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DUKE MAGAZINE • WINTER 2018
DUKE
NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID PPCO
M AG A Z I N E
WINTER 2018
Round-trip wisdom Sojourning in the customs of others. Harvesting knowledge from unexpected experiences. Returning with global health insights from afar. The Annual Fund helps Duke students realize their dreams to make a difference no matter their ability to pay.
What’s in a name?
Whether you leave a legacy with a planned gift or make an immediate impact with an Annual Fund donation, every dollar makes a difference. Together, we are generating the means
History, memorials, and inclusion on campus
for Duke students and faculty to advance ideas, make new connections and move the world forward. giving.duke.edu | #MadePossibleBy
Made possible by you.
Photo taken while Arabic studies major Marivi Howell-Arza ’19 traveled to Jordan to learn more about mental health as a sustainable development goal in the region. After graduation, Marivi aims to pursue a career as a clinical social worker to better serve refugees who are in the process of resettlement.
Return on inspiration
Analyzing international challenges. Leveraging corporate insights. Scaling social change. Giving to Duke supports the greatest ambitions of our students today to create unprecedented value in the world tomorrow.
Made possible by you. Keller Scholar Juliana Collamer M.B.A.’20 says Duke donors are her “fairy godparents.” Donors’ hard-earned dollars fund her merit scholarship and contribute to making her dreams come true by arming her with business skills to tackle social issues, and enabling her to generate social good for international nonprofit organizations like Rise Against Hunger while she is a student at The Fuqua School of Business.
April 12-14, 2019 Celebrate. Reminisce. Reconnect. Come back to Duke Reunions and remember what it means to be Forever Duke. CELEBRATING THE CLASSES OF: 1959, 1964, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994,
1999, 2004, 2009, 2014 and the Half Century Club
Learn more about the weekend, see who's coming, and add your name to the list:
www.DukeReunions.com Whether you leave a legacy with a planned gift or make an immediate impact with an Annual Fund donation, every dollar makes a difference. Together, we are generating the means for the next generation of Duke students and faculty to advance ideas, make new connections and move the world forward. giving.duke.edu | #MadePossibleBy
Duke Alumni Association Reunions Office • Box 90572 • Durham, NC 27708-0572
INSIDE
Winter 2018 | Vol. 104 | No. 5
COVER
In the Name of
The Carr Building controversy raises questions about how the complications of Duke’s past square with its present. By Scott Huler Duke University Archives
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FEATURES:
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Advice, please
FORUM
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At Duke, wisdom comes from many corners, in many ways. And students
THE QUAD
aren’t just asking about course selection.
Gut feelings, an oasis of peace, bad blood
By Robert J. Bliwise
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FOREVER DUKE
Nadia Orton ’98 made a pledge to document her family’s lineage. That turned into a mission to preserve disappearing and discarded history.
A time of displacement The law school’s eviction-diversion program aims to help Durham tenants facing the
Mark Atkinson
wages of housing instability. By Thomasi McDonald
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WORKINPROGRESS
With his master’s thesis, Vijay Rajkumar A.M. ’18 co-opted artificialintelligence systems to make art. COVER: Photo by Jonathan Lee
Alex Boerner
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FULLFRAME PICTURE PERFECT: A foot of snow left a winter wonderland tableau on campus in December. Photography by Reagan Lunn
Forum
UNDERTHEGARGOYLES
What’s in a name? Or, what’s be-
Duke University Archives
hind a naming? The cover story delves into the complicated business of naming a piece of the campus, the Carr Building, and then of interpreting exactly what that signifies. Naming, when it’s set in stone, whether on a Neo-Gothic or Georgian façade, has always been a complicated business—if not exactly arbitrary, then hardly an action of flawless precision. That’s documented in the Alumni Register, Duke Magazine’s predecessor.
RISING: Construction of Few Quadrangle, ca. 1938 Back in 1930, Duke University was taking shape, and students and faculty had gathered in Page Auditorium to hear President William Preston Few unveil more than a few building names. As the October issue reported: “Outside the construction of the chapel and chemistry buildings, work is centered on the beautification of the campus, the laying of flagstone walks, the grading of lawns and adjacent grounds, the placing of lighting fixtures.”
And the placing of building names. An adjacent article noted that the recent flurry of naming honored “former presidents, trustees, benefactors, alumni, and others whose lives have been closely identified with Trinity College and whose names have become traditional in the institution’s annals.” Not that neutral naming was unknown. Referring to what, almost ninety years later, would evolve into the Brodhead Center, the article paid tribute to “the magnificent Duke Union.” Its “many necessities and conveniences” included a post office, a barbershop, a laundry, stores, dining halls, lounges, and student offices. Also, a coffee shop—apparently, the caffeine imperative is endless and ageless. An adjoining building housed what had just become Page Auditorium, which featured some fancy “talking-picture equipment.” Even then, Duke was outrageously ambitious, certainly in its entertainment offerings: The talking-picture machines were “equal to the best in the South.” The building name referred to two revered Pages: Walter Hines Page, Class of 1875, a one-time ambassador to Great Britain; and his nephew, Allison Page, Class of 1920, “the first undergraduate of Trinity to give his life in battle,” in World War I. Across the quad was the “beautiful little chapel” that adjoined the library and was set to become York Chapel. Brantley York, as “a youthful Yale graduate,” was the first principal of Union Institute, the antecedent of Trinity College. He had “labored for many years in North Carolina for the cause of education.” Over on East Campus, a residence hall would be named for the Giles sisters, Theresa, Mary, and Persis. As 1878 graduates, they were the first women to receive degrees from Trinity College. Later they had run a school for girls in South Carolina. A pioneering president, John Franklin Crowell—as in the Crowell Building—had led Trinity College from 1887 to 1894; under his administration, Trinity College would make the momentous move to Durham.
DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018 | Vol. 104 | No. 5 | www.DUKEMAGAZINE.duke.edu EDITOR: Robert J. Bliwise A.M. ’88 MANAGING EDITOR: Adrienne Johnson Martin SENIOR WRITER: Scott Huler CLAY FELKER STAFF WRITER: Lucas Hubbard ’14 CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: Christina Holder M.Div. ’13 STAFF ASSISTANT: Delecia Hatcher PUBLISHER: Sterly L. Wilder ’83, associate vice president, Alumni Affairs SPECIAL SECTIONS EDITOR: Bridgette Lacy ART DIRECTOR: Lacey Chylack, phase5creative, inc. PRINTER: Progress Printing OFFICERS, DUKE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION: Laura Meyer Wellman ’73, president, Sterly L. Wilder ’83, secretary-treasurer DUKE MAGAZINE Box 90572, Durham, N.C. 27708 PHONE: (919) 684-5114 FAX: (919) 681-1659 E-MAIL: dukemag@duke.edu ADDRESS CHANGES: Alumni Records, Box 90581, Durham, N.C. 27708 or bluedevil@duke.edu • © 2018 Duke University, Published five times a year by the Duke Alumni Association.
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Letters& Comments Also recognized: a momentous figure in Trinity’s history, John Spencer Bassett, Class of 1888. He had been a Trinity faculty member for twelve years and, as the Alumni Register put it, had “set in motion many influences that are still growing.” In a 1903 issue of The South Atlantic Quarterly, published out of Trinity, Bassett, a historian, had singled out Booker T. Washington as “a great and good man, a Christian statesman.” Washington might even be considered “the greatest man, save General [Robert E.] Lee, born in the South in a hundred years.” Predictably, Bassett was excoriated as a threat to the accepted “Southern Way of Life.” Admirably, in what today is seen as an early endorsement of academic freedom, Trinity’s board of trustees refused his offer of resignation. And so emerged, in Duke’s formative stages, another institutionally resonant naming— Bassett residence hall. Then there was the complicated figure of Julian Carr. He was among a small group of “trustees and liberal benefactors who responded to the financial needs of the institution,” according to the Alumni Register, “and who in other ways meant much to the college.” His name, too, went up on a building—on land Carr had provided for the university-to-be. For Trinity and the future Duke, Carr may have been a savior. But in the realm of race relations, he was a provocateur. He provided not just the gift of land, but also the opportunity for an ongoing conversation about history, memory, and legacy. —Robert J. Bliwise, editor
Critically acclaimed Thank you for the very informative and interesting article on critical zones and the work of Dan Richter and Will Cook [“To the deepest roots,” Fall 2018]. As a native-plant enthusiast and Indiana Master Naturalist, I applaud educating the public about the interrelationships in nature. Graphics, photographs, quotations, and text written at just the right level worked together very well. Kudos to writer/photographer Scott Huler and to the Duke and hidebound now, in essence, than it Magazine staff! ever was. Amy Morrison Perry ’61, A.M. ’68 Thus, should Mr. Schoonmaker care to Fishers, Indiana attract people like me to the Nasher, he should focus squarely and uncompromisingly on the artistic quality of the works Disaster relief shown, not on the personal characteristics For those of us who survived Hurricane Katrina, the essay [“Under the gargoyles,” of the artists—which are or should be Fall 2018] hit home. Duke Law Professor irrelevant. Jacinto J. Regalado ’79 Purdy’s comment that a “natural disaster Coral Gables, Florida is at least half non-natural, the product of a natural event and the infrastructure that it floods, shakes, or ignites” left me think- He only sees blue ing truer words have never been spoken. I was disappointed by the comments It is sad to see what happened along the made by Dorian Bolden ’02 [“Happy to North Carolina coast, and most recently, make a comeback,” Fall 2018]. in California and also Alaska. I am fortunate to return to campus But once you experience the most several times a year on recruiting trips for costly man-made disaster in United States my firm. I do not perceive the students history—and yes, I’m talking about as white, nor as nonwhite. I simply see Katrina and the federally managed levee Duke students of all shapes and sizes and system designed to protect an American colors and genders and nationalities. It is city—it is hard to imagine the future one of my great joys to be able to interact getting any better. with them, to hire them, and to mentor David L. Bowser ’84 them going forward. Lexington, South Carolina John Ladany ’79 Montclair, New Jersey He begs to differ Perhaps I misread [“Loud and Clear,” A tragic ending Fall 2018], but was the Nasher Museum’s Your article “POWs in the kitchen” [Retro, Fall 2018] recounted a little-known Trevor Schoonmaker implying there is any intrinsic problem with an artist being facet of life on the home front during World War II, but for me it stirred strong white and/or male, or that there is any memories. My father, Charles T. Wilkinintrinsic merit to an artist being otherwise? If he was, he has nothing else to say son, practiced family medicine in the to me, particularly about art. town of Wake Forest for some forty years For what it’s worth, I am a so-called before his death in 1968. He described Latino, so I am not burdened by Mr. himself as “a specialist—in the skin and Schoonmaker’s conspicuous whiteness— its content.” He served active duty in the although, alas, I am also male. In any U.S. Army Medical Corps during World case, I am exceedingly skeptical of the War II and retired as a brigadier general. pronouncements and conceits of the art From 1943 to early 1945, he commanded establishment, which is no less academic an army hospital that was stationed near DUKE MAGAZINE
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Letters& Comments... continued the front lines during the fierce fighting in New Guinea. He returned to command the base hospital at Fort El Reno in Oklahoma, where I, age ten, with my mother and two brothers joined him. There was a large contingent of German prisoners of war at that military base. Like the POWs described in your article, many of them voluntarily were employed on surrounding farms and in other occupations. Others provided extremely valuable service as orderlies and technicians at my father’s hospital. I had the opportunity to meet a number of these young men, and several of them became babysitters for me and my brothers. When the war ended, the POWs were told that they were going to be repatriated to Germany. For many of them this was not welcome news, and many cried openly. They feared what it would be like to return to their war-ravaged country, perhaps with the opprobrium or disgrace that they had been captured. Many of those who had worked at the hospital openly expressed their gratitude to my father for the way they had been treated, and many gave him some of their personal items as thank-you gifts. Sadly, I remember quite distinctly
how distressed I was to learn that a few of these previously happy and active young men had demonstrated the depth of their despair over being forced to return home by committing suicide. Harold A. Wilkinson M.D. ’59, Ph.D. ’62 Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts Alumni support I’d like to voice my support for Mary Bowen’s [’59] letter in the [Fall 2018] Duke Magazine. I think required
embrace ideologies that take and protest the slightest micro-aggressions without any intellectual analysis of future consequences or the facts. President Price et al. should be teaching the very privileged who attend my university, not blindly acquiescing to those who will protest anything, oblivious to the opportunity for higher learning that they have been given. For example, the members of the Antifa movement don’t realize that they are the fascists.
President Price et al. should be teaching the very privileged who attend my university, not blindly acquiescing to those who will protest anything, oblivious to the opportunity for higher learning that they have been given. reading should be Stanford Professor Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals and H. Mac Donald’s The Diversity Delusion. I find it ironic that the mostly left-leaning faculty and student body
When I went to Duke recently, I was unable to view Lee’s [now-deposed] statue, as the archivist was unavailable. Bruce Romig ’67, HS ’77 Puyallup, Washington
SEND LETTERS TO: Box 90572, Durham, N.C. 27708 or e-mail dukemag@duke.edu. Please limit letters to 300 words and include your full name, address, and class year or Duke affiliation. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity. Owing to space constraints, we are unable to print all letters received. Published letters represent the range of responses received. For additional letters: www.dukemagazine.duke.edu.
UPDATE
TO THE AIR
DEEPEST
ANNA WADE, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in environment working with the Nicholas School’s Professor Dan Richter studying human-made soil systems, gave us news on the old stump that raised readers’ interest in our Fall 2018 story, “To the deepest roots,” about critical zone science. She has a right to: She’s the one who found it, and the only one who could find it again. “I have a very photographic memory,” she says, though she also allows that she found the stump in August, when streams were low and easy to see, and Richter and Will Cook sought it in December, when streams were high and full of leaves that complicated the search. She eventually took her colleagues back and led them to the stump. A stump is vital to dating a land surface because it not only tells scientists exactly where the surface was when it was living but also provides a source of trustworthy carbon dating. “Soils, which are all over the terrestrial landscape, are very heterogeneous themselves, so if you’re trying to date a soil surface, it has carbon from all different years mixed together,” Wade says. “But a tree stump has carbon from the year it dies. That’s a single value; it’s fixed.” 6 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
ROOTS When Wade led Richter back to the stump, they found two others, and they chipped a piece off one for carbon dating by a colleague (the shovel came into play after Richter’s buck knife broke in half in the frozen stump). The result? “Around 1800,” she says of the date the stump died. And the stumps were found “below the current floodplain streambank surface by about two meters.” That is, six feet of sediment has been deposited in two centuries, “which is orders of magnitude higher rates of sediment deposition than what is natural.” That’s what they expected: Everything they’ve found in their research leads them to believe the erosion and downstream deposition has been enormous. “But these stumps, these markers in time that are confirmed, they validate the previous conclusions that we made.” n
Critical zone science, a new cross-disciplinary field of study, unearths secrets held in the organisms that sustain us.
D
ORGANISMS
SOIL
WA T E R
ROCK
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TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHY BY
SCOTT HULER
an Richter Ph.D. ’80 and Will Cook ’88 are poking around the basin of a tiny tributary of the Tyger River in South Carolina, looking for a buried tree stump. It is overcast, and a steady rain falls, and they are not having much luck. The scientist who discovered the buried stump on a previous expedition actually stumbled across it while she was lost; her directions have been good but somewhat open to interpretation. So Richter and Cook slog up one drainage after another in the chilly December rain, boots sinking into sandy riverbottom. Pines and bare, gray deciduous trees provide little shelter from the pelting rain; last fall’s leaves stick to raingear that itself sticks to skin. It’s not a particularly pleasant morning, but nobody is in a hurry. This is science. Science involves a lot of trying to find stuff, and if standing in the rain in a silty riverbottom in December is what it takes, that’s what you do. Plus, nobody wants to give up easily. A buried stump is something of a holy grail if you’re trying to understand the history of a piece of land. You can core the stump, which, when you count the rings, tells you how old it was when it died; then you can carbon-date that core, telling you about when that death occurred. Suddenly you have a moment: a very particular time when that stump stood, and that was ground level, and its surrounding sediments tell you what the ground looked like. Then you can examine the sediments that have buried it, which tell you what kind of processes have gone on since then, in what order those progressed, and what’s been going on since that tree stump first grew, far beneath the surface on which people now walk around. You have what the new discipline of critical zone science seeks above all things. You have a story. DUKE MAGAZINE
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THE Jared Lazarus
LIFE ON CAMPUS FROM EAST TO WEST
Reagan Lunn
Jared Lazarus
COVER MEN: Freshman players pose for Sports Illustrated
COLD SHOULDER: Snow on Washington Duke
SUGARPLUM The Nutcracker by Devils en Pointe
Jared Lazarus
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CREEPY/KOOKY Hoof ‘n’ Horn’s production of The Addams Family
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DR/TL* Brief mentions of things going on among Duke researchers, scholars, and other enterprises
ANIMALS AND MICROBES
DUKE
If you like OLD-TIME MUSIC, you’re not alone: Birds seem to sing the same songs for thousands of years. / Wait, here’s more cool stuff about bird learning. ZEBRA FINCHES learn songs by identifying a “tutor” bird that stimulates not just vocal but also social areas of the student bird’s brain. / Specific genes in mouse intestines control the INTESTINE DESIGN; that’s why they look like Slinkys. / CHLAMYDIA attacks people by colonizing cells, like a virus, and using unusual combined proteins to build a fortress within the cells; it copies itself, then breaks out of the fortress to do it all again. Eww. / H. pylori, the bug implicated in stomach cancer, may help cause COLORECTAL CANCER as well. / Animal and human bodies appear to manipulate the behavior of GUT BACTERIA by starving them for nutrients.
Three more RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS this fall, bringing Duke up to forty-nine. Seniors Claire Wang, Ariel Kantor, and Kushal Kadakia (recently seen in these pages as chair of the Honor Council) earned the multi-year scholarships to Oxford University. / Seniors Julie Uchitel and Shomik Verma were chosen from among more than a thousand applicants nationwide to win Marshall Scholarships, Duke’s twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth. They’ll be supported for a graduate degree at any British university. / THREE PORTRAITS in the Gothic Reading Room—of architects Horace Trumbauer and Julian Abele and construction engineer Arthur C. Lee, all involved with the creation of the Duke campus—have moved across the room, next to John Hope Franklin. A portrait of immediate past president Richard H. Brodhead has been added to the line of presidents. Founding trustees of The Duke Endowment have moved into storage to make room. The portraits in storage could not be reached for comment. / Duke Dining banned the use of disposable plastics from all thirty-four campus eating venues. / In the 2018 ELECTIONS, Duke board of trustees member J.B. Pritzker ’87 was elected governor of Illinois; Bradley Byrne ’77 retained his Alabama seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, as did Mo Brooks ’75. Mike Levin J.D. ’05 won a seat in Southern California; Dan Lipinski Ph.D. ’98 retained his U.S. House seat in Illinois. / A Duke team wrote an ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE ALGORITHM that won a PoetiX award for generating a somewhat plausibly human-seeming Shakespearean sonnet. Go to our website, follow the link, and read it; it’s crazytown, but it’s getting there. Plus, have you ever gone back and looked at your own poetry from sophomore year? / EUGENE WASHINGTON, chancellor for health affairs and president and CEO for Duke University Health System, received the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medal, the institution’s highest honor. / KRISHNENDU CHAKRABARTY, William H. Younger Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received the Bob Madge Innovation Award from the IEEE Test Technology Technical Council. The award recognizes “innovation that matters” in semiconductor design, test, and data analysis. / Professor of civil and environmental engineering ANA BARROS was elected hydrology president within the American Geophysical Union. / After a $20 MILLION DONATION from the Grainger Family Descendants Fund, Environment Hall, which houses the Nicholas School of the Environment, was renamed Grainger Hall. / A $1 million gift from Michael S. and Annie Falk enables the Nicholas School of the Environment to establish a RESEARCH LABORATORY IN “ENVIRONMENTAL EXPOSOMICS,” an emerging field that assesses the cumulative effects of environmental contaminants on human health.
PEOPLE LOW-INCOME OBESE PATIENTS with signs of cardiovascular risk who used a free phone app to monitor behavior and received telephone counseling lost a clinically meaningful amount of weight. / Stop the Presses, Part I: The delicious citrus or cinnamon that flavors your VAPING? The flavoring combines with solvents in the “e-liquid” and can form lung irritants. / Stop the presses, Part II, Section A: Fear of American-style MEDICAL MALPRACTICE claims seems to inspire unneeded tests that raise the cost of health care about 5 percent—and those tests don’t improve outcomes. / Stop the Presses, Part II, Section B: American health-care administration is expensive, and AMERICAN HEALTH-CARE BILLING is enormously expensive. / Red blood cells undergo detectable and predictable changes over time when they are stored outside the body; those changes appear to be useful in DETECTING BLOOD DOPING by athletes. / Making sure you encounter opposing views on SOCIAL MEDIA may increase, rather than decrease, polarization. / A “Frankenstein” mixture of protein segments that is liquid at room temperature but solidifies at body temperature can, when injected into patients, help form a sort of structure for BLOOD-VESSEL FORMATION and other healing processes. / The worse the crime you’re accused of, the more likely the jury is to convict you.
MISCELLANY A very few changes on a region of FLOWER GENES appear to be able to get the flower to express itself in different colors. / Maybe a ROBOTIC SNIFFER made from mouse cells will eventually replace dogs for detecting troubling substances at airports or buried human remains. Not soon, but maybe one day. / Engineers have found a way to DIRECT PHOTONS OF LIGHT AROUND SHARP CORNERS with virtually no losses due to backscattering, a key property that will be needed if electronics are ever to be replaced by light-based devices.
Go to dukemagazine.duke.edu for links to further details and original papers.
* Didn't Read?/Too Long? Well, we did, and now we're all smarter. 8
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istock
ROOMMATES
Meghan Miller
Hometown: Bernardsville, New Jersey Favorite Off-Campus Eateries: Juju, Local 22 Pet: Cocker Spaniel Poodle Artistic Outlet: duARTS First Year Intern Program Appliance Bought for Room: Vacuum
Caroline Gamard
Hometown: Fairhope, Alabama Favorite Off-Campus Eateries: Happy + Hale, Mad Hatter’s Pet: Corgi Artistic Outlet: Duke University Wind Symphony Appliance Bought for Room: Keurig
WHERE'S HOME? RANDOLPH RANDOM ACTS: First-years Meghan Miller and Caroline Gamard were shocked when they heard that their incoming class would not be able to request roommates. “I was scared. I didn’t know what to expect,” says Meghan, and although Caroline was confident it would work out, she, too, admits she was “a little worried.” Meghan was in a group chat of women who were going to Duke; her peers, who had planned to room together, refused to believe the news. “They were forming petitions and having [their] parents send e-mails,” she says. Caroline did not know a single person coming to Duke. The mandate took the weight off her shoulders of having to seek out someone. “It just found a roommate for me!” she says. SHARED PRIORITIES: They finally met the night before movein. “We were so excited,” says Meghan, smiling at Caroline. Quickly, they learned they had much in common. In addition to being on the pre-health-professions track, both are involved
in religious life at Duke and are engaged in the arts. They love studying at Triangle Coffee House on Ninth Street and much prefer the Brodhead Center over the East Campus Marketplace. (Nevertheless, the first-year dining location won their hearts during its annual Fall Festival event.) A DIFFERENT SHADE OF BLUE: Perhaps the biggest hurdle in their pairing was the dorm assignment. “I heard it was the worst—I was super-sad,” says Caroline. But like the Marketplace, the dorm also grew on them: They both agree that they have a community in Randolph, and perhaps more important, they’ve managed to add their own touches, most notably with their turquoise curtains in the window. “Looking in, you know which room is ours,” they say in unison. —Noor Tasnim ’18, photography by Chris Hildreth
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FROM THE PRESIDENT: A CAMPUS VIEW
Seaside Connections
T
his past July, as I was preparing to make my first visit to the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, Director Andy Read warned me that our island campus there is a little “saltier” than Durham. A few weeks later, rounding the harbor like a buccaneer on Duke’s sixty-five-foot research catamaran, I understood what he meant. We weren’t on West Campus anymore. My wife, Annette, and I had made the trip to the coast for the Marine Lab’s annual community open house, when Andy and his team invite local students and their families to explore the campus and learn about the wide-ranging research that goes on there. Along with Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment Toddi Steelman and hundreds of enthusiastic visitors, we spent a day flying drones that are being used to explore the coasts of Antarctica. We examined sand dollars and sea urchins. We peered through vials of bioluminescent algae, which cast an eerie yellow glow. But these were more than just cool exhibits. We know less about the oceans than any other environment on Earth, and the demonstrations taught us about the vital work the Marine Lab is doing to explore and protect threatened marine ecosystems. It’s an effort that has been under way since Duke professor A.S. Peerse first visited what was then a sandy wayside in the 1930s and decided to set up a pioneering marine biology lab. Through the ensuing decades of hurricanes, technological advancement, tourism, and shifting salt winds, Duke students and faculty have been living and learning here in Beaufort, helping to conserve the coastline and waterways for their own families and neighbors.
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Photography by Jared Lazarus
COASTAL: From far left, Professor Daniel Rittschof gives a quick lesson in crab behavioral biology; a visit to the maritime museum; with Annette Price checking out marine specimens; aboard a catamaran to tour the waters around the lab on Pivers Island; directing a drone with Rittschof and Professor David Johnston, right.
Duke’s ties to Beaufort even run through generations. During my stay I was introduced to local leaders in education, government, and business by Beaufort Mayor Rhett Newton, an engineer and former U.S. Air Force pilot who is now pursuing drone research as a doctoral student at the Duke Robotics and Remote We know less about the oceans than Sensing Laboratory. On my any other environment on Earth. tour of Beaufort, I saw the granite monument in the town’s park honoring Rhett’s father, John G. Newton, who as Duke’s marine superintendent led the 1973 discovery of the sunken Civil War ironclad Monitor. Today, Andy and his colleagues don’t have to read the scientific literature to see the impact of their work; they can go camping on the Outer Banks or sailing in Beaufort harbor. They could also ask some of the young students who visited, their eyes wide with wonder after learning about sea anemones and sharks. And now they can take particular pride in the resilience of their community: The Marine Lab was hammered by damaging winds and torrential rain from Hurricane Florence, but the campus was back to normal operations within weeks. In fact, Andy and his team quickly turned their attention to helping their neighbors recover. Across North Carolina and around the world, Duke is working to build more of these direct connections to our community. We know we have a tremendous opportunity to meet our neighbors where they are, learn about what matters to them, and partner to build a better future for the places we are proud to call home. Based on what I saw in Beaufort, we are already well on our way. —Vincent E. Price
Background photograph Duke University Archives
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A lot to digest
New research shows a closer relationship between our guts and our brains.
W
Duke Department of Medicine
hat with gut feelings and gut ears that turn perception of sounds into electrical signals and so interact directly with instincts, you have heard of the your nervous system. Likewise, cells in your stomach being cast as a second intestines can send information to your brain brain. Diego Bohórquez, assistant professor of medicine in milliseconds. at the Duke School of Medicine, thinks that Gut feeling, indeed. may have the order backward. Bohórquez, who describes himself as a gut“Very simple organisms do not have a brain neuroscientist, recently published a paper on the mechanism by which your gut and brain,” he says, smiling. “But they have a gut.” your brain communicate. The days of talking He has a point. Our relationship with food about feeling full only twenis primary. Organisms have ty minutes after you ate, of to eat to live, and organisms getting sleepy after tryptowere eating for around a billion years before they were phan kicks off a hormonal reaction, are history. Scientists even breathing, much less have long understood that thinking. And, indeed, you the long vagus nerve conare what you eat. “We talk nects the brain with, among about the self,” Bohórquez other things, the intestines, says. “Most of the time we carrying information from talk about the conscious self, the gut to the brain. And but a huge portion of us is in 2015, Bohórquez and inside. We eat three times a INNARDS: Neuroscientist his team discovered sensory day. That is modulating who Bohórquez cells in intestinal lining that we are.” ended in synapses capable of He expressed it succinctly connecting with the nervous system. Called in September when he gave a research seminar at the medical school. “At the core of who neuropods, those cells, like similar cells in we are,” he said, “we are food.” the nose and tongue, end in synapses—nerve Okay, so big deal, right? That’s obviendings—that could connect with the nerous: You eat, you build yourself, you move vous system. along. What used to be food is now you. In his most recent publication, Bohórquez Let’s not even mention your gut biome. But and his team put rabies virus, specially labeled Bohórquez is talking about something far with a fluorescent tag, into the stomachs of more complex and surprising. Information mice. The tag enabled them to watch the virus can get from your gut, it now turns out, in makes its way directly up the vagus nerve and the blink of an eye. There are cells in your into the brain. Petri-dish work demonstrated
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“At the core of who we are, we are food.”
that vagal neurons liked to connect with neuropod nerves and that the neurotransmitter glutamate might be the messenger. At least in mice—and likely in humans— the gut talks directly to the brain. The gut, that is, is a sensory organ, transmitting to the brain way more than whether you feel full or not. This falls in line with other things we know about the gut and our behavior, Bohórquez notes. People who have gastric bypass surgery, for example, lose weight in six months, but within two days diabetes symptoms improve—and some patients develop alcoholism. “The gut clearly affects the brain and behavior.” Bohórquez was studying choanocytes, very early bacteria that have a food vacuole with primitive receptors that communicated whether the vacuole was stretched or warm. So “I started to wonder, how is it we learn to eat? Both evolutionarily and developmentally?” That’s when he began to realize that studying the gut “would get to the crux of how it is that we’re built, how it is we evolved around food.” The gut, he says, is underrated, “judged by what he produces, not by what he contributes.” It clearly contributes far more than scientists have been able to demonstrate, though Bohórquez’s recent publication of his research in Science moves knowledge along. “It’s a constant iteration of the process,” he says: You get a little knowledge, you digest it, then along comes the next course. Kind of like a nice meal. —Scott Huler
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Peace offerings
The Oasis offers a room for students to find relief from the stress of academia.
