The following article is from Rosey Grier's All American Heroes: Today's
Multcultural Success Stories, Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier.

"Success is defined by one’s ability to tell the difference between what’s right and wrong, and to strive as best as humanly possible to do what’s right. To me, success and goodness are synonymous."
                                — Dinesh D'Souza

When seventeen-year-old Dinesh D'Souza left India and landed in America, he looked around and saw no surprises. The deserts and the mountains, the cities and the skyscrapers, the ghettos and the glamour all looked familiar. After all, he had spent many hot Bombay afternoons seeing America at the movies, as Rocky, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, Bonnie and Clyde, and National Lampoon’s Animal House flickered across the screen.

Yet surprises and unexpected turns are par for the course for D'Souza, a complexly adventuresome fellow who believes in keeping an open mind to all possibilities.

As a child in India, he never dreamed he would end up marrying and settling in the United States, working in the White House as a domestic policy analyst, creating a flurry of controversy with his ideas, or, for that matter, becoming known as a high-brow intellectual who also manages to be a down-to-earth guy.

But little that he or anyone else does happens by pure chance, D'Souza believes. "The thoughts in our minds are the rudders for the things we do," he said.

Thinking is what D'Souza does, mostly—and he gets paid for it. As an author and political activist, D'Souza makes his living pondering questions such as: "How do we create an educational system that has equal rules for everyone? How do we get rid of poverty without punishing the privileged? How do we give everyone a fair shake?"

Growing up in the world’s largest democracy, D'Souza was inspired by "good books and good people," he said. "I had the benefit of a strong and cohesive family, and have also been fortunate to have good teachers. I had a happy childhood."

While he liked playing field hockey, cricket, badminton, and Indian games, he also studied English and Hindustani (the main language in India) at a tough, traditional Catholic Jesuit school. There he developed a fascination with Western and Eastern literature.

"Books give you a window into experiences that are often deeper than the ones we have in everyday life," he explained.

His parents were practical people, but young D'Souza dreamed of adventure and exploring new worlds. So when he wasn't playing sports, he dived into "wild and fantastic fairy tales and adventure stories. "

His American adventure began in a small-town Arizona high school; with the help of funds from the Rotary Club, he participated in a one-year exchange program. Back then, he was uncertain about his career plans, his interests, his whole future.

So even when he made the decision to stay in America after high school graduation, D'Souza still faced a lot of tough questions and a dubious future. "It was quite difficult for me to figure out how I would make ends meet to stay in this country to study and work," he recalled. Short on money, he soon discovered "the process of applying to college was both a trying and a difficult one."

And, back in India, his family was having mixed feelings too.

"Believe it or not, my dad and mom felt that they would like to see more of me," he said with a gentle laugh. But they also realized that their son—whose first name means "God of the Sun"—would be exposed to opportunities in America that he would never have in India.

So in 1979, he headed off to New Hampshire to major in English at Dartmouth College. There, he soon began writing for the campus newspaper, working in the international students' association, joining an energy conservation committee, and eventually, helping to start the Dartmouth Review, a politically conservative magazine that became nationally notorious for attacking the college’s administration and taking controversial stands on minority issues.

But in his defense, D'Souza is quick to mention that the college administration regarded him as a "moderating and constructive" influence on the magazine.

Motivated by what he describes as "an interest and an ability to explore the world of ideas, and attempt to relate it to the world of action," D'Souza’s policy judgments and his writings—including four books and numerous newspaper articles—aim to "excavate the world of scholarship and relate it to practical questions of what should be done."

Among the issues D'Souza said he regularly grapples with: "How should we address the problems of poverty or crime or declining educational standards?"

He draws his inspiration from Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher. "By all human standards," D'Souza said, "Socrates was a kind of disgrace. He was poor. He was ugly. He was virtually homeless. He was unemployed." But, D'Souza said, "he understood the virtue of friendship and of conversation."

By most people’s standards, D'Souza has made a success of himself very young in life. At age 26, he was advising President Reagan on issues such as civil rights, constitutional questions, and AIDS. Before that, he was managing editor of the magazine Policy Review, and before that, editor of Crisis Magazine, a Catholic monthly publication of news and opinion.

But he is probably best known as the author of Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. Published in 1991, the book rocketed D'Souza to literary stardom. More than three dozen publications, including the prestigious The New York Times Book Review, reviewed or wrote articles about his book.

"It is a brisk, hard-hitting, sometimes strident journalistic tour through the political land mines imbedded these days in higher education," The Wall Street Journal wrote.

