From human rights advocacy to college basketball coach, David Danzig ’88 is always working to make a difference.

Whether standing up for human rights or pacing the sidelines as a college basketball head coach, David Danzig ’88 has sought to put points on the board in service of both changing public policy and winning games.

For more than 25 years, Danzig has leapt between two seemingly different careers. One working for prominent human rights organizations and the other coaching basketball in Europe and the United States. Today, the former Sidwell Friends point guard coaches the Pratt Institute men’s basketball team. For someone imbued with a passion for social responsibility and justice, the roles are not as different as they seem.

In 2001, Danzig was working with the advocacy group Human Rights First when the September 11 terrorist attacks rocked the nation. Suddenly, Danzig found himself smack in the middle of a years-long political debate over what constituted torture, its efficacy, and morality. What he found was that political support for what some officials described as “taking the gloves off” to prevent another terrorist attack—even torture—was rooted in popular culture. As part of his role at Human Rights First, Danzig traveled to West Point Military Academy to talk with cadets about the value of human rights and the immorality and inefficacy of torture. “Instead of it being a policy discussion divorced from reality, these were students who were going to become soldiers, who potentially could face a situation where they would genuinely have to decide, ‘How am I going to treat a detainee?’” he says. “They would say without blinking, ‘I’m going to go Jack Bauer on them if it is going to save the lives of my fellow soldiers.’”

Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, was the fictional Counter Terrorist Unit agent in the Fox television show 24, which first aired less than two months after the September 11 attacks. The show grabbed the country’s attention as Bauer worked hour by hour over the course of a day to stop bad guys from killing millions of Americans. On 24, torture worked and the ends—saving innocent lives—justified the means.

So Danzig flew to Hollywood to meet with the show’s writers, producers, and actors, including Sutherland, to explain the show’s impact in the real world and to provide some perspective about the use of torture. To Danzig’s surprise, the show’s executives had no idea of how 24 was being received, especially within the military. “They were stunned but also open to the idea of including different storylines,” Danzig says.

He subsequently brought interrogators and West Point’s commandant to the set of 24 to explain to showrunners that torture does not actually work. As a result, 24 began including more nuanced storylines. Sutherland condemned the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and said that torture did not work. Most importantly, Human Rights First produced a free video for the military in which one of 24’s producers told soldiers that life should not imitate art—that is, do not follow Jack Bauer’s lead.  

But back to basketball. Before Danzig dove into a career advocating for human rights, his real passion was shooting hoops. If he was not at school or doing homework, he was in the gym practicing free throws and playing pick-up games.

From 7th grade through his senior year in high school, Danzig was on the basketball team at Sidwell Friends. During high school, Danzig played point guard on a team stacked with Division I talent and coached by Eddie Saah, a legend in Washington’s competitive basketball circles.

On the court, Saah could be demanding and tough. Danzig loved it.

The best coaches leave their players with a deep desire to play the sport even more.David danzig '88 “The best coaches leave their players with a deep desire to play the sport even more,” Danzig says. “That was definitely true for me. He sparked in me a real enthusiasm for the game.”

Saah in turn valued Danzig because Danzig had an acute understanding of what shots to take and which ones not to take.

Following graduation from Sidwell Friends, Danzig played basketball for two years at Haverford College. He can tell you about every point he scored. “I only scored 67 points so it would not take too long,” he jokes. 

After working at Human Rights First for more than a decade, Danzig and basketball would find each other once again—this time in Istanbul, Turkey. 

In 2011, Danzig and his wife, Marie, were living in Rome, where Marie was working at the time. They traveled to Istanbul for the weekend, and Danzig saw former NBA star Allen Iverson, who had joined a Turkish basketball team, hit the court. At the game, Danzig also spotted a former Sidwell Friends teammate, John Patrick ’87, who was coaching Iverson’s opponents, a high-level German team.

Patrick invited Danzig to visit him in Germany, where Danzig confessed that he would love to coach basketball. Patrick hired him as an assistant. “I had never experienced basketball at this level, and so I was doing everything I could to help him out and would literally write down everything that he would say,” Danzig says. “At my first meeting in Germany as an assistant coach, I had three pens and a big notebook. The meeting lasted three minutes. I was stunned. It’s just very focused.”

There’s no navel-gazing in sport.

Danzig later went to work for another German team and, after returning to the United States, he coached at Saint Peters, a Division 1 school, in Jersey City, New Jersey.

But college basketball coaching means constant travel and time, and with a young family, Danzig needed more balance. That’s when he joined the Open Society Foundations, a leading human rights foundation. “It does sound strange to toggle back and forth between these two very different worlds,” he says. “But in some ways, it’s kind of great. On policy issues, you often wonder, ‘Am I making a difference?’ You work so hard, and you never can be sure.” Conversely, basketball players and teams are constantly and instantly evaluated. At the end of the game, there’s a score. And the goal is clear: What does it take to win? 

After several years at Open Society, Danzig once again felt the call to return to basketball. Living in Brooklyn near the Pratt Institute at the start of the COVID pandemic, he called up Pratt’s coach to ask if he could help the team. Soon enough, Danzig was coaching early morning and late-night practices. In his first season, Danzig helped lead Pratt to a big win over a strong Baruch College team. Now he’s the head coach, responsible for 19 players and everything they do on—and sometimes off—the court. And he is imparting lessons he learned at Sidwell Friends.

“The challenge of the job is to help players understand ‘What do I need to do in order to be successful?’” he says. “Showing up on time, showing engagement, doing work outside 
of the normal flow—all of these things translate beyond basketball.” He is quick to add that he wants his players to be prepared for what comes after college. “They’ll understand what it takes to try and do something that’s really hard, and get it done in a way that makes a difference.”

The 2024/25 season was a particularly tough one for the team, which suffered through some injuries and finished with a 2-22 record. “People always ask if my job is fun,” Danzig says. “It is fun, but not in the traditional sense of the word. Being part of a group that is striving toward a difficult-to-achieve common goal—whether on or off the court—is one of the most engaging and rewarding things you can do with your life.”