The Wall of Recognition of Service to Country is a tribute to all Harvard Business School community members who have served their country in times of war and peace.

On Tuesday, November 3, 2015, the Harvard Business School Wall of Recognition of Service to Country was installed on campus at Kresge Way North, east of McCulloch Hall. The idea of recognizing all HBS community members who have served their country came from the leadership of the Armed Forces Alumni Association. The wall sits on an active pedestrian pathway at the nexus of the Executive Education and the MBA/Doctoral sections of the HBS campus, and—increasingly—at a key junction point for HBS and Harvard University, so that all will have the opportunity to pause and reflect on its meaning. The purpose of the recognition piece is to inspire us to consider the service of veterans and, more broadly, the role of service to country in our lives. The timeless quote from former US president John Adams (Harvard University AB 1755, AM 1758) reads, “Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives,” eloquently capturing the spirit of the piece.

The wall of carved Mesabi black granite is a monolithic piece that includes four different finishes. In recognition of the global community of HBS, its design features Buckminster Fuller’s projected map of the world (also known as the “Dymaxion Map”). It is the only flat map of the entire surface of Earth that reveals our planet as one island in one ocean, without any visual distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of land areas, and without splitting any continents. Fuller's view was that, given a way to visualize the whole planet with greater accuracy, humans will be better equipped to address challenges as we face our common future aboard Earth.