Interview with Rodney Alexander

Interview with Rodney Alexander

Alexander, Rodney ; Gashurov, Irene

2019-11-14

In Copyright

Rodney Alexander.mp3

2019-11-14

Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni

63:15 minutes

db54668a-0dd7-404a-982b-740dfd1194a3

Alumni Interviews
Interview with: Rodney Alexander
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 14 November 2019
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(Start of Interview)

RA: 00:05
So, my name is Rodney Alexander. My diploma says I graduated in 1968. Although my last year on campus was probably 1966, we are in my apartment at Hanson, on Hanson Place in Brooklyn, and I am the subject of an oral history interview.

IG: 00:34
So, Rodney, tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, who your parents were, what they did, whether they- you had siblings, whether they encouraged education as you were growing up.

RA: 00:52
Well, I was raised in the Bronx. My parents were from the South. We lived in a working-class black community in the South, a community in which there was a strong drive to see that all of us did well in school. That was part of my family's ethic. I was not the first to go to college in my family. I have three sisters. My older sister graduated from Hunter College sometime in the mid (19)50s. I had uncles who were also and aunts who were also college graduates, so there was never a time when I did not know that I was going to go to college. That was always the expectation. Sometime in the (19)50s, my family moved from the South Bronx to the West Bronx, so I attended George Washington High School in Northern Manhattan, and then spent about a year at City College before I transferred to Harpur in 1962.

IG: 02:17
And why did you transfer to Harpur College?

RA: 02:20
Well, I wanted to get away, and I understood that it was a good school. As a matter of fact, someone said it was the best school in the State University of New York.

IG: 02:32
And did you have an idea of what you wanted to pursue in college, or did you have career aspirations, or?

RA: 02:43
I did not have career aspirations, but I always knew that I-I mean, I always had an interest in history and political science, those kinds of subjects.

IG: 02:58
So, when you first came to Harpur College in 1962. What did you find? What kind of environment was it?

RA: 03:08
Well, as you know, it was a much smaller institution. 1,200 students, as I recall it. About most-most about half of them came from New York, and I think about half from upstate New York. So, I mean, you basically knew you had a familiarity with most students on campus. You either knew them directly, or you had- you saw them around, and so now, what I have to say is that the student body was almost entirely white, as was the faculty. So, that was not an entirely different experience for me. When my family moved from the South Bronx to the West Bronx, I attended my last year of junior high school was in Riverdale Junior High School the first year it opened, and it turns out that although we lived in the adjoining neighborhood Kingsbridge, I was just over the line, so I did not go to the junior high school that the overwhelming majority of Kingsbridge students went to, I had to go to PS 141 Riverdale Junior High School, and in Riverdale Junior High School, my younger sister and I were the only blacks in the institution in the school. There were a few Asians, but there were no other blacks.

IG: 03:08
So, you know what-what-what you know protective mechanisms. What did you were you aware of developing as a result of whether protective mechanisms were necessary, or how did your personality change [inaudible]?

RA: 03:08
Well, the protective mechanism suggests some kind of threat in place.

IG: 03:08
No. Oh. No, that is not-not that you were a threat. No, the-the protective mechanisms. I mean, I-

RA: 04:35
I did not feel the need. I did not feel under threat. Is that my response to that? It was different. I mean, these were young people who did not necessarily share all of my interests or concerns, but no, I did not feel under threat. You had a second part to that question. I do not recall what it was. What did I develop, or I do not? Perhaps you can.

IG: 06:40
Well, I am just thinking, actually, of myself because I am a child of the (19)60s, and I grew up at the height of the Cold War. My family is Russian-speaking from the Ukraine, so I was seen as the enemy. It was a very different experience then, so that-that is-I guess I am coming from my own, to a degree, to a degree. So, you know, that is where I am coming from. It is a difference that you experience. Maybe you experience complete acceptance.

RA: 07:20
I-I do not think my experience was like that. I mean, I did. What you just suggested was that because of this hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union, you endured something that was different, yeah. I do not think that the students at Harpur were hostile to black people.

IG: 07:51
I was, I was actually talking about your high school experience when you transferred. You said that you had a certain-

RA: 07:58
[crosstalk] junior high school. Yeah, it was my ninth grade, not my high school experience. Because my high school experience was very different. George Washington at the time drew students from mostly white, mostly Jewish Riverdale section, as well as mostly white, mostly Jewish students from Northern Manhattan, Washington Heights, and Black students from Harlem and other places in Manhattan. So, it was a thoroughly mixed high school experience. So that, I mean, in that way too, Harpur was different.

