Military Service & Education
Bennis grew up within a working-class Jewish family in Westwood, New Jersey, before enlisting in the United States Army in 1943. He would go on to serve as one of the Army’s youngest infantry officers in the European theater of operations, and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
Following his military service, he enrolled in Antioch College in 1947. Antioch president Douglas McGregor, considered one of the founders of the modern democratic management philosophy, would take Bennis on as a protégé, a scholarly relationship that would prove fruitful when both later served as professors at the MIT Sloan School of Management. There, Bennis would hold the post of chairman of the Organizational Studies Department.
Read more about this topic: Warren Bennis
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