations’ embrace of “wokeness” is disingenuous and dangerous to democracy.

Vivek Ramaswamy founded and served as CEO of Roivant Sciences, a biotech firm, and earned degrees from Harvard and Yale Law School. In recent years, however, he publicly challenged some tenants of the Black Lives Matter movement and the social media censorship of then-President Donald Trump following the Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021. Though Ramaswamy found the riot disgraceful, he did not agree that politics and business should mix, and condemned “cancel culture” for impeding citizen’s rights. Facebook and Twitter, he argued, had no right to police free speech.

Ultimately, to protect his company as well as his own right to free speech, Ramaswamy decided to step down as CEO. Today, he embraces a new identity as a self-described “traitor to his class,” determined to uncover the “do-good smoke screens” businesses and politicians employ, which, to him, disguise a darker intent. As an ordinary citizen, he now works to expose the “woke-industrial complex” as a cynical cash grab at best, and, at worst, a phenomenon that...

About the Author

Vivek Ramaswamy is the founder and executive chairman of Roivant Sciences, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the application of technology to drug development. He has authored numerous articles and op-eds, and serves on the board of directors of the Philanthropy Roundtable and the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.

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