IG: 08:44
So, you know, what-what was? I mean, you were a city kid who came to this very rural environment. What did you make of it? Was it conducive to your study and to your social life? Tell us a little bit about that.

RA: 09:01
Well, it was a rural environment, but I had prior experiences with those kinds of environments. I was a Boy Scout. I went away to camp in upstate New York and in Pennsylvania. So that in itself was not different. I think the- what made it different was the isolation because transportation was not great. So, you were on that campus for a long time unless you had, you know, access to. You had a car. You had some other kind of transportation to get around. So, what I will tell you is that, and I had occasion to communicate this with Diane Butler recently. One of the things that struck me about Harpur was the amount of cultural activities and other activities that went on. So, I can remember, for example. I can remember seeing the Donald McKayle dancers. I can remember the Granary Quintet. I can remember José Limón dancers. The Modern Jazz Quartet. Astrud Gilberto during the height of the Bossa Nova music craze. So, Harpur was at the time a kind of cultural center in the, in the area, in the, in the triple cities area, so I think in that regard we did not suffer much as students. I did not feel that I suffered much in that-that way.

IG: 11:19
So, you had all of this and theater, probably. So, what were your extracurriculars? I mean, first of all, let us talk about the academics. Which do you remember? You know, faculty courses that made an especially an impression on you that-that opened your mind, especially.

RA: 11:46
Well, a couple of things. One is that, you know, it was. I always knew that I would probably major in something like political science, which I did. What I did not know was that I would have an affinity for philosophy. So later, in some time in late in my sophomore year or junior year, I began taking a lot of philosophy courses, and-and enjoyed those courses, so that that was a surprise to me. Some of my course selections were based on looking at the reading list and seeing how much reading I would have to do. I have a friend who said that had if he was to give students the kind of reading list that we had at Harpur, he would be accused of abuse because it was, you know it was quite extensive in almost all courses. Philosophy courses tended to have shorter reading lists, so that appealed to me. You had to read the material multiple times, in many cases, like in the German with the German philosophers, before you got it. But nevertheless, the reading list was short. So that-that was one of my discoveries. Now, with respect to friends, I did belong to one of the two-letter social clubs. This one was called Delta Sigma Dionysian Society, and, but I did gain two friends, lifelong friends, out of my Harpur experience. They were not students; they were faculty members. So, one was Ed Wilson, who was a black art professor. You may have heard of him, and James Farganis, who was a political science professor. Both dead now. Ed quite a while ago, and Jim just within the past three or four years, but you know, I was close to him and his wife, so we continued to see each other and share conversations and talk about Jim because. He was a brilliant professor. His courses were always oversubscribed, and he- I think what attracted me to Jim, and what attracted other students to Jim, and what frankly attracted his wife to him was the- his ability to analyze brilliantly the kinds of forces that were in play at any well, I am not going to say at any given point in time, but certainly those forces that were impacting our lives at that point in time in the (19)60s, and he had very Catholic small C interest. So, for example, his curriculum in political science included Jan Hus, the Blacks, included Black Muslims in America. In addition. addition to, you know, challenges, authors who challenged, you know, American capitalism, kind of mainstream historians, historians like Clinton Rossiter, et cetera. So, we had a very rich experience in that regard.

IG: 16:52
Were there debates in class? Were there discussions?

RA: 16:55
Well, there were discussions. Yes, of course. I mean, that was the expectation that there were discussions, and that is one of the reasons why his classes were so good. I think Jim also knew that being in front of a classroom required you to engage in a bit of theater, and he was very good at that.

IG: 17:28
So, you draw these classes. Did you probably- did you make did you continue these discussions after the classroom in, you know, in your dorm and your, I mean, where they-

RA: 17:45
Well, I had no friends. The people that I knew outside of class were not, for the most part, you know, I think almost entirely were not part of the classes that I took. So, but with Jim and with Ed, we would have there would be some discussions. Yeah.

IG: 18:25
Did they invite you to their home?

RA: 18:28
I never. I never went to Ed's house, but to Jim had an apartment not too far from campus, and he had a number of us over. There were a couple of faculty parties. I think we had some parties that he came to.

IG: 18:53
That is very nice. So, so in your, you know, discussions outside of class, what kind of things would you talk about? I mean, apart from, I mean, apart from the expected-

RA: 19:05
Well, I remember one time in-in Jim's apartment, he played Dylan one of Dylan's pieces, and we talked about that, and of course, Dylan was very much rooted in the moment, the 1960s. So, I remember having a discussion around one of those songs.

IG: 19:41
Do you remember some of the things that were said?

RA: 19:44
No.

IG: 19:45
No, you do not. But what was the general tenor of the discussion?

RA: 19:48
Well, the general tenor was about, you know, the extent to which. Dylan had insights into the kind of social and political environment that we were living in.

IG: 20:21
So, you know, the politics around you, you were alive to, and as you know, you just said that you were discussing Dylan and sort of an alternative understanding of your, you know. know, the reality of the United States. Were you active in any political movements? Did you go-

RA: 20:52
Well, as you know, this was a time of much ferment. You know, I was not particularly active, but I was aware and intellectually engaged. So, you know, when I was on campus, this was a time of student sit-ins, you know, Stokely Carmichael, for example, Malcolm X, and when I had the chance, you know, I would make attempts to-to hear those people, listen to those people, and I was moved by those people. Now, to get more directly to your point, I did become a draft resister after I finished college. I spent, you know, I resisted. I refused to go in. I refused induction, and as a consequence, was indicted. Spent six months in a federal prison camp. Was paroled to the army. Do not shake your head. It was not that bad. [laughs] So, and I spent two years in the army.

IG: 22:37
But stationed here?

RA: 22:38
No, stationed in Germany. So, the- so as I said, I spent six months in a federal prison camp, and from there went to the army. Did basic training at Fort Dix--was some what they call advanced training in Texas, and then was given about a month's leave before being shipped out to Germany. In that month’s time, I got married. So, and my wife was finishing college at the University of Minnesota. She was from Minnesota, and we had been introduced, by the way, by a friend who I had gone to junior high school with. One of the other non-whites at that all-white junior high school. He was Chinese. He is an actor. You have probably seen him named Calvin Jung. Calvin Jung. And so, sometime in the period after I finished Harpur, and before going off to and before doing battle with the federal government, Calvin introduced me to my wife, who had flown to New York to interview a musician here. She, as I said, was a, or maybe I did not say, she was a journalism student at the University of Minnesota with a studio art minor. So, we got married in June of 1969. I went off to Germany, a place that was about two hours south, I believe it was, of Frankfurt, Germany, and she joined me a couple of months later. So, I was discharged in 1971.

IG: 25:07
You know, I just I am thinking as you were saying this. I mean, it probably must. You know, I can imagine what kind of strength of character and conviction it would require to stand up to the government. I mean, it is not every.

RA: 25:30
Well, you know, it is interesting. I think that in many ways, I had been well prepared for these kinds of confrontations. I am not the kind of person who is inclined to stand by and endure injustices, either to myself, my family, or anyone else in the community. So, as you can imagine, I have strong feelings about what we are currently enduring. So, I mean, constitutionally, that is who I am. In this battle, I had the active support of Ed Wilson, the art professor, and Jim Farganis, the political science professor, my political science professor. Now, Jim had left Harpur at this time. He left Binghamton in (19)65, I believe it was to go and teach at his alma mater, which was Brooklyn College. His undergraduate alma mater. He had gone to- his Ph.D. was from Cornell, and but they were very supportive. I remember I just recently came across a reading list that Ed Wilson had given me. As he thought that if I read these books, that it would help fortify me, help give me some strength in this-this confrontation I was having with the federal government over the selective over my being drafted.

IG: 27:32
So, what-what were the reasons that you gave the government for resisting the draft?

RA: 27:41
Well, what I told them that I was there aren't many grounds that you can object to. I mean, so I told them that I was conscious. I was opposed to this war, so I put myself forth as a conscientious objector, mostly to this war, but not to war itself, but to that particular war, the Vietnam War, and this came at a time when young black men were being recruited, drafted disproportionately, and I believe the statistics support that they were dying disproportionately. So, I saw this as-

IG: 28:33
And you saw these statistics. You were reading about the many combat casualties. That was all-

RA: 28:41
Oh, no question about it. I mean, [crosstalk] everyday news in the New York Times and the and on television. You had people like David Halberstam from the New York Times. You had William Faulkner in the Senate, raising questions about the legitimacy of this war. I mean, it was so there were a lot of marches. I participated in those marches here in New York and in Washington, D.C. I was part of something called the Black Anti-Draft Union. People who were who were like me were resisting the draft.

