About Matt Daniels
Matthew Daniels was raised by a single mother in the section of Spanish Harlem with the highest rate of violent crime in New York City. When Dr. Daniels was eight years old, his mother was the victim of a serious violent crime that left her partially disabled. She went on welfare for the remainder of her life. After attending inner-city public schools in New York City, Daniels received a full scholarship to Dartmouth College where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1985. He later received a Public Interest Law Scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he obtained both his law degree and a Master’s in Public Administration. He was subsequently awarded a doctoral fellowship in American Politics to study judicial policymaking and the rule of law at Brandeis University.
Dr. Daniels successfully launched an online video portal in partnership with venture capital specialist Sequoia Capital, the lead backer of YouTube and Google. A major Templeton Foundation grant supported the founding of Good of All, an international public education movement dedicated to promoting universal human rights in the Digital Age. Building from an initial base in South Korea and London, Good of All has launched a half dozen academic centers on three continents and has reached over 50 million people online in English, Spanish, and Arabic, using a pioneering “edutainment” methodology of student-created content developed in partnership with the founder of Disney Interactive.
Dr. Daniels is also the Creator and Producer of www.universalrights.com, a YouTube channel dedicated to promoting universal rights through entertainment content created by students at Good of All’s global network of academic centers. An interdisciplinary research study by the University of Nottingham funded by the British government affirmed the effectiveness of Dr. Daniels’ approach, which has subsequently been endorsed by a number of national security experts, including two former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, the former Commander of NATO, the Attorney General of Great Britain & Wales, and the CEO of the Association of the Chiefs of Police of the Great Britain and Wales.
Dr. Daniels is the author of Human Liberty 2.0 (Simon & Schuster), which showcases the inspiring stories of teens and adults channeling the power of digital social media to advance the cause of human dignity and universal rights in our world. Dr. Daniels’s pioneering work on the application of the universal rights principles at the core of Dr. King's work to the forces of hatred, division, and violence in the Digital Age have led to the creation of K-12 curricula published by McGraw Hill Education and Share the Dreamchurch curricula published by Harper Collins Christian that have recruited support from a wide array of human and civil rights experts, from Ambassador Andrew Young, to the current Mayor of Atlanta, to leading news media, sports, and entertainment personalities.
Most recently, Dr. Daniels launched a campaign with several dozen NBA players adding their voices to the chorus of support for teaching Dr. King’s Gospel-based principles as an antidote to the forces of division and violence. This campaign has averaged 71 million views a day and will soon expand to the NFL later this year: https://vimeo.com/902344799/456dfae1ea?share=copy.
Dr. Daniels serves as Distinguished University Professor of Law, Political Science, and Human Rights at Anderson University in Anderson, SC. Dr. Daniels is the Founder & Co-Director of the Center for Law and Digital Culture at Brunel Law School in London, England, and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Handong International Law School in Pohang, South Korea. He has served as an affiliate faculty member at the George Mason University School of Business in Washington, DC. He has also launched academic programs in Costa Rica at both National University and the University of Costa Rica.
This fall, Dr. Daniels will release via America’s leading Catholic publisher (Ignatius Press) a parochial school supplement to his K-12 curricula that has been approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and endorsed by dozens of leading Catholic church officials and intellectuals.