Bringing His World to Furman: Don Gordon’s Journey to The Riley Institute

Early roots

Those passions trace back to Gordon’s childhood in Jim Crow Mississippi. His home life was rich and nurturing, standing in stark contrast to his wider surroundings in the deep South. His earliest years were spent with his mother, a schoolteacher, and his aunt, a principal who also ran a dairy farm, while his father was fighting in the Pacific Theater in WWII.

From early on, it was clear to Gordon that his family was different, both in terms of their education and their mindset. “My mother, who had a master’s degree, and my aunt, who had a Ph.D., were among the less than one-tenth of one percent of Mississippi women with that level of education,” he said. “I came out of a family, which on my mother’s side, never owned slaves. They were relatively well-educated people from professional backgrounds, so there was always an anti-slave context and the notion that people should treat everybody equally.”

Of course, what Gordon was taught at home was a far cry from what he observed in the world around him. “Mississippi was, well, Mississippi,” he explained. “It had about 2.1 million people, half of them African Americans, and it was incredibly segregated. Everything—water fountains, schools, movie theaters—everything was segregated.”

In spite of—or perhaps because of—the oppressive culture bred through ignorance and bigotry, Gordon’s mother and aunt poured themselves into their work as educators. Gordon recalls watching his aunt strive to uplift her pupils within the classroom and by exposing them to the world beyond their four walls.

“She took these extraordinarily poor kids and used phonics to move the needle for them in terms of reading abilities. She did field trips with them, so that for the first time in their lives, they were taken out of Lowndes County and went to places like Jackson.”

Eventually, though, the tensions between Gordon’s family and their wider community became too great to bear, and they left Mississippi for Florida, seeking better prospects and less hostility. But the experiences of his early years—seeing the promise of public education and the violence of racism and inequality play out in everyday life—etched themselves into his thinking. Education, opportunity, inclusion: these would be the anchors of his career.

Choosing Furman

Precocious from the start, Gordon skipped two grades, started college at 16, and earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Florida at an unusually young age. His specialty? Initially, state and local politics, and then African politics, fueled in part by a need to trace back and grapple with what he’d witnessed as a boy in Mississippi.

“One of the reasons I went into African politics, I think, were those burned-in memories of incredible injustices that were done against African Americans,” he said.

Among his memories was watching a parade in Columbus, Mississippi, that a Black high school band attempted to participate in. He watched in shock as policemen beat the young students with heavy night sticks and called them racist names. Years later, his studies would connect him back to these terrible moments from his past.

Degree in hand, it was only natural that Gordon would follow in the footsteps of the educators who had raised him by becoming a teaching professor. Job offers rolled in—11 in all—but Furman University quickly rose to the top, thanks to Gordon Blackwell.

At the time, Blackwell ’32 was serving as the eleventh president of Furman University, having previously served as president of Florida State University, where he had made a deep impression on Don Gordon. Not only had Blackwell presided over the early years of FSU’s integration, but he was the lone university president in Florida to stand up against a legislative committee bent on rooting out “communists” from campuses.

When Gordon came across Blackwell during his campus visit to Furman, he knew Greenville was where he wanted to be. “I just thought, I don’t care how much they’re going to pay,” he said. “I’m going to be where he is.”

So at just 26 years old, Don arrived at Furman, embarking on what became a 37-year teaching career as a faculty member in the Department of Political Science (now Department of Politics and International Affairs) before he devoted all his time to serving as the executive director of The Riley Institute (Gordon retired from Furman with a total of 56 years of service.)

“I’m sure I was as horrible a teacher at Furman at 26,” Gordon joked. But his storied career reveals that Gordon carried a vision for what teaching—and learning—could be.

Bringing the world to Furman

Dr. Gordon’s specialty in African politics expanded the department’s offerings, but soon he was providing students the opportunity to learn beyond the classroom, leading student trips to the state house, Washington, D.C., and abroad to Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Estwani, Egypt, and parts of the Middle East. The experiences were transformative, but not equally accessible to all students at the time.