IG: 29:27
Is it national [inaudible]?

RA: 29:29
No, no local.

IG: 29:32
It was New York-based.

RA: 29:33
New York-based, yeah. And there was a lot of other activities. Students-students for a Democratic Society, women strike for peace.

IG: 29:52
So, all of that was in the era, but it still, you know, it still, it still takes a lot of government--to stand up to the government, you know, not everybody does that. So, you know, what when you heard, when you heard, you know, civil rights leaders speak about the struggle. about you know the condition of African Americans in the United States. Did that, did that kind of you know what? What did that open up? What is that a fair question? What did that, you know what-what qualities what-what feelings emerged?

RA: 30:44
Well, a couple of things. I was I was moved by much of what some of the black nationalists talked about, particularly in terms of not in terms of the need for self-reliance. So that was a message, part of the message that Malcolm X delivered, that resonated with me. Not his entire message, but that part resonated with me because, in fact, that is what I grew up with. I grew up in, as I said, a black working-class family and a black working-class neighborhood. I was also moved by the social message of and political, ultimately political message of Martin Luther King. So, I was there in Washington when he made that speech. I was in that crowd when he made that speech. So, does that answer your question?

RA: 32:26
Yes, but you know I want more.

RA: 32:30
Well, I am not sure. I can give you more.

IG: 32:35
More-more description. You know what? So what? What feelings did that evoke in you when you heard Martin Luther? Did you come from a religious background or?

RA: 32:47
Not particularly religious, but in my family, we talked, and we argued a lot about current events, and I mean my immediate family and extended family, so with my aunts and uncles, and with my sisters. So, yeah, we were, and we were very conscious of ourselves as-as being Black Americans, and all that that meant.

IG: 33:30
What-what-what did, what did all that mean? What-what-what was that?

RA: 33:37
Well, what that meant was that. We that we had we had battles that we would have to fight just because we were black, and for no other reason, and that we had to prepare ourselves for those battles, and that there was a long history of blacks before us who had fought these battles?

IG: 34:26
So, how do you prepare? You prepare intellectually by reading. You prepare by socializing, by also attending these marches. I mean, by having the support of your professors. How do you prepare?

RA: 34:40
Well, I think the preparation starts when you are young. It starts in the home. It starts when you hear adults talk about these things and talk about how they responded to these challenges. So, having knowledge about where you come from, and having knowledge about what the expectations are of you, is the primary way that one arms themselves for this-this kind of thing. [crosstalk] Some of them are said. Some-some of them are implicit. Some of them are not. My grandmother used to tell me that when I grew up, so this is something she would tell me when I was about eight or nine years old. She would say, "This is what I told your uncles, and this is what I am telling you. When you grow up, I want you to not to have to live lift anything heavier than a pencil to make a living," and it is not that my grandmother had anything against workers, people who worked with their hands, but-but what she was saying was that she wanted us to get an education to go to college.

IG: 36:39
So, what-what we are, okay? So, tell us a little bit about your career trajectory, after you know what I mean. There are so many things that I would like to delve into, but I know that [crosstalk]

RA: 37:05
Yeah. So, before we get to that, I have to say that tell you a little bit about my army experience because what I would say is that when I got to the army, I was treated fairly. I-I had a good experience, a relatively good experience. So, I-I am proud of both my resistance and my service. And I sometimes jokingly say I had a brilliant army career because I got probably the highest rank that you could get within the two-year time span, which was the equivalent of a sergeant. That was not the title, but it was the same pay grade. So, when I left the army, I got out. It was January of 1971. I soon found a job through a friend working with a group called the Council on Economic Priorities, started by a woman by the name of Alice Tepper Marlin, who was a Wellesley graduate, who had experience on Wall Street putting together portfolios, and she had this idea that. that one of the things that investors might or should be interested in was the extent to which American corporations were socially responsible or not. So, they did studies, for example, of the use of power, coal, for example, paper manufacturing, and their impact on the environment. I and another woman was hired to do a study of minorities and women in banking, and we produced a report that was called "Short Changed. “We looked at the top three banks in the largest cities, with the exception of the cities with the largest numbers of blacks. So, we looked at New York, Chicago, Detroit, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and Philadelphia. I think Atlanta we added for Geographical spread, not because it had the largest percentage of blacks, although it did have a very then and now has a very high concentration of blacks and a concentration of historically black colleges. So, I did that report and was asked by a former boss to join him in at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he was exploring the use of telecommunications as a means of delivering healthcare, and we had two projects. One of them involved a link between the hospital, a pediatrician's office at Mount Sinai, and a child health station at in East Harlem, and the effort there was to was twofold. One was to see if we could reduce the cost of healthcare through this two-way television communication link that enabled the patient to see and hear the physician, the physician to see and hear the patient in real time.