Business Week, in its review, said, "Many universities don't want to talk about the issues raised by affirmative action, curriculum revisions, special studies, and other efforts to redress past social injustices. But a most unlikely self-appointed substitute has stepped forward to do so."

Business Week characterized D'Souza "as a sort of Indian William F. Buckley, Jr.," because of his Catholicism, Ivy League background, courtly manner, and mischievous wit.

Indeed, one of the consequences of becoming a best-selling author was that suddenly D'Souza was much in demand to discuss his book. In a twenty-city media tour, he appeared on network talk shows and news programs such as Face the Nation, This Week with David Brinkley, Good Morning America, and Nightline.

He also won fans on college campuses; in a space of nine months, he gave more than sixty lectures, often speaking without notes, on the issues that prompted him to write Illiberal Education.

Though his ideas are weighty, D'Souza, ever the down-to-earth fellow, delivers them with an engaging ease. Here’s how one reviewer described D'Souza’s appearance at Centre College, a liberal arts school in Danville, Kentucky:

"At the podium Dinesh D'Souza looks disarmingly genuine—too young for subterfuge, and too friendly. He woos the crowd openly with an ingratiating joke: 'When I got to Centre College earlier today I asked one of the students whether the college has a reputation for being very activist, and I was told that, no—Centre is known for being a hotbed of rest.' He is rewarded with a big laugh."

Already at work on a second book that examines the issues of race relations and human rights from a global perspective, D'Souza, now 32, is decidedly matter of fact when he discusses his past successes—or his future.

He does not, he said, "think in terms of 'making it.' I don't think there is a threshold that separates those who have 'made it' from those who have not."

If anything, he defines making it "as the continuous striving for knowledge. The search is always motivated by the hope of finding something, but even when you think you've found it, you still have to be open to the possibility that you're mistaken. Maybe part of making it is the ability to sit back and ask yourself, 'Where is my life going?' and not to be enslaved by one’s circumstances to such a degree that you can never even ask the question or alter the circumstances."

D'Souza, highly praised and sharply criticized, seems to appreciate the attention he garners—even when it’s the negative kind. He’s been confronted with claims that he’s glib, but more biting and more common are the accusations that label him an enemy of multiculturalism because, while he clearly defends equal opportunity for minorities, he is also against affirmative action policies.

At the same time, the criticism bothers him: "All criticism should bother you in the sense that it does make you ask whether you are mistaken or misunderstood, and if so, why."

It’s how a person reacts to his critics that counts, he said. "You might respond to criticism by admitting your mistake. You might respond to it by saying 'Look, maybe I didn't express myself well.' You might respond to it by saying 'I don't agree with you, but that doesn't make me a bad guy.'"

Even though D'Souza’s life journey has taken him so far in such a short time, he thinks that kids "should not try to grow up too fast. We spend most of our time as adults, so one should not be in too much of a hurry.'"

And he offers these insights to young people. First, recognize and take advantage of the opportunities America offers. Equally important, he said, everyone should "make one good friend and read one good book that is going to change their lives."

D'Souza has jumped many hurdles and he has jumped them both far and high, thanks in part to influences that have guided his life. "A believing Catholic but a poorly practicing one," D'Souza said religious faith is vital to achievement. He also believes a supportive family and friends are "indispensable," as is "a belief in one’s own potential for good."

Still, all three—faith, support, and self-confidence—can be taken too far, and beliefs alone cannot make you a good person. "Good deeds," he said, "are not the function of philosophy but of habits, You are honest not because you have reflected on the moral necessity of honesty, but because you have been taught to be honest and you are used to saying what happened and what didn't happen."

It took a great deal of reflection and twelve years of searching for answers before D'Souza decided to become an American citizen. Feeling suspended between the American and Indian cultures, he procrastinated. And while he procrastinated, he considered what being an American citizen meant, what America’s founding principles stand for, and "what place American society makes for immigrants and outsiders."

Given all that, he wondered, was he really at home here?

"I ultimately concluded that I was," said D'Souza, who on October 15, 1990, took his oath of citizenship.

And while D'Souza the intellectual knows a lot about American literature, government, and history, D'Souza the adventurer has his eye on worlds he’s yet to explore.

"I don't know enough about art and music," he said. "I'd like to know more about the blues, sculpture, and architecture." But most especially, he wants "to spend more time seeing the country in the way that it differs, and yet in the way that it’s held together."