In a community like Great Neck, where neighbors come from every corner of the world, Daniel Straub is still something of a puzzle at first introduction.

Is he Captain Straub, the former naval officer? Dr. Straub, the scholar of international relations? Or simply Dan, the neighbor you might run into at a local meeting?

“They just call me Dan,” he said.

At 60 years old, after a 41-year career in the U.S. Navy, Straub is navigating a transition that is as much about identity as it is about geography.

Straub is what the Navy calls a “Mustang” — a sailor who enlisted straight out of high school in 1983 and rose through the ranks to become a captain, commanding warships and later advising the government as Division Chief for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia on the Joint Staff.

While his resume includes high-stakes operational successes, Straub said his leadership style was forged in the trenches.

“I learned that if you are going to be leading men and women, then you need to know the job they are doing and the challenges they face,” Straub said. For him, leadership was never about the authority of the rank, but about communicating the purpose behind it. “If they understand the why, then they’re going to follow you,” he said.

The pursuit of that “why” led Straub beyond the deck of a ship and into the classroom. Over the years, he built his education alongside his military career—starting with night classes while on shore duty, earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Penn State, then a master’s in international relations while teaching at an ROTC unit at Boston University, and eventually completing a doctorate in security studies at the Naval Postgraduate School.

He often found himself bridging two worlds: facing physical storms at sea and the intellectual complexities of national strategy. To help his crew understand their place in the world, he taught political science courses on board so sailors could earn college credits while at sea.“Ultimately, the goal was to help the sailors understand the broader mission and the broader goals of the United States,” he said.

When Straub moved to Great Neck in 2020 to serve as director of Naval Science at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, he arrived at an unusual moment. The pandemic had emptied streets and sidewalks, making it difficult for him to get a feel for the neighborhood.“It was a time when nobody was outside,” he said.

Source: LI Press