We are delighted John O’Keefe earned a Nobel Prize for a discovery about how the human brain works. What especially caught our eye is that the Bronx-born neuroscientist is a product of two New York schools.
The first is Regis HS. This is an all-scholarship, all-boys Jesuit high school that opened its doors in 1914 after a grant from its wealthy foundress.
Today, Regis serves a diverse student body — 40 percent are children of immigrants, and the boys represent almost every national background, from Guatemalan to Nigerian.
The other is the City College of New York. O’Keefe graduated in 1963 — when it was known as “the poor man’s Harvard” and before it adopted the disastrous open-admissions policy (a policy thankfully reversed, against great political pressure, during Matthew Goldsten’s tenure as chancellor of the City University of New York).
O’Keefe’s Nobel is a testament not only to his own brilliance and hard work, but to the schools in his life that set high standards and aimed to expand opportunity.
If we want more Dr. O’Keefes, we need to encourage the schools of excellence that produce them — whether they be Catholic high schools like Regis or city colleges like CCNY.