Rafael Reif came to the United States from Venezuela in 1974 to complete a graduate degree at Stanford University. He believed he would finish his degree, and return back home. In fact, he was already packing his bags when, what he calls an “accident of history,” came along and changed the course of his life. Nearly 50 years later, he serves as the president of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Reif was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela. He is the youngest of four brothers born to immigrant parents who fled Eastern Europe right before the outbreak of the Second World War. In his 2012 inauguration speech as President of MIT, he described his family as “wealthy in integrity and principles and values, but poor in everything material.” His immigrant parents, who did not know the language or culture when they arrived in South America, initially worked “all sorts of menial jobs,” he has said. “To this day, each time I see a humble person in some menial job, I see a smart person like my parents who did not have the opportunity for an education,” he added.
At age nine, he moved to Caracas, where he remained until he moved to the United States to continue his studies. “Almost no one we knew even went to high school,” he said, “but somehow, my third brother, Isaac, decided that he wanted to. To this day I do not know what inspired him to go to high school. But he did.” His other brother Benjamin followed suit, and he attributes his own choice to go to high school to following the steps of his two role models. It would not be the last time that following his brothers’ footsteps led him to something great.
Reif enrolled in the Universidad Central de Venezuela, and later had to transfer to the Universidad de Carabobo in Valencia, Venezuela, when his university was shut down by the government because of student riots. He graduated in 1973 with a degree in electrical engineering.
His goal was to become a professor in a university in Venezuela. So he decided to get a PhD in the United States, like his brother Isaac had done. “I basically looked at California institutions, because growing up in Venezuela and not being ever outside Venezuela, I was scared to death about snow and winter,” he said in an interview. He applied to Stanford, and was accepted into their electrical engineering PhD program.
Reif grew up speaking a combination of Yiddish and Spanish at home, and spoke very little English when he began studying in Stanford in 1974. “I couldn’t understand anything of what the lecturer said in class. I wrote the sound that I heard, and then I would go home and read the sound, try to figure out what on earth he or she was talking about. I had no idea,” he explained.
Nonetheless, he completed his PhD, and stayed in Stanford for a year to do research. When the year was up, he began to tell everyone he was moving back to Venezuela in the fall, still intending to pursue a career in academia in his home country.
But while attending a conference, he bumped into a colleague who had left Stanford for MIT. He learned that MIT was looking for a faculty member in his field, and his colleague asked him if he would be interested. Another MIT professor began to recruit Reif, who insisted that he at least interview for the position. “I had seen pictures of the great Massachusetts Blizzard of 1978. I wanted to go back to the warmth of Venezuela, in every sense,” Reif explained.
His brother Benjamin was doing a PhD in MIT at the time, so Reif decided he could go visit him and interview at the same time. “So I came, I spent a day here, and I realized – “This is it!” he said. They made him an offer, and he accepted immediately. On his first day, Benjamin escorted him to his faculty office. Reif hasn’t left MIT since.
In an interview years later, Reif laughed when asked if MIT was always his end goal, saying: “MIT was a dream, not the end goal. As a college student in Venezuela, MIT faculty wrote some of my textbooks. We didn’t have money to buy textbooks, so I just borrowed them from the library, but they only had one or two for students and we could only borrow them for a day or two. So for me, taking a book written by someone at MIT was like touching the Bible for a religious person.” “I never imagined that I could end up in this place,” he added. One of Reif’s projects has been to create digital education tools so that people like himself, who are in Venezuela and all over the world, can directly access an MIT professor’s course.
From 1990 to 1999, Reif directed MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories. From 1999 to 2004, he served as associate head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science—MIT’s largest academic department. He then chaired the department before becoming provost in 2005. In 2012, he became the University’s 17th President.
Photo: https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/06/19/185564/the-calm-wise-voice-in-the-room/
When reflecting on his experiences and successes, “I think about my parents, I feel strongly how important it is to be humble and respectful to those who have not been lucky enough to have the same opportunities,” Reif said. Additionally, he thinks of the power of inspiration and of having a role model. “If it weren’t for my brother Isaac, I would not have been able to fulfill the dreams my parents had for us. But he was my role model. I did what he did. He inspired me and showed me the way. And he did the same for Benjamin – his older brother! And the three of us did what we did under the inspiration of our oldest brother, Elias, who helped support our parents and supported us morally and ethically in every way he could,” he added.
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Reif explained the importance of foreign students to the United States, calling America’s heterogeneity and ability to draw the best and brightest from all over the world the very strength its competitors envy most. Reflecting on his own experience in coming to America as a foreign student in 1974, Reif concluded: “I found a culture of openness, boldness, ingenuity and meritocracy — a culture which taught me that in coming to America, I had truly come home.”
Photo: Dominick Reuter