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James Lynch ’81
real estate and banking attorney, James Lynch ’81 is an Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College in the Finance and Business Management program. James has served as a consultant to numerous non-profit housing and community groups; his expertise is in corporate and personal finance, micro loans, and first time home buying. This dynamic legal eagle was born in Brooklyn, and his family moved to Cambria Heights, Queens when he was seven. “Cambria Heights was a fantastic neighborhood. People cared about their neighbors. Really, people would leave their back doors open, sit in the back yard, watch television and kibitz with their neighbors,” he recalled. “It was a middle class, working neighborhood where hard work was prized, and which was culturally and ethnically diverse.” James came to BFS as a 7th grader. “My mother, who was an educator, was focused on my receiving a values-based education which focused on the dignity and self-worth of the individual.” The culture at BFS was a shock to him at first, he now admits. “The amount of freedom that the students had was simply not considered in my old school. But I loved the change. BFS represented a kind of mental and spiritual freedom that I didn’t have. The Quaker focus on the inner light was really an extension of the beliefs that my family was practicing already.”
Teachers had a major impact on the young James. “Martin Moore saved me as a student and changed my future forever,” he recounted of one of his favorite BFS teachers. “He made me realize that no matter how many challenges I have I can make it so long as I apply myself. That advice was crucial when I was eventually diagnosed as having dyslexia.” Of his singing with the Boston Orchestra in the 1980s as part of an international choir, he thanks Marjory Duncalfe and Valerie Lindquist: “Both were important for my confidence as a professional singer.” James also credited Martin Norregaard and Richard Begelman for instilling in him a love of literature. Don Knies, Ron Patterson, and his former teacher who is now head of school Larry Weiss, continue to influence him every day. Lastly there was yet an earlier head of school, Stuart Smith, who “gave me a philosophy which I apply to this very day in every endeavor. He said, and I paraphrase him, ‘We don’t educate students for the way the world is but for the way the world can be.’ – that is how I live my life and it is a subtext to everything I do.” After BFS, James attended Brown University, earning his degree in Religious Studies, a passion he attributes directly to his experiences at BFS. His college admissions essays reflected his belief that, “While many people thought that societal problems could be separated into distinct categories, the essential question was, how are we as human
beings relating to one another? BFS influenced my entire experience while I was at Brown.” During his freshman year he cofounded a coed interracial fraternity, Delta Psi, after an attack on students of color occurred on campus. His continued humanitarian work eventually led to his decision to become an attorney. “I founded an organization dedicated to housing homeless women and children,” he said. “During my work I was surprised when several city and state officials asked for what amounted to little more than kickbacks. These requests strengthened my resolve, and my decision to go to law school. I realized that by learning the law I could develop skills that could be of value to those who were unable to adequately protect themselves.” James pursued his legal studies at SUNY Buffalo, focusing on Critical Legal Studies, which he described as “a philosophical approach which states that the law is not necessarily fair and balanced, but rather it is heavily influenced by the economics, business and sociopolitical realities in which laws arise.” Soon James was a novice attorney for a private practice, while also serving on the board of New York City-based Eviction Intervention Services, where he focused on the displacement of elderly residents of Eastern European descent. Not long after 9/11 he formed his own practice, focused on providing low- and moderate-income clients with legal representation. At Brooklyn College today, James teaches business law, ethics, crisis management, and, not surprisingly, spirituality and happiness in the workplace. When he’s not busy working, James is busy “working,” he quipped. “I have utilized my legal skills, when time permits, to advising the victims of the sub-prime lending scandal and working with building organizers to thwart hostile takeovers. Recently I worked with lawyers involved in obtaining social justice for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. I have also helped found a company dedicated to ensuring that doctors can maintain their individual and local practices.” His advice to the current generation of BFS students? “First, as Stuart Smith told me, BFS is not educating you for the way the world is, but for the way the world can be. Second – if you remember nothing else – use the concept and interaction with the inner light in every individual as a focus in your daily experience to cherish every encounter that you have. Third, the silence that you learned about while at BFS can be your secret room of respite that can carry you through life’s inevitable storms of strife and uncertainty.” – Jeffrey Stanley
SPRING 2013 Brooklyn Friends School Newsletter 7