Doug Ross

When my father came to the US as an immigrant in the 1930’s, he arrived without connections or being able to speak English, motivated by a powerful desire to live in a democracy where he would be free to pursue a good life.

He taught me that it was my personal responsibility to fight for the preservation of the America that drew him here and made me (and our better life) possible. Coming of age when John F. Kennedy became President simply deepened that sense of responsibility as he called on all Americans to make the world a better place.

Not surprisingly, much of my career was in government: as a Michigan State Senator, Michigan Commerce Secretary, and U.S. Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training. These experiences led to my belief in education as the principal path out of poverty in a knowledge economy.

So after running unsuccessfully for Governor of Michigan in 1998, I decided to see if we could create public schools that worked for low-income children.

I founded the University Prep charter schools in Detroit—and we learned how to graduate our low-income students of color and send them to college at the same rate as the most affluent suburban students.

But as anti-immigrant sentiment has been building, faith in democratic processes weakening, and a new nationalism emerging that would have branded my father and my Detroit students as “the other”, I felt the need to speak out.