24-02-2025
London Business School's New Dissident Dean
When London Business School named Sergei Guriev its dean in January 2024, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny offered congratulations to his friend from his Arctic prison cell, just five weeks before he died under suspicious circumstances. Navalny's death, Guriev wrote soon after, was 'terrible news, not only for the future of Russia but also for Ukraine, Europe and the entire free world.' Guriev had left Russia years before, when he resigned as a rector of Moscow's New Economic School in 2013, fearing for his safety after co-authoring a report critical of the treatment of oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
'I have never been a politician, and I am not a political refugee. I left Russia for personal reasons: I personally prefer to stay free,' he wrote in the New York Times in June 2013, announcing why he would not return to his homeland (he was in Paris at the time). Guriev's lauded research has focused on political economics, including Russian economic history, and labor mobility. After leaving Russia, he continued to study and teach and served as provost of Sciences Po in Paris. He's also done stints as chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and as a visiting professor at Princeton University. We spoke with him in early February about this new role at LBS (he started in August 2024) and the direction that graduate business education is taking worldwide. The interview was edited for clarity and length.
