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JANUARY 2005

Eugene Lang in his office with the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Corporate Contributions
to Education

Interview with
Eugene Lang


By Nazneen Malik

“Everything that happens in life that is worth noting seems to be a coincidence,” muses Eugene Lang, prominent businessman, and founder of the I Have A Dream Foundation (IHAD). Indeed, fortune has favored the 85 year-old philanthropist but one must recognize that his choices, ambitions, and persistent dedication to education have played a significant role in shaping his life’s trajectory.

“I live very intensively,” states Lang, “and I couldn’t live otherwise. I’m here at 7:30 in the morning, six days a week.” His Fifth Avenue office at the Eugene Lang Foundation has the warmth and familiarity of use. On one side stands a desk, smothered in papers—a speech is being written. The walls are decorated with photographs, cataloging the important and memorable moments of his life. There is a picture of Albert Einstein with a much younger version of himself sitting below the framed Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to him by President Clinton.

The story of Lang’s educational development and subsequent philanthropic tendencies begins with a high school education from Townsend Harris, and a dishwashing job at a local restaurant. Back then, students at the high school completed a four-year education in three years, were taught by college professors and assured a free education at City College. Lang was content. What would be his future alma mater, Swarthmore College, was not even a possibility until a man by the name of George Jackson entered the scene when Lang was 14. The two met by chance, when the waiter who normally served Jackson, an antique shop owner and regular customer, was indisposed and replaced by Lang. It was Jackson who introduced Lang to Swarthmore and pushed the young man to apply. The result was admission with a full scholarship.

As a freshman at Swarthmore, Lang volunteered to be a club leader at the Friends Neighborhood Guild, a settlement house in the slums of Philadelphia. “I would come in on Monday evenings,” he says, “the program involved 13 to 14 kids, my age, all African American and I had to think of things that would keep them interested.” A dogfish dissection in his Biology class gave him an idea; but what he thought would be an interesting experiment for his kids at the Guild, turned out to have a far greater impact than he had ever imagined. About five years later, Lang, who by then had graduated with an Economics degree, received a letter from one of the students expressing how the dogfish experiment had made him re-evaluate his life and return to school with the goal of becoming a doctor. In fact, he wrote the letter after gaining admission to a university as a pre-med student. “I can never forget that,” says Lang with a brief pause, “it was a defining experience in my life.”

Since then, Lang has been characterized by Forbes magazine as “the quintessential entrepreneur,” and has fervently supported small business interests. He has donated millions, but perhaps one of his greatest contributions to education is IHAD. During a commencement speech at PS121, Lang promised a college scholarship to a group of 61 students provided they graduate from high school. Learning that over 75 percent of students would most likely drop-out, Lang realized that “the big thing that I had promised them was not the scholarship but figuring out some way to keep them in school.” As the program developed over four years, he found that all of the students had remained in school. In June 1985, the time had come to go public. “All over the country responses came,” says Lang, “I’ve never seen anything like it.” What had begun as a single promise quickly became a national enterprise, prompting Lang to organize a foundation to secure its long-term needs.

Recently, Lang has developed two, six-year internship programs in conjunction with the Museum of Natural History and New York Presbyterian Hospital for aspiring scientists and medical professionals in the seventh grade. “I have realized,” says Lang with undeniable sincerity “nobody has enough money to be able to pay for the sense of reward you feel when you see opportunities that you’re not even conscious of giving these kids suddenly blossom into young people who are really making their mark in this world.”#

 

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