In American teen movies, one college acceptance letter can change everything. For decades, that scene carried a country's promise: education as the way out, and up. Today, the promise feels worn thin. Student debt. Diversity programs dismantled. A degree that no longer guarantees a decent job, let alone a better life than your parents'.

And yet education is never only about credentials. It is also about what a country chooses to pass on, or fails to.

To explore this tension, Walid turned to two people who live it from both sides — personal and professional.

In Atlanta, in spring 2025, at the end of his stay, he sits down with Elizabeth Elango, then head of the Global Village Project, a school for refugee girls. Born in Cameroon, shaped by two continents, she welcomes students arriving with stories of war and displacement, and tries to make room for joy and wonder in the school day.

In New York, he meets Amir Moosavi, then assistant professor at Rutgers Newark. Son of an Iranian father and an American mother, he grew up in Milwaukee when the Gulf War, and later 9/11, made names like his harder to carry. He was teaching at a time when the country's divisions were already showing on campus.

Walid closes the series with a personal note one year after these conversations.


What’s Left of the American Dream? / Que reste-t-il du rêve américain ? is a bilingual documentary series by Walid Hajar Rachedi. Set in Atlanta — the city of Martin Luther King Jr., a “Black Mecca” and a new crossroads of migration — during the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term in 2025, it explores the stories of those who still live the American Dream, those who question it, and those who never believed in it.

Editorial and sound support for this episode : Ryad Maouche.
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Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.