Mourning Swearer (July 2020)

July 23, 2020

Dear Alan,

I’m writing you this letter to help you process your experience at Brown - and to remember that amidst the loss you feel after being pushed out of your dream job at Brown, that there are certain things that nobody can every take away from you. Your time at Brown mattered … to you and to others … despite the loss you still feel.

Gratitude for the opportunity

I had no idea what to expect when I joined Brown in the summer of 2007. My decision felt right because it was connected to several criteria I’d set for my next job: I wanted to work in the arena of social impact, I wanted to leverage my business and entrepreneurial experience, and I was curious about teaching. But I was also nervous about entering the arena of higher ed because I didn’t think I belonged there. I did not particularly enjoy school for most of my education - and I didn’t feel I had any skills to offer.

Soon after arriving, I realized that I’d made the best professional decision of my life. I was learning about innovative approaches to social change in many different contexts from entrepreneurial students, my business and leadership expertise was helping many students progress in their lives and careers, and (when I finally the classroom after five years) it turned out that I was actually a pretty good teacher … maybe a very good teacher.

As I prepared to write this letter, I re-read some of the letters I received from grateful students when I left Brown in December 2017 and found this:

I am incredibly proud that my work made such a difference in the lives of so many students - and more importantly, I feel lucky to have found my way to Brown and teaching which unleashed a previously hidden talent that could have such an important impact in my students’ lives and create so much meaning in my own life.

I will always be grateful for the opportunity to work at Brown’s Swearer Center - for the people who inspired me, taught me, and for the opportunities this experience brought into my life. There are countless people who played an important role in my journey, my learning, and my accomplishments at Brown - but I want to appreciate the impact they made to my learning, my impact, and my life:

Roger Nozaki is the best boss I’ve ever head. He guided me with his steady, strategic thinking; he demanded excellence in my work by demonstrating the same in his own; he protected me from the suffocating bureaucracy of the university; and he believed in our work and encouraged me to forge new paths
I will always be grateful to the two students who interviewed me, Kalie Gold and Jen Hustwitt, who worked against all odds to organize bringing Brown’s women’s rugby team to Uganda where their very presences inspired women in that country to see themselves differently - as capable, competitive athletes that deserved to compete against international teams. No doubt, their story convinced me that students as innovators, leaders, and entrepreneurs would be a powerful force of change in the world - and a unique learning opportunity for students.
My work partner, Lizzie Pollock, was the perfect complement to my work style and my best talents. We collaborated beautifully to explore opportunities to extend our work in new and innovative ways; she brought systems, structure and rigor to the visionary ideas I offered; and she introduced discipline to our planning and impact measurement that drove us to be the best we could be and became a model for excellence that our colleagues emulated in their own work. And her leadership was guided by empathy, caring, and compassion - which was appreciated by every person she ever interacted with.
I will always be grateful for the opportunity to work beside and learn from Rabbi Alan Flam. He was the moral compass for our Center - and taught me how to respect, listen, and learn from others. He is a mensch, my teacher, my friend.
Professor Emeritus Barrett Hazeltine is, without a doubt, the most thoughtful and caring teacher I have ever witnessed. I will always remember how he would walk through a crowded lecture hall to shake the hand of a student for offering their perspective during a conversation. I sat in his classroom for three years watching him teach - and try every day to live up to the respect he showed to his students and the invitation he offered that allowed his students to learn what was meaningful to themselves - rather than accept a set of ideas from an authority.
And finally, to my dear friend Bill Allen. I would never have had the courage to step into the classroom if you hadn’t agreed to partner with me in redeveloping the Social Entrepreneurship class. It has been an honor to teach with you and to develop a friendship that has enriched my life in so many ways. Thanks you, my friend.

Brown turned out to be my dream job - and I remember thinking on many occasions about how lucky I felt to be there - and how I looked forward to finishing my career teaching there.

How one man changed everything

In the summer of 2015, our Center embarked on a search to find a new director after Roger took a job in the Obama administration. Brown’s new President had elevated the importance of our work within her strategy so the search for our director was a big deal. The search committee set its sights on a national scholar in Engaged Scholarship that would move our work from the edges of the curriculum toward a more strategic role in student learning and growth.

We interviewed several candidates who seemed to be genuinely interested and excited by the opportunity to join our work - and to help our team bring our work to new levels of impact and visibility - on campus, in the community, and across higher education. But the committee selected MJ, who asked Lizzie and me during his interview (on July 30, 2015) why social innovation belonged in a center for community engagement. He was signalling then that if he got the job, that he intended to radically change our work.

It was clear from the very first day that he was threatened by me - he so much as said so. I was not allowed to speak to people without him present; he began shifting resources away from projects that we had built to other priorities he had established; and he undermined me and my reputation in the Center, on campus, and in the community. I found myself constantly on my heels - and understood that he intended to fully dismantle everything I had built.

I feel I did everything I could to make it work … maybe not everything … I did not believe that the work he was guiding the Center toward would matter to the students we reached. He was much more interested in how many students we served and not interested in whether those students benefited from their engagement with us / our work. The Center was shifting its emphasis from people and community to programs and national reputation.

Deciding to leave what gut wrenching and hurt deeply. MJ stole my dream job to build his empire and his reputation so he could get what he wanted … his dream job of fame and stature as a university president. So I left. And when I left, I felt defeated … by him … and devastated at the loss of connection to the community of colleagues, students, alumni, and others that had enriched my life for nearly 10 years. To make matters worse, within two weeks of me leaving, all evidence of my time at Brown had been erased - our website erased, programs canceled, and donor funds redirected.

I sorely miss the steady stream of students who arrived at my door - each one with their own story, their own questions, and their own gifts. Goodbye Swearer, I will miss you, but never forget you.

What MJ can never take away from me

While MJ pulled my dream job out from under my feet, he can never take away what I am most proud of - the relationships I forged and the imprint of my work in the lives of my students:

When I left Brown, I received a beautiful collage of video messages from students who wanted me to know that I mattered to them - and a pile of letters that expressed their gratitude for my impact in their Brown experience and in their lives. I hadn’t looked at either of these since I left but dug them out before writing this letter - and was reminded that I made a difference in their lives. I don’t have as many interactions with students now that I’ve left Brown - but occasionally have an opportunity to reconnect with them … and universally hear and feel their admiration and gratitude for the impact I had in their lives. What a gift.
I feel proud of the confidence that donors showed in me and my work when they made significant contributions that were earmarked to programs we imagined, to build on the success of pilot programs with gifts to realize the full vision of what we were building, and permanent endowments to assure that the Center could continue its support of learning and growth for students with our work. I am still in touch with some of these donors who have expressed their gratitude for the partnership we developed.
I have come to realize that I built a reputation for building the field of social innovation education, for my commitment to students, and for the impact that my work had in their lives and in the communities where they work(ed). I see this reputation reflected in my interaction with former colleagues at Brown, or when I’m contacted by faculty at colleges across the country and around the world who seek my advice to guide their own work.
And I feel my value from colleagues at Brown who have been supportive of my recent efforts to expand my teaching at Brown. They recognize that more of me at Brown will be good for students … and good for the University.

While I can never regain what I’ve lost - I will always remember the impact that I had when I was there. And build on that success as I move forward toward new and exciting challenges.

Love,

Alan