About the Author

Ted Gross spent twenty years, from 1958-1978, as a teacher, chairman, dean and vice president at the City College of New York. He has written or edited sixteen books, some of them central to the issues described in STRIVER: DARK SYMPHONY: NEGRO LITERATURE IN AMERICA, THE LITERATURE OF AMERICAN JEWS, ACADEMIC TURMOIL: THE REALITY AND PROMISE OF OPEN EDUCATION, THE HEROIC IDEAL IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, and CHOICES, his first novel. At Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he was president from 1988-2002, he sought to resolve this struggle between academic standards and open access, a central concern that still pervades American education at all levels