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ake a peacock feather out of a tall glass vase. Balance the feather, by the point of its shaft, on your finger— one finger. You can move, but try to stay steady, just keeping the long, curving feather vertical. Good luck. Now try again, but instead of looking at your finger or even at the surrounding comfy furniture you’re trying not to trample, look at the eye of the feather. Within seconds you’re doing the preposterous: keeping a two-foot feather, with a curving shaft and downy barbs that sway in the lightest of breaths, vertical on the end of a finger you’re not even looking at. “Sometimes,” says Associate Dean Tom Szigethy, director of DuWell, a solution comes from “just reframing the way I think about the problem.” Don’t think you’re done with plumage-based insights, though. “Peacocks get color,” Szigethy goes on, “by eating poisonous plants,” and within the Buddhist tradition, peacocks thus symbolize the capacity to live through challenge and turn difficulty into beauty. “We try to pull from as many cultures as possible.” He pulled from all those cultures to create the Oasis, quiet rooms in three Duke locations: one in the Wellness Center, one in Bell Tower dorm on East Campus, and one in Perkins Library. The rooms provide resources to help students balance more than just peacock feathers. The goal of the Oasis, like DuWell—Duke Wellness—itself, is to help students balance their lives, to help them reduce stress and anxiety, and to keep them healthy and successful both as students and as people. “Stress and anxiety are the two top factors for over a decade” in the biennial National College Health Assessment surveys taken by the American College Health Association, Szigethy says. In the 2018 survey, 35.3 percent of students listed stress and 28.1 listed anxiety as having adversely affected their academic performance. Sleep difficulties—likely caused by stress and anxiety—came in at 23.5 percent; no other factor even broke 20 percent. Students are stressing. So they step into the Oasis West, a room on the ground floor of the Student Wellness Center. First, it’s peaceful in there. The burble of a waist-high stoneware fountain is the only sound,
unless someone is creating a throbbing, metallic hum using one of the Tibetan singing bowls or jingling in their hands a pair of Chinese Baoding balls. Students sit on the gray sectional couch across from the wall of windows or in the few armchairs arranged around a central freeform ottoman, either listening to headphones or enjoying the quiet. Several stations offer opportunities for relaxation or stress relief, from artwork from various spiritual traditions to a spot where you can use essential oils to create aromatherapy spray bottles to a box of coloring books and pencils and markers. A massage chair never seems to lack for business. A bowl of condoms and a bookshelf full of works on alcohol safety betray the origin story of the Oasis. “My position was created as a result of the lacrosse incident” in 2006, Szigethy says. It became clear that Duke needed to help its students make better decisions regarding alcohol and sex, and the increased focus on wellness has grown from that. The original wellness center was in Crowell, where Szigethy’s office was, and he had a few tables with books and comfortable chairs. “People would all say, ‘It feels so good in here. It feels like I can breathe in here.’ ” When his office moved into Bell Tower, he noticed that people were coming in not necessarily to seek a particular wellness service. “They were coming in to hang out.” That spurred the development of what is now Oasis East, in Bell Tower, and when the Student Wellness Center opened in 2017, it included Oasis West, a room designed to fill students’ needs to hang out and receive help regarding wellness in several areas: spiritual, intellectual, social, and on and on. Research supports the elements the center brings in, but the important point is that the students use it. “I was studying and my back hurt,” said sophomore Annika Hsu late in the fall semester as she got up from the massage chair. “It’s finals week, so everyone is high stress.” She remembers using the essential oils and coloring to soothe her nerves, but “I’ve probably used almost every resource in this building.” Hsu went off to her next final, and another student took the chair. Typing while she vibrated, to be sure, but she took the chair. Small steps.—Scott Huler
“We try to pull from as many cultures as possible.”
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SNOWED UNDER.
As the Triangle was looking to its first snowfall of the season, back in December, Scott Compton was introducing the region to an unfamiliar term: chionophobia. Compton is a clinical psychologist at Duke who specializes in anxiety disorders.
Chionophobia is a real thing? It refers to fear of snow, and it’s within the cluster of natural-environment phobias, including fear of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and, certainly these days, wildfires. People who are chionophobic struggle with the thought of snow. With just a mild snowfall, they might miss days at work because they’re housebound, or not show up for activities that are important to them. They express a range of behaviors that impair their day-to-day functioning, and they organize their life around their snow anxiety. They won’t be sleeping well at night. There might be constant trips to the grocery store, constant tuning-in to weather forecasts, constant checking of conditions outside.
How does fear of snow get embedded in someone’s mind? Of course, even for people who don’t have the phobia, snow is still a hassle. They have to shovel it, they have to maneuver carefully as they drive in it. But most people associate snow with going sledding, making snowmen, gathering for the holidays—all positive things. I grew up in Northern California, not far from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which is a good area for skiing. So I was in the snow a lot. For a chionophobic,
Chris Hildreth
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there must have been a bad experience with snow. Maybe it was a car wreck in snowy weather, or slipping on ice and breaking a limb, or getting hit and injured by a snowball, or even watching a movie that comes to a tragic conclusion where snow is involved.
We can be very anxious about lots of things, right? Generalized anxiety disorder is the most common anxiety disorder. It refers to people who worry a lot about different things, above and beyond normal worry. They can’t concentrate on other things; they can’t turn it off. Chionophobia is a more specific anxiety disorder, like a phobia around contact with dogs. The tricky thing about these phobias is the more you start listening to your irrational thoughts, the more you adjust your behavior to those thoughts. That means you’ll work to avoid a situation that would have you confronting the source of your anxiety, and so the phobia is going to take root—it’s going to be maintained.
How would you treat chionophobia in particular? You have the person list his or her specific concerns around snow. You deal with the simplest one first, and gradually work your way up the hierarchy of concerns. It’s the same approach as dealing with dog phobia. Maybe the biggest fear is
Q&A
being assaulted by a big dog. You start by making the person comfortable around the most innocuous expression of a dog, like a stuffed dog, and from there, a puppy. The idea is to get them to turn toward the situation rather than to run away from it, to gradually build confidence so the person, for example, eventually can handle a German shepherd. For the chionophobic, maybe the biggest fear is getting frostbitten. You might start by having the person reflect on idyllic scenes of snowfall. And maybe you work up to a conversation with a doctor, so the person can develop a more rational respect for snow.
Frostbite does happen. You don’t want them to be naïve about that risk, but rather to recalibrate that risk with knowledge.
Imagine someone who is phobic both around dogs and around snow, finds himself in a snowstorm, and is rescued by a Saint Bernard. That would address one of the phobias, I guess. I would work hard to make that happen. —Robert J. Bliwise
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Where there’s a will, there’s an épée This Fuqua professor always makes time for fencing.
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usy” and its close cousins (“intense,” “cra“Now you could never—without having a lot zy”) are how Leslie Marx ’89 likes to deof experience fencing before—just jump onto the scribe her schedule, yet it soon becomes team,” says Marx. “Fencing was a little different apparent that her “busy” starts at a higher baseback then.” line than non-academics’. Her first e-mail notes The team had no designated space, practicing that she’s in Shanghai teaching in the Global Exin Card Gym “at the mercy of other basketball ecutive M.B.A. program at the Fuqua School of or volleyball” players, she recalls. Another key Business, where Marx is the Robert A. Bandeen difference was the variety of weapons: Given her Professor of economics. Days later, she’s back in height (and reach), it was clear that Marx would Durham, teaching that same course remotely and best thrive in épée, in which making contact preparing to audit a course at the law school (on with the opponent anywhere (with the weapon’s antitrust economics) that she might lead in the tip) earns a point. However, at that time women only fought foil; women’s épée didn’t become future. A few weeks after that, she jets off to a an Olympic event until 1996. As a result, Marx’s conference in Germany. Of note: She’s managing collegiate career isn’t that decorated athletically: this while also raising three kids. While she graduated as an Academic All-AmeriSo empirically, Marx is busy, and that’s before can, she competed only in NCAA Regionals. carving out time for fencing—which she has had to Yet as she waded further into her studies, the do since the mid-1980s. A former Olympian, and fencing virus maintained its hold. Marx travnow the team’s volunteer assistant coach, Marx is eled to Northa “regular” at every practice from No- “She has a virus—the fencing virus.” western for her vember onward, Ph.D., which she when her teaching completed in five load lessens and the varsity season nears. “She has years—even though she took a year to train in a virus—the fencing virus,” says head coach Alex Poland with their national fencing team. After Beguinet, whose thirty-three-year tenure with graduating, Marx landed at the University of the team means he has both coached Marx and Rochester. It wasn’t an accident: The Rochester coached with her. “When she got it, that was it.” Fencing Club was then the Olympic training Tall and athletic, Marx grew up playing bascenter for the U.S. women’s team. Next stop: the ketball, but she didn’t harbor hopes of trying out Atlanta Olympics, where she took sixteenth in at Duke—especially considering her academic the individual épée. “Tenure was kind of looming obligations as a math, economics, and computer for me at that point,” Marx says, so she skipped science student. Coincidentally, Beguinet had just practicing but continued to enter competitions. stepped in as coach on short notice—“we were Remarkably, she still qualified for the 1997 both freshmen,” he says—and, without the benWorld Championships. efit of a recruiting cycle, needed to fill out his rosIn 2002, Marx landed at Fuqua and immeter for practices. He went to P.E. fencing classes, diately rejoined Duke fencing. With Beguinet picking out one or two talented novices from each recently adding foil and sabre specialists to his session. In that first class? Marx. staff, Marx has shifted into the volunteer assis-
tant role. But she still is the lead voice coaching Duke’s épée contingent, which includes seniors Camille Esnault and Bryn Hammarberg, both of whom were All-Americans in 2017. Last spring, Hammarberg, who won the ACCs for men’s individual épée, helped lead Duke men’s fencing to its first-ever ACC Championship. Months before, in October, Marx finished her Global M.B.A. teaching duties in Santiago, Chile, and flew directly to the Veteran World Championships in Slovenia. She had had this competition circled for a long time: It offered a window of opportunity in which her main rival, a year younger than Marx, and not yet at the minimum age to compete, would be absent. “She’ll be there in a year, and she’ll beat me again,” Marx says, explaining her logic at the time, “so I wanted to get in there before I had to lose to the same people I lost to in the ’90s.” Starting her training with Beguinet years in advance, including frequent spars with Duke team members, Marx managed to claim gold in the Vet-50 Epee division. Marx admits that she “probably” could have been a better fencer, or a better economist, if she had just chosen one path. “But I’ve enjoyed enough success [at] both ends that it’s been a lot of fun,” she says. Plus, it’s not as if the duties of academia distract her during her training. “I don’t have much trouble with other things disrupting my concentration, because you have an opponent there who’s trying to hit you. And, it kind of focuses the mind to see someone attacking you.” Beguinet, after listing all of Marx’s duties and accomplishments, is left asking, simply, “How?” But that last quote could hold the answer to why, even though Marx’s life might be busy, her mind is at peace: When fighting for tenure or the matchwinning touch, it can’t afford to be otherwise. —Lucas Hubbard, photography by Chris Hildreth
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Durham, new and old
A student is working on a film that explores the city through two prominent lives.
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own to her bunned hair and the Perrier bottle at by association, a story of Durham—resists a telling that’s her fingertips, Sarah Riazati is an artist, and so isolated or definitive; as the title of Riazati’s accompanying she speaks with an artist’s precision: She doesn’t installation puts it, “complexity is a family tree.” “shoot” so much as “film”; she prefers to “make” “One thing I wanted to avoid was any fixed narrative, of a picture rather than “take” one. Which means that, this ‘the story is like this,’ ” Riazati says. “That’s a problem with past August, weeks after winning the Princess Grace Founhow we think about history, that it was like a fixed set of dation Award to help fund her film thesis, when she demurs facts. But really everything is a constructed story that humans made up. And a construction of a story leaves out a to painstakingly discuss her project, her hesitation speaks lot of things.” volumes of the project’s status: Right now, it could turn into As a documentary artist, Riazati notes that she “can come almost anything. at it from another angle” from a historian. She refers to the Riazati, a second-year student in Duke’s M.F.A. in Experimental and Documentary Arts program, describes the John Akomfrah film Precarity that featured at the Nasher development process as a “spiral” in which she keeps comMuseum of Art, in which water continually washes over aning back to the same place: Durham, her home for the past cient texts, as an influence: She’s trying to embrace “a fluid, messy, contradictory story,” and to poke at the idea of two years. “I think I’ve always been interested in places that I’m inhabiting and what they looked like before,” she says. (Her early metaphor for the project was Palimp“One thing I wanted to avoid was any fixed sest—“originally a classical term, then an architecture narrative, of ‘the story is like this.’ ” term for ‘when you turn a building into something else,’ ” she explains.) “whether you can trust any narrator.” Shambhavi Kaul, assistant professor of the practice of In mid-November, Riazati shares a twelve-minute edit filmmaking of Art, Art History & Visual Studies and Riazati’s adviser at Duke, encouraged her to work locally. And with her program peers. It’s evolved from initial concepts of after protesters tore down the Confederate monument on students walking through Pauli Murray’s house, of infinite, East Main Street last August, Riazati focused on the historfaceless speakers weighing the legacy of Carr. What comes ical layers present in the Bull City, the questions of “Where across instead is a blending of Durham new and old. Images is Durham going, and where has it been?” that must be recent (she began filming last February) appear Her thesis will be about Durham, but also it’ll be about disconcertingly faded; these layer over black-and-white still those Durham commemorates: people like Julian Carr, the frames of the city. Landmarks of industry and destabilization—the train tracks, the Golden Belt factory, the 147 commercial magnate and white supremacist, and Pauli Murray, the civil rights figure who coined “Jane Crow” for the freeway that ruptured the Hayti community—themselves double discrimination women of color face and who now become destabilized and removed from time. stars in a vibrant downtown mural. The end product won’t crystallize until the spring. And While the duo had vast differences, Riazati explains, while Riazati hopes her film “could help people look at familiar terrain with new eyes,” she doesn’t pretend to hold tributes to each arose in striking and somewhat harrowing proximity. Upon his death in 1924, Carr was buried a the key to these debates of how a city like Durham should stone’s throw from Murray’s childhood home, in the cemerecognize both the famous and forgotten figures of its past. tery where local Confederates were honored. Today, plaques Instead, the film—and Riazati—only aim to add to the list for Murray and Carr face one another on West Chapel Hill of questions. Street, barely a block apart. “What if a film was a monument?” Riazati asks. “And the But in life, too, they overlapped directly: When the film didn’t give you answers and wasn’t fixed in stone and twelve-year-old Murray won an award at the local “colored” stood there for a hundred years, but was something temporary and an experience you have in a cinema with a hundred library, she was recognized for the accomplishment by Carr, neighbors? a key benefactor of the library. And the more one looks, “And then...what would happen after?” the more it becomes apparent that a story of the pair—and —Lucas Hubbard, photography by Chris Hildreth
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WE ASKED
Michael Lionstar
BookClub
John Carreyrou ’94, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start-Up (Knopf), about his reporting career and what we can learn from the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes’ blood-testing company, Theranos. Has corruption always been an interest for you? Is this type of reporting the natural extension of “follow the money” to you? As much as All the President’s Men and the Watergate reporting was inspiring, I’ve actually never, in my career until now, reported on politics or government or have been based in Washington, D.C., except for an internship I did after Duke. I mostly reported on business. And so, my investigative journalism has been about business. Of late, I’ve been focusing on Silicon Valley, obviously with Theranos. It strikes me that the same watchdog journalism that we’ve had for decades in this country, about government, and Washington, and the presidency, we should increasingly have about Silicon Valley, because it’s become such a huge part of our economy. Some of the companies out there are the biggest and most valuable in the world. One thing that plays a really big role in your book is the presence of nondisclosure agreements [NDAs] for employees who get disenchanted with Theranos and leave but then can’t say anything. How has that made your job trickier as a journalist? It was a very difficult obstacle to surmount in the Theranos reporting. And, yes, I think NDAs are everywhere now. They’re not just used in Silicon Valley. I think companies—and especially ones in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street—try to use NDAs to muzzle would-be whistleblowers. That’s a terrible development that I hope doesn’t continue. I don’t know if this can express itself through new regulations. But I think the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission should send a strong signal that that sort of behavior isn’t allowed, that just because you signed an NDA, that’s not a prohibition
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against pointing out wrongdoing and lawbreaking. And I hope, also, that the Theranos precedent serves to weaken that trend and go against it. Will Silicon Valley change its behavior after the Theranos debacle? It remains to be seen whether any real lessons will be drawn from this because a lot of sophisticated investors you see in Silicon Valley are saying, “Actually, Theranos wasn’t really part of the mainstream Silicon Valley. None of us funded it.” And it’s true that she scrupulously avoided venture capitalists, and especially those with experience in med tech and biotech. And a lot of people who are respected in Silicon Valley are washing their hands of Theranos, saying, “This was a complete outlier. It happened on the fringes of our ecosystem.” That makes me think that, perhaps, people aren’t taking it seriously enough as a cautionary tale. Do you think this story is more of an outlier, driven by Holmes’ sort of extreme personality? Or is it something that’s more inevitable, given the Silicon Valley “fake it until you make it” culture? On that spectrum, I see it closer to the latter because I think, in many ways, the only thing that made this a scandal is that Silicon Valley playbook and culture were applied to health care. If they had not been applied to this industry where the stakes are so much higher, I question whether Holmes wouldn’t still be operating and be celebrated to this day. I think a lot of what she did is, like I said, completely embedded in behavioral patterns in Silicon Valley. n This interview has been edited and condensed.
RECOMMENDATIONS from Nathaniel Philbrick A.M. ’80
During In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown (Viking), Philbrick covers how America’s first president navigated his way to glory during the Revolutionary War. Below, the National Book Award-winner summarizes the four books you should read about George Washington—after, of course, devouring his: Parson Weems may have invented the story of the young George Washington chopping down his father’s cherry tree, but Philip Levy gets at the more interesting and much more complicated truth in Where the Cherry Tree Grew: The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home. A wide-ranging examination of Washington’s coming of age in a little red farmhouse on the banks of the Rappahannock River, just across from Fredericksburg.
Kevin J. Hayes, George Washington: A Life in Books. John Adams once claimed that Washington was “too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation.” But as Hayes amply demonstrates, what Washington lacked in formal education he more than compensated for through a lifelong program of self-improvement. Yes, he was a man of action, but he was also a compulsive reader, who enjoyed novels like Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy when he wasn’t reading about military tactics, politics, and the latest farming techniques. Who knew America’s “indispensable man” was also a bookworm?
Joseph Manca, George Washington’s Eye: Landscape, Architecture, and Design at Mount Vernon. When it comes to the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson is usually touted as the architectural genius. As Manca proves in this lushly illustrated book, Washington also had a passionate interest in architecture and design. Required reading if you are contemplating a trip to Mount Vernon.
Peter R. Henriques, Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington. In a single, relatively slim volume, Henriques provides a remarkably insightful examination of Washington’s multifaceted personality. His account of Washington on his deathbed is a tour de force. “Washington’s stoicism, strengthened by a belief in a benign and irresistible Providence,” Henriques writes, “empowered him with a calmness and courage in the face of danger that was awe-inspiring to his contemporaries.” Proving that character is indeed destiny, Washington died while taking his own pulse.
BY DUKE ALUMNI & FACULTY
Tiber: Eternal River of Rome (ForeEdge Press) Bruce Ware Allen ’80 Understanding the Mexican Economy: A Social, Cultural, and Political Overview (Emerald Publishing) Roy Boyd Ph.D. ’81, Maria Eugenia Ibarrarán, and Roberto Vélez-Grajales HELP! The Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the Magic of Collaboration (W.W. Norton and Company) Thomas Brothers, professor of music The Cash Ceiling: Why Only the Rich Run for Office—and What We Can Do About It (Princeton University Press) Nicholas Carnes, Creed C. Black associate professor of public policy and political science The Snow Leopard Project: And Other Adventures in Warzone Conservation (Hachette Book Group) Alex Dehgan ’91, Chanler Innovator in Residence at Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship Places I Stopped on the Way Home: A Memoir of Chaos and Grace (Icon Books) Meg Fee M.P.P. ’19 The Bloated Belly Whisperer (St. Martin’s Press) Tamara Duker Freuman ’97 Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe (University of Wisconsin Press) Dagmar Herzog ’83 Womanish: A Grown Black Woman Speaks on Love and Life (Ig Publshing) Kim McLarin ’86
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NAME of The Carr Building controversy raises questions about how the complications of Duke’s past square with its present.
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BY SCOTT HULER
N A SWELTERING AFTERNOON in man who donated money to a fledgling college. He also, September, in front of the Carr Building as recent documents dug up by historians have shown, on East Campus, a young black woman supported the violent movement to suppress black voters and black progress around the turn of the twentieth addressed a gathering of a couple hundred century, publicly supported the dishonest Lost Cause mymembers of the Duke and Durham communities. She stood in front of a building named for Julian Carr. thology, proudly and publicly reflected upon his beating She stood on ground Carr donated to the university. Is changing a name erasing history? She was not there to praise Julian Carr. Or, for that matter, Duke. of a black woman. With Carr’s name prominently cele“As a black African woman,” senior Christine Kinyua brated, Kinyua said she sees Duke as a place seemingly said, “as an immigrant, I don’t see myself in this institution.” Kinyua was talking about the physical environment frozen in “a time stuck with the prevalence of wealth and Duke has built as it has created itself. Founded by white white supremacy, a time that we all acknowledge as wrong men and segregated until the early 1960s, Duke has honand problematic.” To Kinyua, by retaining Carr’s name ored only them with statues, and named buildings almost on a building, Duke said far more than that it appreciated only after them. his financial support in its early days. In front of Carr, Even in that context, Carr was not just another rich she voiced one of the demonstration’s central demands:
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INYUA WAS STRAIGHTFORWARDLY asking: Does Duke want to honor a man who spent most of his life working against, even attacking, black people? Can you ask a black student to walk through a door beneath such a name? Would you ask a Jewish student to sign up for classes in the Himmler Building, a Native American student to meet you in the Andrew Jackson Center? Duke has found itself addressing these kinds of questions at a time when digitization eases access to historical documents, bringing forgotten realities into the light and to wider view. As many citizens ask the nation—and especially the South—to confront its undeniably racist past, members of the Duke community are asking Duke
Kinyua’s movement didn’t advocate forgetting Carr. When she spoke, Kinyua quoted Pauli Murray, who was raised in Durham and became a noted civil rights activist in the mid-twentieth century: “True emancipation,” Murray said, “lies in the acceptance of the whole past, in deriving strength from all my roots, in facing up to the degradation as well as the dignity of my ancestors.” But acceptance of the whole past doesn’t mean honoring it. Kinyua still demanded the removal of Carr’s name. She would eventually get her wish—in early December the committee examining the question recommended removal, and the board of trustees took the action. Carr is now the Classroom Building, the original name of the building, though maybe not for long. The questions raised around the issue of naming were hardly new. They had moved to a central place in university debate in August 2017 when, shortly after Charlottesville, a vandal attacked Duke’s own statue of Robert E. Lee, which stood in the portal of Duke Chapel. A few days later the university whisked the statue away before dawn “to protect Duke Chapel, to ensure the vital safety Duke University Archives
“To move forward to actually [remove] the Carr name in front of this building and [replace it with] something that is representative of our entire community.” Names, she was saying, have meaning; statues have meaning. They tell us who we are, what we believe, what we raise up.
“The White Man Must Rule or Die." to question the names on its monuments, the statues it has chosen to erect. A year-and-a-half ago, a woman was killed in Charlottesville by a protester defending a statue of Robert E. Lee. The same issue—highlighting a speech by the very same Julian Carr—boiled over at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when, after years of peaceful protest failed to cause change, demonstrators in August tore down the Confederate memorial statue of Silent Sam. Changing a historic name is a complex topic, perhaps ironically so given that the Carr Building houses Duke’s history department, the very people most committed to examining the complexities of the past and how they relate to the present. Is changing a name erasing history? Who decides, and how? To what degree should long-standing expressions of memorial and honor, like buildings bearing people’s names, like statues, express the current values of the university? Do you apply today’s values to all historical figures? Is anything permanent? How far can re-evaluation go?
of students and community members who worship there, and above all to express the deep and abiding values of our university,” according to Duke president Vincent E. Price. Protection and safety need little explication, especially given that almost exactly a year later protesters at UNC pulled down Silent Sam. But the question had been raised, and regardless of the decision on any specific statue or name, it remains.
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UKE IS HARDLY ALONE in facing this challenge to its understanding of its past and how it represents itself. Vanderbilt University spent fourteen years in court and raised $1.2 million so that, in 2016, it could repay the United Daughters of the Confederacy for an original $50,000 donation and thus be free to remove the word “Confederate” from what is now
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merely Memorial Hall. Yale, after the 2015 murder of nine black women in South Carolina, reconsidered whether a residential college named for slavery defender John C. Calhoun would be perceived as welcoming to all people. A furious worker in 2016 used a broom to attack a common-space stained-glass window of slaves placidly harvesting cotton; another Yale window, previously removed, had been titled “negro with a watermelon.” It took a couple of tries, but Yale in 2017 renamed the college. Berkeley has recently begun rethinking the name Boalt, on its law school, for its namesake’s Chinese-exclusionist views. Duke itself had addressed some of these questions as recently as 2014, when it returned an East Campus dorm to its previous name, East, removing the name of Governor Charles B. Aycock. Winning the race for North Carolina governor in 1900 after a statewide campaign of repression and violence, Aycock declared in his acceptance speech: “When we say that the negro is unfit to rule we carry it one step further and convey the correct idea when we declare that he is unfit to vote.” He also claimed that white people were “thoroughbreds” who ought not to waste resources educating “a commoner stock.” In recent years Duke has carved the name of African-American architect Julian Abele into the masonry
It didn’t take long—Duke created an ad hoc committee to consider the May 2018 unanimous request by the Department of History that the East Campus building remove the name of Carr and replace it with that of longtime professor Raymond Gavins, Duke’s first African-American professor of history and a beloved mentor throughout the Duke civil rights, human rights, and history communities. The request was supported by Duke Student Government, by a letter signed by 140 history department alumni, and by student protest groups like Duke People’s State of the University, which organized the demonstration at which Kinyua spoke. Carr’s name entered public debate when historians unearthed his now-notorious speech at the 1913 dedication of Silent Sam on the UNC campus, in which Carr recalls the pride with which he discharged his “pleasing duty” the time he “horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds.” Carr called the 1898 Wilmington coup d’état, in which white mobs destroyed black-owned businesses, seized control of city government, and murdered between dozens and hundreds of black citizens “a grand and glorious event,” and he called the subsequent elections in which black votes were suppressed “the great uprising of Anglo-Saxon manhood.” On black suffrage he
“Yes, he had some vile views and said some horrendous things, and the ways that he viewed certain people was absolutely horrible,
But if you look at Duke’s history, Duke
wouldn’t be the school it is today without Carr. That’s why his name should be on the building: his contributions to Duke.” of his masterwork, Duke Chapel, and renamed the West Campus quad for him (a granite engraving recently replaced the temporary metal plaque in the ground near the bus stop). Regarding Lee, Duke has ultimately decided to leave the niche where Lee once stood empty for the long term. In explaining the decision, Price quoted dean of Duke Chapel Luke Powery, who suggested the empty space might symbolize “a hole that is in the heart of the United States of America, and perhaps in our own human hearts—that hole that is from the sin of racism and hatred of any kind.” Duke also created a procedure by which anyone could propose the reconsideration of any building or memorial on campus. 24 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
was clear: “The whole world admits that it was a mistake,” he said in an 1899 speech, “to have given universal suffrage to the negroes.” According to the history department document, he ran for U.S. Senate under the campaign slogan “The White Man Must Rule or Die.” On the other hand, Carr is also the man on whose donated land East Campus sits, and whose money, made largely through his branding of “Bull Durham” tobacco, helped sustain Trinity College and move it to Durham. Without Carr, there simply might not be a Duke University. He donated generously to other schools, including UNC and institutions that helped African Americans, such as the Training School for Colored People in Augusta, Georgia.
Jared Lazarus
So: Can you honor the generosity while despising the racism? Can you pry Carr the philanthropist apart from Carr the violent white supremacist? And if you can’t, how do you decide whether to remove his name from a building? If you do, are you erasing history, pretending unpleasant things never happened? The Aycock-East name change was handled without an established procedure. Student government and advocacy groups clamored for the change, then-president Richard H. Brodhead brought the idea to the board of trustees, the trustees approved, and in June 2014 the name changed. A plaque hangs in the lobby now, reminding viewers that “Aycock’s legacy is a complicated one,” and East is now uncontroversially East. Aycock, though, had no special connection to Duke, whereas Carr played an essential role in the university’s history. So the Carr reconsideration provided the first test of the systems Duke administrators created after the vandalism and removal of the Lee statue. President Price at that time convened the Commission on Memory and History: sixteen students, faculty, trustees, alumni, administrators, and local residents who not only considered what to do about Lee and the chapel but also offered advice on how Duke could, as Price said in an e-mail, “engage in a broader campus conversation about history and inclusion.” The result was a simple, published procedure by which com-
munity members could bring up names or REMOVAL: For now, Carr becomes the memorials for reconsideration. Classroom Building. And the university did more than create a commission. Provost Sally Kornbluth sponsored a symposium in March, “American Universities, Monuments, and the Legacies of Slavery,” that for two days filled the Holsti-Anderson room in Rubenstein Library to overflowing, raising questions about how universities face these uncomfortable legacies. Attendees heard about things like Georgetown University’s apology for its ownership and sale of slaves, and about how Georgetown found its way to its plan to rename buildings, create an institute to study slavery, and raise a monument. And Robin Kirk, faculty co-chair of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, led a Bass Connections team called The Construction of Memory at Duke and in Durham. “This idea of what we think about the past and how we use it to construct the future is something I’ve been thinking about for a while from a human-rights perspective,” Kirk says, recalling work she’s done in places like Chile and Argentina; she’s also worked with a DukeEngage team in Northern Ireland. She describes herself as “one of the few people who would take students to the chapel and point out who was there” during the years when the Lee DUKE MAGAZINE
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statue was mostly overlooked, at least by white members of the community. She says most of the dozen students on the Bass Connections team quickly “were able to see beyond the façade and ask what these symbols stood for,” when considering the statues, names, and other ways Duke creates its physical memory. Kirk notes that in many cases the people commemorated aren’t the entire problem. “It wasn’t actual statues or plaques,” she says. “It was the absence of any other stories or influences.” Ways to address those other stories appeared in the hundred-page report the team released, “Activating History for Justice at Duke,” which not only noted names to consider changing—it called for the change for Carr— but offered ways of telling those other stories as well. It suggested, for example, a statue of Caroline, a longtime
Do you apply today’s values to all historical figures? cook for Washington Duke whom he originally purchased as a slave, which would face the statue of James B. Duke from across Abele Quad. It also suggested renaming East again—only this time instead of merely unnaming it, renaming it for a person worthy of honor. As Kirsten Delegard Ph.D. ’99, a Minnesota historian and signatory to the alumni letter, said: “Whose name is on a building, and by extension who we honor, should express the most cherished values of the institution.”
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INYUA, WHO SPOKE at the Carr Building demonstration, grew up in Kenya, where after independence, name changes came in volume—she mentions the power of a secondary school changing from the Prince of Wales School to the Nairobi School—so she brought a specific vision to the Bass Connections project. “When you live in a country that’s a former colony, in some ways the spaces you occupy are somehow home, but foreign,” she says. By the time she came to Duke, “this was like an obsession with me.” Changing names to help them represent current reality simply makes sense, from her perspective. Carr was named in a time when how black people would experience that name would never have crossed the minds of those doing the naming. That’s not today’s reality, so Carr shouldn’t be today’s name. “Black Lives Matter, feminism, it all boils down to matters of choice. It’s all a matter of not being excluded from the decision-making on a daily basis that affects us.” Carr got his name on a building because he gave money to the school that became Duke. “When did we as a Duke community,” Kinyua asks, “agree that this money equals 500 years of his name being on this space?”
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Ian Jaffe/The Chronicle
Especially in a university, where undergraduate students are around only four years at a time, permanence may be the wrong concept to apply. “I’m unattached,” Kinyua says, “to the idea of permanence.” For others permanence holds considerable attraction; for them, reflecting current values by removing a statue or changing the name on a building that has stood for a century reeks of revisionism, inspiring comparisons to pictures of Stalin or Mao in which one-time comrades, subsequently executed, are simply retouched out of the frame. The term “erasure” rises again and again. Sophomore Michael Johnson Jr. attended a town hall-style meeting the history department held when the idea of renaming Carr arose. “Yes, he had some vile views and said some horrendous things, and the ways that he viewed certain people was absolutely horrible,” he says, “but if you look at Duke’s history, Duke wouldn’t be the school it is today without Carr. “That’s why his name should be on the building: his contributions to Duke.” Even now that those “horrendous” views have become public? “Erasing Carr, who was such an instrumental man in the creation of Duke? You really can’t remove him from modern-day Duke.” George Washington was a slave-owner, Johnson notes, but “the Washington Monument in five years isn’t going to be changed to another name.” He recalls the history department panel discussion at which
Kinyua described the name changes in Kenya, and he says that’s not an American value. “It’s just not how we do things.” He understands that Carr’s beliefs in his time no longer square with Duke’s values now. But “I would ask, would you affiliate with the school at all? If his views were reflected in the school to begin with? And if the school reflected that individual in its inception, does it reflect them now?” But, again: That seems to be the exact problem the Procedures for Reconsideration are designed to provide a pathway toward resolving. At the provost’s symposium in the library, President Price described addressing “a
OPEN: The space where the Lee statue stood will remain empty.
games all change names like partner-hopping celebrities. But those are mostly financial transactions; in the Duke setting there’s a conscious element of honor, and that’s the question constantly raised. In the demonstration in front of the Carr Building, associate professor of African & African American Studies Wahneema Lubiano said, “Money never forgets where it came from.” And it’s more than just the money, says Trey Walk, a senior history major and member of Duke People’s State of the University, which organized that demonstration and whose manifesto in April 2018 was the first public call for the building’s renaming. Walk recalls racial hate incidents in the spring of 2018 (a student posted a racist meme; someone wrote racist slurs on another’s door), and “these questions about ra-
“Why does it take Charlottesville happening to make us remove the Robert E. Lee statue? Why does it take the Mary Lou getting defaced and students gathering en masse to protest for us to have a conversation about the Carr Building?” past that we never fully reconciled with.” The past is a sticky thing, which means the opportunity for reconciliation will come up again and again. Carr’s own speeches, after all, were almost unnoticed for a century. Then an enterprising grad student at UNC found them as part of Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina, a project at UNC digitizing everything a team led by professor of history Fitzhugh Brundage could find on the statues and memorials currently at issue. “The goal,” Brundage says, “was to make a resource so that if people wanted to make a conversation they would have a resource to have that conversation.” Which we seem to be doing. Brundage raises the same question Kirk raised on how the movement to honor Confederate heroes not only honored people we feel differently about now but also crowded out other stories. “They were polemical,” he says of honors from the era of Lost Cause commemoration. “They were didactic when they were erected. They were part of a systematic cultural project, and it’s entirely understandable why they are the subject of controversy now.” As for the question of erasure or revisionism, Brundage isn’t buying. For one thing, “revision can take many forms. We tear down old historic buildings. Societies revise their landscapes all the time.” Given the number of high schools and roads that changed their names in honor of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr., any claim that Americans don’t change commemorative names doesn’t hold water. Airports, sports arenas, downtown skyscrapers, bowl
cial injustice and anti-Blackness and what they meant at Duke especially were just in the air.” When he returned in the fall, racist slurs were written on the sign of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, and the Silent Sam protests down the road were heating up. “We were like, we can’t have a conversation about this without talking about how our past and built space shapes some of this,” he says of the protest, which occurred days after the history department submitted its request. The university’s new policy helped guide protesters’ thinking, Walk says, both for good and ill. “We kept harking back to the decision to bring down the Robert E. Lee statue, and the reasons they were using, rightly so, applied in so many ways to Julian Carr.” On the other hand, he says, “Questions about process are really important.” The current ad hoc approach works, he says, but “are we going to keep piecemeal doing this? A student discovers something, or the faculty discover something, then we have this conversation,” rather than having an overarching survey or assessment. “I think that is what makes me question the commitment to the values that we parade out whenever we make these changes. “Why does it take Charlottesville happening to make us remove the Robert E. Lee statue? Why does it take the Mary Lou getting defaced and students gathering en masse to protest for us to have a conversation about the Carr Building?” As for questions about whether removing the name would erase history, Walk says that’s how DUKE MAGAZINE
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he read the Silent Sam speech. “After the graduate student discovered the speech, it haunted me,” he says. He finally came to the conclusion that given changes in our culture, Carr’s name now is simply not the same as it was: “Its meaning has changed.” The department proposal doesn’t aim “to eradicate the name of Julian Carr from the record of history,” Martin says. Like the Aycock Building, a renamed Carr Building will have a record of its naming history in its lobby. “We’re trying to say this building should represent the values of the university and of the history department in particular. “Which are not the values of Julian Carr.” Not hardly. Ruebe Holmes ’13 works in the history department as assistant to the director of undergraduate To what degree should long-standing expressions of memorial studies, and she spoke at the and honor express the current values of the university? town hall meeting. She hadn’t known about Carr until the department filed its proposal to rename the building, but UKE EXECUTIVE vice president Tallman she ran smack into Duke’s commemorative history at the Trask III allows that people commonly get chapel door. During her freshman year, facing the common struggles of a student away from home for the first honored with their names on buildings just as time, she says, “I went to the chapel, just, you know, to be Kinyua said they did: by giving a lot of money. And Duke there and get some solace. And I happened to walk past does its due diligence. “When names are proposed, we do the statue of Robert E. Lee. I was trying to get some solook to see whether there is some reason why we ought lace, but there’s a Confederate soldier immortalized here.” not to do that,” he says. They rarely find problems. “All That point resonates with Delegard. “How can we ask Afthe recent cases are things that at the time looked fine, rican Americans to walk through a doorway that has the but the standards have changed.” A current example of name of this white supremacist on it?” things looking fine is the new Grainger Hall. It houses In fact, you may not be able to. Hasan Jeffries Ph.D. the Nicholas School of the Environment and got its name ’02 concurs. He spent his entire graduate school career after a $20 million donation from the Grainger Family on the Duke campus, yet, put off by the statue of Lee, he Descendants Fund, “a long-standing Chicago business never entered the chapel, engaging in a quiet, personal act family foundation” that the university deeply trusts and of protest. He learned about Carr only after he graduateasily passed investigation. Now, has some current donor engaged in conduct that if brought to light would ed but knows what would have happened had he known change the university’s perspective? Will some of today’s when considering graduate schools. “All this takes place norms prove unacceptable to future generations? “I have in the history building,” he says of his feelings when he no idea,” Trask says. learned of Carr’s background. People like Carr and Aycock Trask describes himself as “one of the more conserva“are the people who were rewriting history—who literally tive people on the standard” of renaming, though he says, were promoting the false narrative of the Lost Cause,” he “There are reasons one does it—sparingly.” He seems to says. “If there’s one group of people who understands the agree with Kinyua, with Brundage, and with Kirk, that if implication of this, and what people like Carr were doing perceptions change, you address them. “I think you just in trying to rewrite the history of the United States and deal with these things as you get to them.” of black folk,” it’s historians. His final choice of graduate History department chair John Martin, too, came schools came down to the University of Michigan and slowly to the idea that the Carr name needed to change. Duke. “Had I known that everyone knew that the Carr “I have evolved on this question,” he says, “so I can see arBuilding was named for this virulent white supremacist, guments on both sides.” He recognizes that historical figand Duke had chosen not to change it, I’d have clearly ures are ambiguous and resisted changing the name until gone to Michigan.” things stand now: “They know who Carr is,” he says of those who defend the name. “They just erase that part of it. And not only did you erase the violent parts of Carr’s history, you erased all the black people who experienced suffering at his charge.” Historians are the last people to countenance actual erasure of a figure from the record. If the name of Carr were erased altogether, “it would be like a gaslighting thing,” says Delegard. “It would make this historic white supremacy harder to detect. If we don’t have a record of white supremacy, we don’t have an explanation of disparity today, and it makes people of color feel crazy.” Erasure is not likely, as Walk notes. “The history of Julian Carr is never going to leave this place. Every time someone comes on tour, the guides say his name. He’s not being erased. He’s just not going to be honored anymore.”
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“True emancipation lies in the acceptance of the whole past, in deriving strength from all my roots, in facing up to the degradation as well as the dignity of my ancestors." Les Todd
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HE COMMITTEE’S ultimate recommendation to remove the name surprised few. Removing a name shouldn’t be done lightly, but in this case, the report said, it was merited: “The white-supremacist actions that Carr pursued throughout his life, even when considered in light of the time in which they were held, are inconsistent with the fundamental aspirations of this university, and removing the name will be a powerful statement that lifts up our values as a diverse and inclusive institution.” A display in the lobby of the newly named Classroom Building will explain “why the university chose to name the building in his honor in 1930, and why it chose to remove his name nearly ninety years later.” There is “a distinction,” the committee’s report said, “between history and veneration.” Virtually everyone agrees that Duke has moved wisely by creating a transparent process for these reconsiderations. UNC’s Brundage, for example, noted that the Lee statue was excised rather abruptly—Duke is a private university, so a couple of conversations, a piece of construction equipment, and Elvis had left the building. “But this is being done through a much more substantive process,” which he admires. Perhaps envies, as well: UNC could not mollify Silent Sam protesters because the North Carolina General Assembly in 2015 passed a law rendering it illegal for any state or local agency to remove an “object of remembrance” from public property. “I think that law was intended to freeze the landscape,” Brundage says. “To create such obstacles that no one using legal means was likely to enjoy much success.” You see how that worked out. Transparent processes look even more attractive in that light. Nor should they ever stop. “It’s entirely appropriate if every fifty years we would reconsider our landscape,” Brundage says. “Which ones are still doing good cultural work? It would actually be very healthy.” More than healthy. “This is a challenge for us,” Kirk says. “This is an opportunity.” Delegard agrees. “I see this as an opportunity to bind Duke University, which likes to think of itself
as a citizen of the world, but is located in a specific place. I see this as an opportunity for Duke to explore that connection, explain that connection.” Kinyua speaks more strongly on that topic: “We’re no longer an institution in the South for the South,” she says. “We’re an institution in the South for the South, but with a global agenda.” Great, she says, but “Duke needs to stop believing that it is not part of this hostile Southern culture.” Black students “shouldn’t have to go to the Mary Lou to feel welcome.” As Brundage notes, the process, the struggle, never really ends—the university should always be reconsidering, reassessing. Trey Walk certainly sees it that way. “When people ask when does it end, I don’t think I know the answer to that, but I guess I don’t think that’s the right question. Justice is context-dependent. And it’s not a destination. It’s something that we imagine one way, and people who are yet to come are going to imagine it another way, and they should be able to craft the university in a way that their society imagines justice to be like.” Jeffries concurs. He was powerfully affected when he learned that Duke had removed the statue of Lee. “This smile came across my face,” he remembers. “It was less a victory for righteousness, more like a little weight that I had carried.” The statue came down, of course, soon after it was vandalized, and he—like virtually everyone who spoke for this piece—did not approve of vandalism. But he loves the changes he’s seen and the process he sees working now. “That’s being a leading intellectual light in the South,” he says. “And that’s what we need in a state like North Carolina.” He understands the complexity of Carr’s name, that Carr made contributions that cannot be overlooked. But he sees Duke taking the opportunity not only to cast itself also on the right side of history but, given UNC’s struggles with Silent Sam and with Carr, on the right side of historical rivalries. Some university is going to lead the charge into the future in the South. “If UNC doesn’t want to carry that torch?” he asks. “Then let it be Duke. Let it be Duke.” n EAST: A plaque notes Aycock’s complicated legacy.
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At Duke, wisdom comes from many corners, in many ways. And students aren’t just asking about course selection. BY ROBERT J. BLIWISE
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t really wasn’t a case of sophomore slump. His return from a DukeEngage summer in Vietnam, where, among other projects, he had taught English to rising high-schoolers, was a tough transition point for Grant Besner. He was struggling with “the many privileges of my upbringing and also of the material excess that defines so much of the American experience, particularly at an elite institution such as Duke,” says Grant, now finishing his senior year. He felt out of touch with his Duke friends: He had immersed himself in Vietnam’s culture, and he found it difficult to readjust as he was “thrown back into college life.” So he went for advice. He visited with Heather Settle Ph.D. ’07, a director of academic engagement for the social sciences and a cultural anthropologist. Grant says he didn’t have many other outlets for processing the summer. For her part, Settle has plenty of insights as an outsider. Originally from Oklahoma, and from a high school that sent few graduates to college (and even fewer out of state), she was a first-generation college student. After college, she did ethnographic research in a working-class barrio of Havana. When, in Grant’s words, they talked about “culture shock and how to cope with the cognitive dissonance of feeling like an outsider in your own culture,” there was a lot to be shared. “I start out by asking students about their academic interests,” Settle says. “That often detours into other kinds of experiences.” She is always asking the “why” question; it’s a mechanism to inspire reflection. “If a student says, ‘I want to study abroad,’ I say, ‘Why do you want to study abroad?’ If they say they want to study public policy, I say, ‘Why do you want to study public policy? What do you like about
that? What’s important to you about it?’ Advising is one of the few spaces where you have to just talk about what you’re thinking, and why. And you have to slow down a little bit to do that.” The first meeting, and those that followed, veered in lots of directions. “She is just an open and consistent presence,” Grant says of Settle. “Even though I’m not always the best at scheduling appointments or following up, she’d reach out to me and encourage me to come see her.” With that kind of encouragement, Grant has looked to Settle and other advisers for exploring the person he might become—“how to lead a good life and how to be a better person, friend, student, brother, member of a community.” That large view of advising reflects the outlook of Duke’s rather dispersed advising network, according to David Rabiner, director of the Academic Advising Center. A survey of the newest class showed that 94 percent wanted advising to be more than transactional—that is, more than basics like signing off on course selection. As to what such open-ended advising might look like: Ninety-five percent said they wanted help in thinking through career plans, and 75 percent in solidifying personal goals and values. Those advising relationships can offer support for students who, more and more, as national surveys demonstrate, show signs of stress, anxiety, and depression—who feel the pressure to succeed and who, presented with a universe of curricular and co-curricular possibilities, likewise feel the pressure to land on the right choices. And so assistance in navigation is an imperative. It’s more than a navigation aid: Advising, Rabiner says, can be a counterweight. It can push back on the peer pressure that steers students toward the “right” majors, which are, often mistakenly, assumed to be
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the sole path to lucrative job offers. Students are found in majors all over the curricular spectrum, but there is a clustering phenomenon: More than 600 members of the current junior class are majoring in either economics, public policy, or (like Grant) computer science. Department-specific advising, Grant says, hasn’t been among his key advising relationships: “My ‘required’ meetings with my major adviser have been more or less slotted appointments where the adviser’s graduate student asks if I am taking the correct classes for the following semester, clicks a few buttons, and sends me on my way.” Outside any specific major, and within the Academic Advising Center, there’s a small group of professional advisers who, like Settle, work as directors of academic engagement. Some DAEs have knowledge specific to an academic division—arts and humanities, natural and quantitative sciences, or social sciences. Others have specialized knowledge of global or civic opportunities. Under the center’s auspices, a much larger group, about 280 (largely) staff members from all over campus, work as college advisers. Each engages with six or so first-year students and about the same number of returning sophomore advisees; students later will commit to a major, computer science being a popular example, and are assigned to a faculty member in the department. Because the work can be time-consuming on top of a full-time job, Rabiner sees considerable turnover from year to year. Still, he says, some 85 percent of last year’s sophomore class, as they declared a major, rated the overall guidance they received from their college adviser good or excellent.
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s students go, Grant would have to rank as excellent in making connections. But his pattern of connecting reveals a lot about how, and for what, undergraduates seek advice. The two of us met after I had read one of his columns for The Chronicle. (That first meeting led Grant to sign on with me for a writing-oriented independent study.) The column was about a tradition he began as an eighth-grader, when a waiter at a Chinese restaurant impressed him as “the nicest guy in the world.” Back home in South Florida, Grant has continued to snap a photo of the two of them once a year. Such “random connections” might “offer a window into the kind of person we are likely to become,” as Grant wrote. Some windows, though, can slam shut: Shortly before his column appeared, the restaurant, facing sixty-two healthcode violations, disappeared. He wrote that column as a sophomore. His senior year coincides with the first year for Gary Bennett Ph.D. ’02 as dean of undergraduate education; Bennett is also a professor of psychology and neuroscience. Grant and Bennett met through Duke Conversations, a program that connects students and faculty informally and that’s run through Bennett’s Office of Undergraduate Educa-
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tion. This past semester, with Grant helping to facilitate, the new dean hosted a Duke Conversations dinner at his home. It was a get-together meant to serve up advice on “Getting the Most Out of Duke and Preparing for Your Life.” Life Preparation seems to be the greater theme of Duke Conversations. “We talked about how my wife and I met, about how we structure our lives as two reasonably busy professionals,” Bennett says. “It helps students to see me as something other than my bio sketch. And I love it.” Bennett considers Duke Conversations a model of advising. Effective advising “is about listening, and in more than a performative sense,” he says. “The best advising one does, in my opinion, is the kind of advising where there is an imbalance in the amount of time spent talking. We should just listen more.” Along with listening, he says, is some level of “reliability and predictability”—maybe a monthly walk through the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, or occasional “flunches” (subsidized campus lunches for a faculty member and a student), or a text message check-in. The important thing for the student is that “there is someone who is available to me and who is keeping an eye on how I’m doing,” he says. “That’s really it.” In Grant’s world, the most influential professor has been Aaron Dinin ’05, who teaches in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship program. “I love it when students come and talk to me during my office hours, or want to have lunch
with me,” Dinin says. Often they’re curious about what he calls his “really weird” combination of pursuits—undergraduate English major, a Ph.D. in English (his dissertation is titled “Hacking Literature: Reading Analog Texts in a Digital Age”), software engineer, founder of technology companies. Dinin’s scholarly imagination has led him to look at software development and literary production as parallel technologies, both of them involving information storage and dissemination. Students may see him as a natural adviser because, as he puts it, his teaching style is candid and personal. “I don’t talk down to them. I try to think of them as collaborators in the classroom.” Dinin doesn’t separate out teaching and advising. Teaching, he says, is “talking about yourself, sharing your stories and experiences, and knowing that you’re trying to take the lessons you’ve learned and distill them into something actionable for students.” One big lesson—often a tough one in the competitive context of the campus—is to not always be measuring yourself against the presumed successes of your peers. As Dinin puts it: “You have to double-major, have a minor, get good grades everywhere, get the right internships. Anytime I have a student who says, ‘I really hate my classes,
but I’m majoring in X,’ I say, ‘Well, what do you like?’ ‘Oh, I really like Y.’ And I go, ‘Okay, why aren’t you majoring in that?’ ” The usual answer comes down to job prospects. “Anyone who’s ever wanted to hire me for software engineering, not one of them has ever cared an iota about whether or not I had a major in computer science.” Grant was in Dinin’s “Learning to Fail” course. That kind of course, which merges learning and life advice, illustrates a trend: A “What Now” seminar series, through Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, now has first-year students pondering themes like stress, identity, wellness, the good life, and what it means to be free. Each week, “Learning to Fail” students were given a failure challenge, a seemingly impossible task. On the very first day of class, as the students sat down, Dinin gave each of them a candy bar with the instruction to trade it for breakfast at a campus eatery. Grant had steeled himself for disappointment, though he recalls having been awarded a mushroom and onion omelet with a side of hash browns. In his view, the course was really about risk-taking: What happens when you put yourself out there? And how can you make the best of it? “Learning to Fail” was a success story: He earned an A+, though perhaps a grade of F, he told Dinin, would have taught him even more about recovering from failure. Grant says the advice he took from the course was to pursue your own path. And he translated that advice into action
by deciding to transfer to Trinity from the Pratt School of Engineering. This past semester, on top of his computer-science requirements, he took courses in psychology; “World Philosophy”; and “Self Knowledge and the Pursuit of Wisdom,” in the classics department. These days, he readily shifts from talking about the intricacies of a multilayered coding project to the intricacies of Aristotle’s varieties of friendship.
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fter switching out of engineering and spending a summer, between his sophomore and junior years, backpacking through China, Grant found himself in a rethinking mode. Should he follow a longstanding interest in a career in comedy?
He got in touch with Amy Unell ’03, director of arts engagement and partnerships at Duke and a former producer with NBC. As a Duke student, she had taken the Duke in L.A. semester, much of which is built on internships. Grant investigated the same semester program, through which, prodded by Unell’s advice, he ended up interning with a television production company and late-night show Conan. (Back on campus he took in a weekend with DEMAN—the Duke Entertainment, Media & Arts Network—which draws hundreds of students and alumni and for which Unell organizes sessions like “Break Into Hollywood: Script to Screen.”) Grant didn’t become particularly enamored of L.A. or the entertainment industry. Still, while there he took to heart Unell’s theme of relationship-building, and he tapped into Duke’s online alumni network, which is tailor-made for connecting: Apart from his internships and his classes, he met with about thirty professionals for one-on-one conversations, most of them alumni. Before taking off for L.A., Grant was required to meet with Leanne Brown, an assistant director in the Career Center, whose official portfolio includes the arts, media, and entertainment. It was the first time he had ever gone to the Career Center, a place he had associated with pre-professionalism and “networking,” two concepts he found alien to the values of a liberal-arts setting. But he was surprised by the “authentic and genuine” conversation they had about her career and her family. “It made me reconsider the judgment I had passed on the Career Center, but also on professionals.” In L.A., he felt prepared to reach out to people to ask for advice. “That’s all ‘networking’ really is: learning about other people’s stories.” Brown’s own story is zig-zaggy: She’s been an entrepreneur, a sales manager, and the founder of a nonprofit. Back when she worked at Intuit, she brought on a lot of college interns, and she found herself “really invested in helping them.” That led her to graduate work in college counseling and eventually a position with the Career Center, initially as a graduate assistant. She thinks of her current work as being like her time as a hiring manager. “Each student is like a puzzle— figuring out what makes them tick, what motivates them, what might be holding them back.” Brown comes across as a nuanced advice-giver— and, like Grant, as someone interested in other life stories. “One thing that I think makes me good at what I do is that I don’t like to receive advice. Ask my mother. Since I was about twelve, I haven’t liked being told what to do. So I’m particularly sensitive to the language around advice. I ask people for their thoughts all DUKE MAGAZINE
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the time. But I don’t like to have anyone instruct me to do something.” Part of her job is to arm students with the basics. She reminds them that a prospective employer isn’t going to be all that impressed with a résumé ticking off accomplishments. Here’s the real challenge: Can the student show the skills and experiences to solve a problem or create an opportunity for that employer? And about that résumé: Does it somehow break the stereotype of what defines a student in a particular major, so the employer thinks, Hmm, how intriguing, I’d like to get to know the person and not just the piece of paper. Advising hardly hinges on the résumé—learning about the student in full is now a familiar refrain of the advising landscape—but, particularly for a career expert, the résumé can provide a good starting point. (For Grant, the inevitable “Interests” section lists “Cross-Cultural Dialogues,” “Meditation,” and Avatar: The Last Airbender, the last referring to an animated Nickelodeon series.) Brown will spark student conversations with questions that force a non-formulaic response: “What was your favorite part of that class?” Or “Why did you hate that internship?” If students spend time processing some experience, she says, “that will help them mindfully
pick the next experience to inform that big choice—who am I going to be?”
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he résumé attached to another Grant adviser, Elana Friedman, would hardly be straightforward. She’s now the campus rabbi. In college, Friedman majored in environmental studies; she went on to work in environmental and election campaigns, and eventually entered rabbinical school. When I meet her at the Freeman Center for Jewish Life, she greets me in an office that displays four guitars, which she lends to students for music-making. She’s been in a couple of bands, and at Duke she has a weekly radio show on WXDU, where guests, Grant among them, talk about how their musical preferences fit with the “Music and Spirituality” theme. Friedman advises students to connect with others as a relief from the “demanding, difficult, and competitive” work of college. “Despite being rich with opportunities, Duke can be really lonely. And how do we combat loneliness? Being part of something bigger than yourself, being part of a community, and understanding your spiritual self within that community.” She also encourages them to see their Jewish identity as a quality embedded in their larger identity. “If we’re talking about academics, if we’re talking about career paths, if we’re talking about friendships, if we’re talking about hopes and dreams—to me, that’s all deeply Jewish, because it’s all about purpose and meaning, about identity formation.” In the realm of religion, students can find advice in lots of places and around lots of traditions. There’s the Congregation at Duke Chapel, of course, along with the Duke Catholic Center, the Buddhist Meditation Community, the Duke Asian InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Hindu Life at Duke, Muslim Life at Duke, and dozens of other faith-minded networks. Grant—conspicuous in what he calls his “vibrant Chanukah cardigan, my signature (and only) piece of seasonal outwear”—says Friedman “has shaped the way I look at my Jewish identity and how I view community.” Before coming to Duke, he wasn’t especially religious, he says. This past summer, he joined Friedman for a one-on-one “coffee conversation”—she estimates she does 150 or so every year—and then began attending Shabbat services every Friday at the Freeman Center. “Some students are coming in looking to explore their Judaism for the first time in their lives,” Friedman says. “Some come from super-strong Jewish backgrounds and are looking for ways to practice their Judaism authentically, though in a context that makes it sometimes challeng-
ing to do so. Then there are students who already feel comfortable in their Judaism. But it’s the first time they are practicing Judaism on their terms. “And just what does that mean? They leave home, and they no longer have obligations to their parents or other authorities in their lives. So how do they become Jewish in an adult way?”
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n the cusp of adulthood and particularly of college graduations, students like Grant, however dismissive they might be of pre-professionalism, are career-minded. That’s where Jono Schafler ’07, who volunteers with Duke’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship program, enters the picture. An I&E online platform is a resource designed to direct students to potential alumni mentors, with whom they schedule thirty-minute phone calls. Schafler is with what he describes as “a venture builder company,” which raises capital, develops business models, and assembles teams for start-ups. Earlier he had a career in investment banking and private equity. In many ways Schafler sees versions of his younger, still-developing self in students like Grant, and he considers himself having been well-mentored at Duke. He signed on as an I&E adviser as a way to reciprocate. Schafler, based on his own experience, has steered Grant away from investment banking. He’s encouraged Grant to be researching start-up companies deeply—not simply looking at job listings, for example, but rather studying the portfolios attached to venture-capital firms. The bigger piece of advice is to consider a job as an emotional investment: You should be all in, excited about it to the point that it’s essential to your identity. Reflecting the widespread student sensibility, Grant seems to be excited around technology and innovation. On campus he works for the Innovation Co-Lab, a “creativity incubator” focused on using technology to “reshape the research, academic, and service missions of the university.” There he’s a technical consultant for, among other needs, 3D printing and “CNC” milling (computer numerical controlled milling—I had to look it up). He worked last summer for a digital-marketing company, as its awesomely titled “optimization strategist.” Post-graduation, he’ll be joining, for the summer and perhaps a bit longer, a Tel Aviv-based entrepreneurship program. It has young Israelis and Americans come together to form early-stage ventures, working on everything from figuring out a viable product to developing pitches for investors. It’s a version of Schafler’s current work.
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s he’s worked to process who he’s going to be, Grant has followed—really, exceeded—the advice of Gary Bennett, the dean of undergraduate education. Bennett tells students (in a video message, among other places) that they should find at least one mentor on campus.
Bennett’s own history shows a consistent characteristic of advisers: They all benefited from years of receiving advice that, in some way, was transformative. At Morehouse College, there was the English professor who pulled Bennett aside, in his first semester, and told him, “You know, I think you have the potential to be a really good writer. Would you like to be better?” And the psychology professor who brought him on as a research assistant in her lab. Bennett learned about science, but, more important, how to lead a lab team. One of the challenges for Duke, Bennett says, is to find advising mechanisms for students who are not quite Grantlike. “Universities are structured to favor students who are extroverted and charismatic. We have to be very careful to be open to the introverted students who are bookish and scholarly and socially withdrawn, or students who have more limited social networks.” Grant, in his senior year, has somewhat refashioned himself: He’s started giving advice. He’s been quite public about that, writing a column in The Chronicle called “Dear Noah.” The column offers advice to his younger brother, a Duke first-year student—and really, to all students trying to find their way through Duke. It stretches across the advice-giving spectrum, from dealing with the distractions of the campus, to forging community bonds in the face of hate. A typical strand from the column talks about the “giant mistake” Grant made in considering classes, along with a major, as merely an avenue to a job. College should be a time to “follow your natural curiosity.” As he wrote, borrowing some advice from Mark Twain, “Don’t let school get in the way of your education.” Even in his current role as a sort of advice columnist, Grant retains a zest for advice-gathering. (Though within limits: His parents, Beth Cohen Besner and Brad Besner, both ’84, avoid influencing his decisions, he says, “which may be a reason why I’ve invested so much in relationships with adult mentors on campus.”) For the inquisitive student, the student who loves collecting stories and experiences, advice comes from many directions. And it can come in ways that seems incidental or unintended. Tennis, anyone? The two of us have become competitors across the net. My recommended reading to him has included David Foster Wallace’s tennis-driven collection of essays, String Theory. There’s a place in String Theory where Wallace is writing about wearing down a more nimble opponent. He’s employing a certain style of play—steady, nothing fancy: “He was a Slugger; I was a Slug.” In our initial tennis encounters, Grant was a Slugger. He had shown the predictably reckless play of youth. Sadly for his athletic pride, that translated into balls smashed wildly out of bounds. No longer. My game—cautious, consistent, relentless, reliable—is now his game. Power and speed? He’s given up on those attributes, he tells me. “Who knew that the advice I was seeking from you would benefit my tennis game?” n DUKE MAGAZINE
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A time of dis place ment The law school’s eviction-diversion program aims to help Durham tenants facing the wages of housing instability. BY T H O MAS I MC D O NALD
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P H OTO G R A P H Y B Y A L E X B O E R N E R
n a crisp, sunny, autumn morning, Otis Henry Jones, sixty-six, dressed in camouflage, work boots, and a neat black cap, arrived at a small-claims courtroom on the third floor of the Durham County courthouse to respond to a summary ejectment notice. He had received the summons from his landlord nearly two weeks before. Jones, a 1974 graduate of Johnson C. Smith University, walked with a cane owing to an old injury from his tractor-trailer driving days that left him disabled. He’d been renting a one-bedroom duplex apartment in East Durham from Bethesda Realty since late 2012. The monthly rent was $425, and with a voucher from the Durham Housing Authority, he paid $154. After his first lease ended, Jones never renewed it and instead rented on a month-tomonth basis. He always paid on time, and he had not breached the conditions of his lease. Still, Jones’ landlord wanted him to vacate the property because the formal lease had ended in 2013. There was even more alarming news for Jones. Although he had not yet been formally evicted, he was already being denied a new place to live because of the pending eviction on his credit record. And, the
day before the court hearing, he had received a letter from managers of a property on South Roxboro Street, where he had applied for an apartment. He was turned down because there was a $2,000 debt on his credit report for a Raleigh apartment. Jones says he’s never lived in Raleigh. “They got me mixed up with somebody else,” he says. “I still haven’t found a place, and it ain’t no need to look for a place until they clear my name with Equifax.” Jones’ court hearing was scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m., and he was waiting for his lawyer, J. Hamilton McCoy II, the James Scott Farrin Lecturing Fellow and the supervising attorney for the Duke Law Civic Justice Clinic, who is the primary litigator at Duke’s year-old eviction-diversion program. The magistrate had not arrived yet, either, but Jones was already in the courtroom, along with Jo Lewter, the manager of Bethesda Realty. The snow-haired woman sat quietly on the front row of the courtroom unwrapping a piece of hard candy and popping it into her mouth. McCoy arrived just at 10:30 a.m., and the magistrate, Terry Fisher, walked into the courtroom moments later, ready to begin. However, McCoy wanted to speak with Jones outside the courtroom.
COWORKERS: Charles Holton, director of Duke law school’s Justice Clinic, left, brought J. Hamilton McCoy II on board to be the primary litigator for the eviction-diversion program.
36 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
“The issue of wealth disparity and what the market forces are doing to low-income people is no secret. It’s incumbent on all of us to be cognizant of that.”
Jones wasn’t entirely sure he wanted McCoy to represent him; in his view the system is rigged against poor tenants. “It ain’t nothing but a setup,” he said. Fisher agreed to the delay and made small talk with Lewter. It was a slow day—Jones’ case was the only eviction hearing on the calendar. Lewter remarked that there were normally a lot more people in the courtroom. “For three, four or five days a month, there’s a lull,” 38 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
Fisher replied. The first of the month, he said, would bring in the major landlords with massive caseloads. After a while, the magistrate was starting to grow impatient; he had a different case that was set to start at 11 a.m. Jones and McCoy walked into the courtroom and sat together at the defense table. It was settled. The Duke fellow was going to represent the disabled, former trucker.
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North Carolina at Chapel Hill, offers a sobering statishile growing up in Durham and Henderson, McCoy remembers cutting coupons tical portrait of what’s fueling the torrent of evictions. from the circulars of the Sunday paper The researchers note that the revitalization and gentrification of downtown Durham, while making the city to help his mom make ends meet before he started a desirable destination, has also brought historical racial working, at fourteen, to help her. He saw budgets in fault lines to the surface. The very areas that were ground free fall for months when his mother’s car broke down. zero in the past for redlining—the systemic denial of He witnessed, firsthand, the crime and poverty that service to some communities—and urban renewal are afflicted the working-class neighborhood in Henderson after two factories closed over a two-week period. also affected by the current downtown renaissance. So, McCoy appreciates the drylongso adage: It’s exThe researchers found that as affluent newcomers pensive to be poor. His formative years enabled him move in, and as jobs become increasingly stratified by to cultivate the skill of looking past social labels and education and income, rising prices are pushing out connecting with clients to most effectively assist them. the original residents, who are often poor or working Long before he did any formal research, McCoy was acutely aware of income inequality. That’s one of the reasons Charles Holton, the director of Duke law school’s Justice Clinic, brought him on board the eviction-diversion program. McCoy’s early legal experience handling cases involving public-housing tenants, along with his perspective, is invaluable, Holton believes, especially with regard to how to best deal with housing problems in a legal setting with impoverished clients who lack familiarity and experience with legal claims and civil courts. McCoy “has the great ability to perceive the heart of the problem at hand, explain it to our clients, and then devise with them the best available solution,” Holton says. It’s a role that could keep McCoy busy. A recent study by Princeton University researcher Matthew Desmond, author of the DISPARITY: Brent Ducharme, a housing attorney for N.C. Legal Aid of Durham, says Pulitzer Prize-winning work Evicted, shows the common denominator in the eviction crisis is money, along with race and class. that, in 2016, Durham had 5.16 evictions out of every 100 renter households, almost the same eviction rate as Atlanta. class and black. They also found that the average rent In its first year of operation, the Duke program has in Durham County increased by nearly 35 percent between 2011 and 2017, and that there’s an acute housing assisted with fifty cases; in its first six months, McCoy helped 74 percent of those tenants avoid eviction. shortage for low-income households. The Urban Institute determined that only thirty-four affordable units Durham’s county courts receive about 900 eviction exist in the county for every 100 extremely low-income complaints a month. Those that are recorded almost households, and that existing affordable housing stock daily in the city’s small-claims courts don’t account may well dwindle in the coming years. for the cases that never make it to court, where tenants agree to leave without formal legal proceedings. Brent Ducharme, a housing attorney with N.C. Legal Aid of Durham, says the common denominator in So, despite McCoy’s dedication, the challenge is formidible. the eviction crisis is money, along with the overlap of A legal eviction has far-reaching repercussions. It serace and class. It’s commonplace to walk into a smallverely limits housing options because, unlike criminal claims court where eviction hearings are taking place expungement, an eviction stays on a former tenant’s and observe that the majority of people being displaced credit record, says Holton, who helped establish the are African American and Hispanic, he says. eviction program. “The issue of wealth disparity and what the market The report “Racial Inequality, Poverty, and Gentrififorces are doing to low-income people is no secret,” cation in Durham, North Carolina,” made public last says Ducharme. “It’s incumbent on all of us to be cognizant of that.” summer by the Urban Institute at the University of DUKE MAGAZINE
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aw students with the Justice Clinic were already helping Durham residents with housing cases in the county courts. In addition to eviction cases, the clinic was assisting tenants with issues in court involving unsafe and substandard housing and discrimination. But after noting the increasing number of eviction cases coursing through small-claims courts, the law school decided to get more formally involved. Especially compelling, Holton says, was “the significant imbalance of power between landlords and tenants.” Landlords were often represented by counsel or professional managers familiar with the courthouse and court procedures, whereas low-income tenants couldn’t afford representation and were typically on their own in court. Landlords, too, could select the date and time for eviction cases, with as little as two days’ notice to tenants who might have to make arPATTERN: Left, Jones’ rangements for childcare or take time East Durham duplex. off from work, making it all the more Ella Gillis, right, a challenging to find someone willing to former neighbor of assist them with rent or represent them Jones, is working with a in court. private attorney to get “We discovered that there are suban eviction removed stantial community resources for the from her record so she payment of rent in emergency situacan rent again. tions, but tenants either lack the knowl40 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
edge of these resources or do not have the time to take advantage of them between the filing of an eviction case and the scheduled hearing,” says Holton. It took nearly a full year of planning with several other agencies, including N.C. Legal Aid in Durham and the Durham County Department of Social Services, before the eviction program could launch. “We had to get all the buy-ins to make it function,” Holton says. The program works like this: A blue-colored flyer stapled onto court-issued Complaints for Summary Ejectments informs tenants that if they are interested in possibly preventing being evicted from their homes, they should call the Department of Social Services. DSS officials then refer eviction cases to Legal Aid offices in Durham. Ducharme says DSS refers about fifty cases a month to the agency. The tenant must be a U.S. citizen or a green-card holder and must meet financial qualifications that are based on income and family size. “If they don’t qualify, we send them over to Duke,” Ducharme says. City and county officials, too, are stepping up their commitment. City council members approved $200,000 in funding to Legal Aid to hire two more housing attorneys to help with eviction referrals. County leaders have approved a proposal to expand a rental-assistance program.