IG: 41:31
And this was what year?

RA: 41:33
This was 1973-(19)74.

IG: 41:38
This was really ahead of its time, because the hospitals are only introducing this recently.

RA: 41:47
So, the other part of it was to see the extent to which these nurse practitioners working in the clinic could assume child care. So, I did that, and my boss at the time was an associate dean at Mount Sinai, and he encouraged me to go to graduate school, which I did. So, I enrolled in the public administration program at NYU, and I worked full time and went to school full time, and graduated in 1976 with a degree, a master's in public administration, with a concentration in health planning. And just before I graduated, my boss, his name was Carter Marshall, said, "Listen, I am going to be leaving Mount Sinai and going to Atlanta to help start a new school of medicine at Morehouse College," which was King's alma mater. He said, "There is a position there that you might be interested in, as an assistant dean for administration." So, I interviewed for the job with Lou Sullivan, who was the dean. Lou Sullivan later became, under Bush, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, but at that time was the dean of this fledgling medical school on the Morehouse campus. So, my wife left her job. We sold our apartment, and we moved to Atlanta, but that only lasted two years, and it was probably not longer, much longer than a year, that I knew that I was going to be leaving, and I swore at the time that I was not going to work for another not-for-profit, non-profit organization. So, we moved back to New York. Ironically, in the same building that we had left on the Upper West Side, and I went back to school this time for an MBA at again at NYU, and I tried to do what I had done previously, which was to work full time. And to go to school full time, but this was a very different challenge. So, I had to stop working and just concentrate on school. Both, by the way, both efforts were underwritten by the GI Bill, so I graduated from Stern, what is now called Stern, with an MBA in computer systems in 1980, and I went to work for Exxon Corporation as a computer systems analyst, and I spent about four years there, both here in New York at Rockefeller Center, and in Florham Park, New Jersey, and then went off on my own. This was the beginning of the PC revolution, and that was my experience at Exxon PCs and small systems, as opposed to the large mainframe systems. And I did that for on my own for, I think, about eight years or so. But it became, at some point, it became a challenge. If for no other reason that, if you are going to work in computer systems, you have to really go with the changing technology. You have to invest in a lot, both in terms of time and money, in new training. It is very difficult as a solo practitioner to do to get the business, do the business, and also the training. There are- a friend and a neighbor at one point asked me, "Would I be interested in doing some focus groups with people in the industry, both people who train for the industry and practitioners around the subject of new technologies and the training for those technologies. So, I did a couple of those. He then asked me to do a couple more of these so-called workforce analysis studies, and that came to the attention. That work came to the attention of someone I knew at Borough of Manhattan Community College, because when I was on my own, one of the things that I did was train people in computer systems, and so this guy who worked in continuing education and knew of my work in these focus groups that I had done for CUNY, as a matter of fact, John Mogulescu. That is how I first met John.

IG: 48:34
Which year-

RA: 48:37
So, this would be 19- probably around 1987-(19)88. Maybe later. I do not recall. Anyway, I got a call from my friend at BMCC, whose name was John Montagnais. Oh, I cannot say enough about very-very bright and capable guy. He has literally brought millions and millions of dollars into that institution through proposal writing. Anyway, John called me and said: "The president is interested in engaging the business community, the Wall Street business community." And he needs someone who can do data collection and analysis. Someone who can represent the college with the Wall Street community. Is this something that you would be interested in? So, it is only part-time, you see. So, I was interested, and we created something called the Institute for Business Trends Analysis. I did write a lot of reports on workforce trends, the implications of those trends for the curriculum. Wrote a lot of proposals, and in the end, probably. You know, brought in maybe $10 million. Some of them very large proposals, like $3 million proposals that we were awarded to do training.

IG: 51:18
And so, what are just out of curiosity? What were the corporations [inaudible]?

RA: 51:25
Well, these were government proposals. These were with the U.S. Department of Labor primarily. There was there are a couple that were with New York State. I think one for like 750, but the big ones, the $3 million dollar proposals were with-with the federal government. Yeah. The um, so I did that for about 10 years, and one day the president called me and said that I reported to the president. Said that he wanted me to take over a post-secondary school operation in Harlem that was funded by the State University of New York, but administered by CUNY, the City University of New York, and it was called the Educational Opportunity Center, and there are, I believe, five of these centers in New York, each associated with one of the CUNY institutions. So, there is one in Queens and Brooklyn in the Bronx, and of course Manhattan. So, we delivered high school prep, college prep, English as a second language, and then some training in things like security officer training, nurse assistant training, those kinds of things, and I did that for about five or six years, and then retired.

IG: 53:43
So, you are retired.

RA: 53:46
I am retired. Yes.

IG: 53:48
And how are you? What-what are some of your interests, hobbies? What do you do during your retirement? You are reading [inaudible]

RA: 54:06
Well, I do a lot of reading, as you can see. This is, you know, it is a lifelong habit of mine. I am never without a book. I collect books. Besides reading them, I collect first editions, modern first editions. I like to get them signed. So, we- I mentioned that we moved, we left Manhattan and downsized, moved to Brooklyn. My wife was not particularly interested in Brooklyn; she wanted to stay in Manhattan. I was, you know, 35-40, Years was enough for me, and I told her I wanted to leave Manhattan, move to Brooklyn, and I wanted Water Views. So, I managed to get my way. So, I read. I spent about-I am maybe 25 years- well, from the time that I graduated from business school, I have been on one board or another. So shortly after I joined Exxon, someone at Exxon asked me, "Would I be interested in joining the board of directors of an organization that served the needs of low-income women?" So, I did that for a few years. I was then asked to join the board of a nursing home, a not-for-profit nursing home in Harlem, and I am still on that board. We actually sold a nursing home about four years ago, but I became president of the board maybe I do not know, maybe 15 years ago, succeeding Roscoe Brown, who, as you may know, was a Tuskegee Airman, and so that took a lot of my time. Somewhere in there, I served on the graduate alumni board at Stern, that is the business school at NYU. I was on there for a few years, so I have got- gotten rid of all of my board activities except for this nursing home, and I am trying to wind that one down. We have a home on Martha's Vineyard, so we spend a lot of time there. I am leaving for Martha's Vineyard in a couple of hours. We have, for the past few years, been spending the fall in France and living in Paris, but traveling to other cities: Amsterdam, Rome, London, Florence, Madrid. And Belgium. So that is, you know, that is been our life. We spend about half of our time here in Brooklyn, half in on the vineyard, and you know, a couple of months in-in Europe.

IG: 58:27
A marvelous. I know that we are mindful of time, and I usually ask toward the completion of interviews my interviewees to give advice to the young people, to students listening to these interviews, of qualities that you think are especially important for their professional and personal success. What has helped you [inaudible]

RA: 59:06
Well, the first thing I should say is that in this survey of my life, one thing that I failed to mention was that we have a son who was raised on the Upper West Side for the most part. He now lives in New Orleans, where he went to undergraduate school and graduate school. So, what I would say to those students are the very same things that I said to my son, which is that getting an education, a college education, should be about acquiring an understanding of the human condition. Should be about trying to understand life, and not about the acquisition of job skills. I think it is unfortunate that many students, my son included, are burdened with debt. So, that kind of decision-the decision to pursue education in part because of the possibility of it enriching your life-that is not an easy choice to make because it has economic consequences, but I encourage them to do it anyway. I think universities like the City University of New York, the State University of New York, particularly in these times, are doing God's work. What I got at Harpur was a first-rate education. I have traveled a lot. I have met people who have gone to what are nominally the best schools in the country in the world. I have never felt, not once have I ever felt that there was something missing in my education. So that is part of the message. The other part of the message is that education should be a lifelong thing. There should always be, and there always is, something else out there that is of interest that should engage you. I mean, I think that if one wants to lead a full life, you have to be about education.

IG: 1:03:03
Thank you for a wonderful interview.

RA: 1:03:06
You are welcome.

(End of Interview)

2019-11-14

Irene Gashurov

1968

Rodney Alexander

Rodney Alexander was raised in the Bronx and graduated from Harpur College in 1968 with a B.A. in Social Sciences. He later earned degrees in public administration and business administration from New York University. Alexander served as executive director of the Manhattan Educational Opportunity Center at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), CUNY. He and his wife, Daryl Royster Alexander, the founding editor of Essence magazine, divided their time between Brooklyn and Martha’s Vineyard. They have one son.

Audio

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