Beyond Conventional Wisdom

If you glanced at my résumé you might assume that the high point of my life was at age thirty-three, being appointed as the president of Oberlin College. But something more significant than anything on my résumé happened a few years after I’d left that job. My awakening, in a shabby Greenwich Village phone booth, marked the beginning of a quest that would culminate, decades later.

I was awaiting a call from a foundation executive with whom I’d done business while at Oberlin. Despite my changed circumstances—no institutional tie, no office, no title, no secretary, not even a phone—as a former insider I knew how easy it is for someone with the right connections to score a grant for almost anything.

As the end of the business day approached and the phone did not ring, my hope faded, it hit me: I had become a nobody—exiled and invisible. It was not that the executive owed me a yes; it was that he’d broken his promise to call. In that moment, I knew that my dignity would never be secure and that so long as anyone’s dignity is at risk, everyone’s is.

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