The Who2 Blog

Arne Duncan, the Hoop-Shooting Secretary of Education

Here’s a great 10-minute interview with Arne Duncan, the new Secretary of Education-to-be. (Courtesy of the education site Edutopia.)

Duncan’s a fascinating guy. His basketball history has gotten quite a bit of coverage, and rightfully so: After starring at Harvard, he went to Australia and played pro ball from 1987-91.

(It’s just a bit reminiscent of Alan Greenspan running off to play saxophone in a jazz band for a year before settling down to a life of finance. Let’s hope the Duncan era turns out better than the Greenspan era did in the end.)

While he was sowing his wild oats in Australia, Duncan met his future wife, Karen, and brought her back to the States with him in 1992. So now we’ve got a former inner-city Chicago kid, Harvard grad, pro hoops player, then chief of Chicago Public Schools, with an Australian wife, who at age 44 is going to be Secretary of Education for the country’s first black president.

Things move fast these days.

Related Biographies

Share this: