Passing the Torch: Supporting Tomorrow's Leaders

by William Goldman, Ruth Goldman, Chris Black (Primary Contributor)

Passing the Torch describes the remarkable achievements of public university students from marginalized populations who transcend oppression and poverty to become powerful leaders for social justice. Ruth and Bill Goldman drew upon their expertise in mental health and higher education to launch a scholarship program in the San Francisco Bay Area which provides assistance to people of color, recent immigrants and others from marginalized populations, in order to help them become leaders for social change. In addition to tuition assistance, they offer a package of wrap around benefits to replicate the support higher income students receive from their families. To date, every single participant graduated from college and more than seventy percent earned graduate degrees from prestigious universities. Ruth Goldman’s personal story as a Holocaust survivor and Bill’s as the grandson of Jewish refugees who fled discrimination inform the program and draw a parallel to the plight of modern day refugees and the disenfranchised seeking opportunity in the United States today. Passing the Torch shows how the New Leader Scholars overcome poverty and discrimination in order to acquire an education while sustaining their idealism as they strive to achieve greater equity and justice for all.

240 pages, Paperback

Published June 22, 2018

About the author

Goldman grew up in a Jewish family in Highland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College in 1952 and an MA degree at Columbia University in 1956.His brother was the late James Goldman, author and playwright.

William Goldman had published five novels and had three plays produced on Broadway before he began to write screenplays. Several of his novels he later used as the foundation for his screenplays.

In the 1980s he wrote a series of memoirs looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood (in one of these he famously remarked that "Nobody knows anything"). He then returned to writing novels. He then adapted his novel The Princess Bride to the screen, which marked his re-entry into screenwriting.

Goldman won two Academy Awards: an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men. He also won two Edgar Awards, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Motion Picture Screenplay: for Harper in 1967, and for Magic (adapted from his own 1976 novel) in 1979.

Goldman died in New York City on November 16, 2018, due to complications from colon cancer and pneumonia. He was eighty-seven years old.

Reviews

[Barbara Artson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Passing the Torch: Supporting Tomorrow's Leaders tells a story that reveals as much about the achievement of its authors, Bill and Ruth Goldman, with Chris Black, as it does about the breathtaking triumphs of the recipients of The New Leaders’ Scholarship Fund: "students from marginalized populations." The Goldman’s set out to locate scholars from this marginalized population to support and mentor those who would, in turn, become new leaders who could give back to their communities. It is their belief that “leaders who emerge from disenfranchised groups are often the only people…at reaching those at risk.” Perseverance is the trait that most typifies the New Leader scholars. There are many, if not all, that deserve mention. There’s Veronica, the child of undocumented immigrants from Mexico, and Larry, a tenacious African-American man from Oakland, and Sederic, and Gabby and many more too numerous to mention.
Both Ruth -- a Psychology Professor Emerita at San Francisco State University and Bill, a psychiatrist, and founder and president of the National Council of Community Mental Health Centers, and medical director of United Behavioral Health, among his many other roles, have devoted their lives to serving and mentoring others. Their fund is the final chapter in their lifelong pursuit of social justice dating back to their college days, and before. Passing the Torch is a stunning testimony, not only to their achievement, but to the many scholars who worked and stumbled and fought and ultimately succeeded in their quest to change their lives and the lives of others.