“I soon became aware that, while some kids were able to go on these trips because they came from affluent backgrounds, the huge majority of Furman kids could not participate in those programs because they didn’t have the money,” Gordon said. “As somebody that came from a modest background, that really affected me.”

That recognition sparked a question: What if the world could be brought to Furman somehow? What if students and community members who couldn’t afford to travel could still learn from international leaders, top thinkers, and national policymakers—right on their own campus?

“I wanted to explode the interactions between students and the broader learning environment,” Gordon explained. You can read books, and you can hear lectures. But if you have experiences beyond that—experiences that you can link your books and lectures to—then the educational outcomes are so much stronger.”

Gordon and colleagues began to run with the idea, talking with people across the university, Furman alumni, members of the broader community. Eventually, with then-President David Shi’s help, the idea to create an institute was born, and for Gordon, it was clear who should stand at the center of it.

A creation in Richard Riley’s image

On Gordon’s many trips to the South Carolina statehouse in the 1970s, one person in particular stood out to him: then-state senator Richard W. Riley. A 1954 Furman graduate, Riley’s star was continuing to rise as ideas for an institute at his alma mater were beginning to form. Riley had served two terms as governor of South Carolina, enjoying a great deal of popular support, especially for his education reforms. In 1993, Riley was tapped by President Bill Clinton to head up the U.S. Department of Education.

What struck Gordon about Riley was less his celebrity, and more his integrity, willingness and demonstrated skill working across the aisle to get things done, commitment to public service, and proven ability to move South Carolina forward. The fact that Riley had been a political science major at Furman didn’t hurt either.

When Gordon approached Riley with the idea of the institute in his name, he made one central point clear: “Whatever we wanted to do had to be nonpartisan, because it just appeared to me that the only way to bring people together and to do the kinds of things we wanted to do and make real progress on required taking the nonpartisan way. And Dick really loved that.”

With Secretary Riley on board and the support of then-Furman President David Shi, The Riley Institute launched in 1999. Its first program—a residency with former Greenville mayor Max Heller, a Holocaust refugee and Furman friend—signaled what was to come: programs built around lived experience, principled leadership, and learning beyond the classroom.

Finding strength in difference

The institute’s reach grew rapidly. A $1 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation supported a landmark study on public education in South Carolina, drawing insight from more than 1,000 stakeholders across the state. The study set the institute on the path of focusing on public education as one of its core issues—an apt topic given the institute’s namesake and Gordon’s early influences.

Public programming also flourished. Speakers of national and international renown—including Bill Clinton, Chuck Todd, Madeleine Albright, Newt Gingrich, and Al Gore—came to Furman’s small campus in Upstate South Carolina to share ideas and engage with students and community members. Gordon credits his former Deputy Director Jacki Martin with much of the institute’s growth and expanded reach across the state.

“Jacki took The Riley Institute from its more startup, fledgling existence to its mature phase,” says Gordon. “Her emphasis on quality, precision, and polish really elevated our reputation across the state as a premiere convenor.”

Meanwhile, Gordon’s conviction that communities thrive when all voices are heard found expression in the Diversity Leaders Initiative (DLI). Launched in 2003 with help from then-Furman Vice-President for Enrollment Benny Walker,  Michelin executive Calder Ehrmann, and facilitator Juan Johnson, DLI brought leaders together from across sectors and demographic differences to practice inclusive leadership. Its premise was simple but profound: Organizations—and communities—are stronger and better able to meet their goals when they leverage the talents and perspectives of all their members.

Full Circle

Now, with his retirement almost complete, as he still works with the institute’s DLI Riley Fellows program, Gordon’s legacy is unmistakable: an institute grounded in education, widened by access to the world, and strengthened by diversity.

Those three passions trace directly back to Mississippi, where a young boy watched his mother and aunt teach poor children to read, where he saw field trips expand horizons, and where he learned firsthand how much was lost when voices were excluded.

These experiences became the building blocks of a life’s work: an institute that ensures future generations will have the tools, knowledge, and community to imagine—and build—something better.