With all of the challenges facing American higher education -- cost, mission, campus divisions and tensions -- it is easy to lose track of one of the core roles that our colleges and universities have historically played and must continue to play: gatekeepers to the American dream. I was reminded of this just before Christmas when I met Daniel for brunch. Among other things, we were celebrating his new position at a prominent growth equity firm. None of this would have been likely, indeed imaginable, during his early childhood in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn. By the time he and I first met, over five years ago, he was a college senior who was President of the Student Union, a charismatic and insightful leader.
No college president ever had a better student leader at his side than I had with Daniel. He was my advisor and partner, offering me a window into student concerns and attitudes. Together we forged a mood on campus based on collaboration not confrontation. As the student speaker at my inauguration, he shared the story of how he challenged me to a "free style rap" contest during the "Battle of the DJ's." This event, to the cheers of over a thousand undergraduates, was emblematic of the power of partnership -- how much we can accomplish when we realize that none of us is as smart or capable as all of us.
Daniel was an African-American student who came to Brandeis University through Posse, the extraordinary foundation that enables gifted inner city youth to succeed at top colleges in ways impossible without the support of their "posse." The genius of Posse is to select students of great promise, many of whose potential would not be represented by standardized testing, prepare them well before their college experience, and send them to participating colleges and universities as a group, a posse. Posse students fully integrate into the student body -- witness Daniel's landslide victory as student body President -- but know at the end of the day there are a number of peers who always have each other's backs. Brandeis was one of the founding participants of Posse and the originator of the path-breaking and highly successful Science Posse. The hugely impactful role of Posse on our campus is all the sweeter because the visionary founder of Posse, Debbie Bial, is a Brandeis alumna.
Daniel's story does not start with Posse. Others, beginning with caring and devoted parents, launched him on his path. There was a watchful high school teacher who encouraged him to apply to the summer program "Seeds of Peace" where Daniel was encouraged to think, to express his ideas, to listen to others, and to understand abstract principles that could change facts on the ground. This experience was the beginning of his academic turnaround, his intellectual awakening. Although he lived in Brooklyn, Daniel applied and was accepted to a school in Manhattan, by coincidence, Louis D. Brandeis High School, where a dedicated teacher saw his promise and persuaded him to apply for the Posse program. And from Brandeis High School, via Posse, he came to Brandeis University and excelled.
One is tempted to wonder what would have happened to Daniel had there been no teachers to tell him of Seeds of Peace or Posse, or no Posse to send him to a major research university. Alas, we need not wonder; we have an unhappily compelling controlled experiment. As Daniel and I were celebrating his professional success, part of him could not celebrate: he had just learned that his close childhood friend Aikiam, left behind in the old neighborhood, had that very week been incarcerated. Were this a novel, it would feel badly overwritten. But this was not fiction -- this was real.
Undoubtedly many reasons account for the diverging paths of Daniel and Aikiam. One that Daniel stressed to me is the self-fulfilling power of low expectations. At the elementary school he and Aikiam attended, students were strictly ranked based on grades and statewide exam scores. While Daniel worked to move up the ranks, Aikiam, although incredibly talented, remained in the "bottom class" throughout his tenure at the school, a label with a destructive psychological impact. In high school, when Daniel asked Aikiam whether college was an option, Aikiam immediately rejected the idea; college was not for him because "he was not capable."
The opposite fates of Daniel and Aikiam illuminate key issues facing America today, realities that should keep us up at night: minority students are still not gaining adequate access to leading institutions of higher-learning; there is an urgent necessity to improve our public schools. Full solutions are highly complex, but important partial solutions are apparent, and they are large and small, from Posse's having trained well over 6000 students, to individuals like Daniel's teachers urging him forward.
Daniel is proof of the possibility of changing young lives, the enduring promise of the American Dream. This is both an inspiring story of Daniel's contributions and a challenging story about Aikiam's lost productivity -- all of us win when they win, but lose when they lose. As we begin 2016, this strange American doppelgänger should urge us towards continued change, inspired by Daniel.