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y the time Otis Jones, McCoy’s client, got to court, he was ready to leave the East Durham duplex. It was about nine months earlier when he first heard mice scratching behind the bedroom walls of the apartment. The realty company, he says, failed to do anything, and eventually Jones found himself sharing his living space with mice, roaches, and in later months, rats. The toilet works improperly, and he says he had to contend with mold and mildew. “I'm ready to go,” he said, “even if I have to stay in a tree house.” As the hearing began, the magistrate, Fisher, was inclined to agree with Lewter, the property manager, after she showed him the original lease and said in addition to collecting rent on a month-to-month basis, the landlord was moving to evict Jones because he wanted to make renovations to the place. That was the rental agent’s right. McCoy began his questioning by asking Lewter whether Jones was a voucher participant. “He was, yes,” Lewter replied, then added that Jones had paid his portion of the rent for the month the realty company sought to evict him.
Fisher dismissed the case and instructed Lewter to file a second notice of eviction at the end of the month. The magistrate told Jones that a “sense of urgency” should accompany his search for a new home. “I don’t want you to be without a place to live, but I got my job to do,” he said. McCoy and Sam Berman, a law student with the Civil Law Justice Clinic who’d helped out with the case, walked with Jones out of the courtroom to meet in an adjoining conference room to discuss their next move. “We won!” said McCoy. Jones seemed stunned that the case was dismissed in his favor and he would not have to immediately move. But there was still the matter of the credit report debt. McCoy suggested Jones obtain a copy of his credit report and review his credit score. He also suggested that Jones contact the Community Empowerment Fund, a local nonprofit that assists with credit repair. Jones applied for the second one-bedroom apartment and then contacted CEF and spoke with Donna Carrington, a housing specialist with the agency. Carrington agreed to
“There’s no allegations that you’ve done anything wrong. She just wants her back.” property “Has the Durham Housing Authority also paid?” McCoy asked. “No,” Lewter said. “Do you have proof you didn’t get a check?” said McCoy. The magistrate appeared annoyed by that question. “How can she prove a negative?” “It’s part of my line of questioning, Your Honor,” McCoy said. He continued, “Isn’t it true that the housing authority is not paying you because of the conditions of the apartment?” “That was before,” Lewter said, protesting. McCoy asked the magistrate to dismiss the case because Lewter had accepted a rent payment from Jones and then filed court papers to have him vacate the apartment. Fisher agreed. He sympathized with Jones’ inability to find a new place to live because of the eviction notice being posted on his record, and he said there was nothing in the complaint for summary ejectment that indicated he was a bad tenant. “There’s no allegations that you’ve done anything wrong,” Fisher told Jones. “She just wants her property back. He needs a place to stay, but she wants her place back.”
file a dispute with Equifax about the $2,000 debt on Jones’ credit report. She knew the dispute would not be resolved for another thirty to sixty days, so Carrington wrote a letter to the apartment complex where Jones hoped to move. She told the apartment managers her agency was disputing the erroneous debt on his credit report and hoped that the complex would allow him to move in until the dispute was resolved. McCoy says part of the eviction program’s aim is to empower residents with information about how the legal system works and to help prevent the assembly line-like evictions of so many people out of their homes and into shelters, degrading housing, or even out of a city where they can no longer afford to live. “I don’t think the court should be a rubber stamp for anything—guilty pleas, evictions, or child support,” he says. “There should never be a rubber stamp, because there are always situations that people are in that need to be addressed.” n McDonald is a longtime Durham resident, writer, performing artist, actor, and veteran journalist with The News & Observer in Raleigh. DUKE MAGAZINE
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ForeverDuke
These sacred spaces Nadia Orton’s pledge to document her family lineage has turned into a mission to preserve disappearing and discarded history. By Janine Latus | Photography by Mark Atkinson
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adia Orton ’98 steps carefully around concrete vaults and sunken spots where pine caskets have collapsed inside century-old graves, her knee-high camo boots
tificate in markets and management. She relied on dialysis, existing, she says, but not fully living. She needed a kidney, but the cost was beyond exorbitant, so her transplant team told her to send a letter laced tight. to everyone she knew, asking for help. One of those “I’ve had snakes and stray dogs come out of holes letters went to her great-aunt Philgrador Rachel like that,” Orton says, nodding at a grave split in Orton Duke, who didn’t respond. A lot of people two by a fallen tree branch. Her famididn’t, perhaps fearing that she was askly insists on the snake boots, a walking ing them to donate a kidney. The letter stick, a companion. was hard to read, hard to process. The They tell her, “We know you love “Black silence in response was its own kind of history, but you’re not supposed to be painful. cemeteries part of it yet.” Then one day she pulled a thick enveare usually lope from her mailbox. So the boots are always in the car. So “Dear Grandniece,” she recalls readare the thin purple gardening gloves tucked away ing, “this is your grand aunt. I know she pulls on to protect her hands from like they were you barely remember me from our famher own impatience to sweep aside pine nonessential ily reunion, but I got your letter and I needles and poison ivy and run a finger over the engravings there, thinned by parts of history, went to my church and they know weather and time. and sometimes me….” Checks for a dollar, for fifty dollars, fell to the floor, the names on It is cool out, but still Orton has had I could only them all strangers to Orton. She wipes to stay home and rest up for five days in her eyes as she tells the story, some fourorder to muster the energy for this tour tell that they teen years later. “I’ve got to get a new of Oak Lawn, an unmarked black cemwere still here etery in Suffolk, Virginia. The lupus perspective,” she thought at the time. because they that dogged her at Duke is dragging on “It’s hard but if all of these people are were so large.” her still, after kidney failure and dialypulling for me, I have to dig deep, go sis, and finally a transplant, but it was back to my little well I’ve gone to before also her lupus that led her on this quest and power through.” to preserve black and African-American gravesites. Years later, when great-aunt Philgrador lay dying, Orton was diagnosed at fourteen, after her swollen she asked that her people not be forgotten, and the fingers made it hard for her to play her piccolo in opportunity to in some way repay her aunt launched her high-school band. The disease concentrated in DISCOVERIES: Members of the Historic Oak Lawn her kidneys, which she lost right after she graduated Cemetery Foundation examine a grave at the from Duke with a double-major in political science unmarked black cemetery in Suffolk, Virginia. and African & African American Studies, and a cer-
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ForeverDuke
RESEARCHER: In eleven years, Nadia Orton has identified veterans’ graves, replaced their headstones, and contributed more than 10,000 memorials, internments, and photographs to a site that helps others find their ancestors.
Orton on her quest to find her ancestors and document their lives. In the years since, she has visited 400 cemeteries, tracing her father’s side back to 1630 in the Tidewater region of Virginia. His lineage was half freeborn, the offspring of a white indentured servant named Mary Elliott. Orton found them by riffling
les, by digging into plantation records and ship manifests, and sometimes owners’ personal letters, where her family members might be mentioned as a favorite house slave or a mammy who may have been buried off to the edge of a family’s plot. Orton’s mother’s people were also enslaved. She has traced them back to 1770, and one day she “You’re not going to have a lot of angels and pretty headstones, was able to take her mother to see her fambut you have all this history here, and considering what these ily’s graves in a slave individuals went through or what their ancestors did, you don’t need cemetery on private statuary to make it historic. It’s the people who make it historic.” property in Warren County, in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Before they went, Orthrough dusty property tax records, court documents, ton talked on the phone with the cattleman who owned and later, “free negro” registers and certificates. In her the land, asking if they could visit. He gave a warm, files is a letter written in formal script in 1794 by a Southern yes. When they arrived, though, he froze. white landowner declaring her paternal great-great“I said, ‘Mom, I think he’s Klan,’ ” Orton says. “ ‘He great-great-great-great-great-grandmother to be free. didn’t know we were black.’ ” Her mother replied, “He She’s still researching the other half of her paternal does now.” gene pool, the ones brought to the Colonies in shack44 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
The man was curt, but he loaned them a four-wheeler and directed them through a field, not mentioning the bulls penned there. It was frightening, but Orton was able to show her mother her ancestors’ burial site, their femurs scattered by foraging animals, and the headstone of Orton’s second great-grandmother, Cherry Sutton. At each cemetery Orton has found the same things— broken gravestones, overgrowth, dead trees. She pauses in her story as a train rumbles by. “Black cemeteries are usually tucked away like they were nonessential parts of history, and sometimes I could only tell that they were still here because they were so large,” she says. “If they were small, developers would get away with moving the headstones and nobody would know it had been here.” “Black cemeteries are sacred sites of the black community,” says Brent Leggs, a program assistant at the National Trust for Historic Preservation who focuses on important landmarks in African-American history. “They’re where our ancestors were laid to rest with the dignity and respect they often had not had during their lifetime. The majority are simple and unadorned at first glance, but pull back the layers, and there’s a rich story of black history. They’re often threatened by development, so it’s exciting when a community pulls together and comes up with the resources to preserve these sacred spaces.” Here at Oak Lawn a cell-phone tower looms on the edge of the land, next to a municipal building with an asphalt parking lot and an abandoned ball field, kept mowed even though kids no longer play there. This graveyard is the final resting place of Civil War veterans, business leaders, dentists and doctors, and the pastors who guided the flock of the surrounding community. Yet there is no sign announcing its existence. Until 2011, it was hard to even see the graves, hidden as they were by weeds and vines, scraggly trees, and people’s discarded bed mattresses and beer cans. That was when George Richardson, a deacon of the Mahan Street First Baptist Church and a supervisor for the Suffolk Housing Authority, looked out his office window at the remaining tombstones and decided that something had to be done. So he founded the Historic Oak Lawn Cemetery Foundation. Together he and other members of the community whacked down weeds and hauled out trash. They got the power company to cut down dead limbs, and local jail inmates to pick trash off the banks of the railroad. “There’s soldiers that’s out there who died for us,” says Reginald Dirtion, a member of the foundation. “I think we owe them that much, if we can’t do anything else.”
Still, this is no city-maintained white cemetery. The man who mows it is a volunteer, possibly paid a small stipend by one of the churches. The town long ago lost track of the owner, and there’s no perpetual-care fund. People fresh out of slavery didn’t have hundreds of dollars to pay for a plot, and because of Jim Crow laws that lingered into the mid-’70s, they were kept segregated even in death. There were few records, and double burials weren’t uncommon, not out of disrespect but because after a pine casket deteriorated, grave diggers often found nothing to show that a plot had been occupied. “A lot of people cluck their tongues at that, but it’s more about what they were up against versus what they chose to do,” Orton says. “If they didn’t have a lot of spaces or a lot of money, they would work a deal to do it cheaply, maybe in the middle of the night, because it was the only choice they had.” This cemetery’s fate is common among black gravesites, perched as they almost always are next to train tracks, on land others don’t want. The property for Oak Lawn, next to an existing white cemetery, was purchased by African-American community leaders, the effort led MARKERS: The headstones in Oak by a freed slave. The white Lawn are typically simple and congregation buried nearunadorned. by insisted on a fence dividing the two, but soon even that wasn’t enough, and the majority of the white graves were moved, taking their marble saints and seraphim and leaving behind Sears-catalogue concrete crosses and the calcified remains of memorials made of wood. The site is listed as five acres, but tiers down to the creek stretch it to about eleven, those graves rarely accessible because the overgrowth is a perfect habitat for copperheads and cottonmouths. The place is still historic, in spite of its lack of architectural flourish. “You’re not going to have a lot of angels and pretty headstones,” Orton says, “but you have all this history here, and considering what these individuals went DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018
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through or what their ancestors did, you don’t need statuary to make it historic. It’s the people who make it historic.” By the time Orton found her own kin, her curiosity had been well stoked, and she continued to spend her days in libraries and archives deep in courthouse basements. There are people who help preserve cemeteries by pulling weeds and scrubbing graves, but Orton’s research training at Duke and her physical limitations have primed her for the dusty book work. During college she built her schedule to accommodate her limited energy, “They’re where our grouping her classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that she could ancestors were rest up the rest of the week. She laid to rest with learned time management and to the dignity and persist in the face of frustration. The lupus and the related medirespect they often cations led to depression, which had not had during forced her to take a year off. But their lifetime. The that detour also taught her to pivot when she hits an obstacle and majority are simple take on something else. and unadorned at “Learning how to manage Duke first glance, but pull University while sick helped preback the layers, and pare me for everything else,” she says. “I learned how not to give up, there’s a rich story and that helps a lot out here, beof black history.” cause you just have to stick to it.” She’s been doing this for eleven years and, in that time, she’s seen two Rosenwald schools—the ones built throughout the South to educate African-American children—and three historic black lodges torn down. “How many other things are disappearing right now that I don’t know about?” she says. “I can stay mad and rail, or I can pull up my sleeves and see what I can do to save some of this history.” Orton has identified veterans’ graves and replaced their headstones. As a member of the online community Find A Grave, she has contributed more than 10,000 memorials, internments, and photographs to a site that helps others find their ancestors. She’s working now to get the 140-year-old Mount Calvary Cemetery Complex in Portsmouth, Virginia, recognized on the National Register of Historic Places. She shares stories about her discoveries on her blog, Sacred Ground, Sacred History, and gets e-mails from strangers saying, “Thank you for finding my great-grandfather!” On one level the research is thrilling, because she’s unearthing people’s stories. On another, it is infuriating. “Why is there so much to be discovered? Why isn’t 46 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
this already out there?” she says. “I shouldn’t be able to study for ten minutes and find another Civil War hero that no one knows about.” She waits for another train to pass, then rattles off details of a soldier whose grave had been buried beneath six inches of decomposing tree leaves. Visit after visit she had passed it, which makes her wonder how many more are out here, given that 70 percent of tombstones in historically black cemeteries are missing or hidden by overgrowth. For a time, people here were buried in concrete vaults, their domed roofs flush with the soil, their name and date of birth and death engraved on the top, a solution more sturdy than wooden coffins and cheaper than buying both a vault and a headstone. One here has a stuffed bear in a jar affixed to the top, along with a yard ornament angel and a handful of silk flowers. Four others sport fresh silver paint, their tops swept clean of the ubiquitous pine needles. A series of nearly a dozen are crammed, shoulder-to-shoulder, clearly relocated and shoehorned together, although Orton looks back at the municipal center’s parking lot and wonders how many remains are still under there. For generations community members and congregations paraded to such cemeteries for Decoration Day, spending the day cleaning and placing flowers on their ancestors’ gravesites, picnicking and singing and chanting prayers. But families moved away, elders died off, the records that kept track of who was buried where were destroyed. Orton re-creates them using church lists of congregants who have passed on, but they’re often as vague as “buried at Owen’s Farm” or “Wilson’s Cemetery” or “Mann’s Place”—none of which exists on current maps. There were official records at some point, but when the elders died, the younger generations tossed them out, not understanding their importance. Churches were burned in the ’50s by the Klan, and again in the ’60s and since. The same was true of black-owned funeral homes. So Orton searches old newspapers and church newsletters, property-tax and court records, deeds of trust and obituaries stored in court houses and historical societies. Occasionally she finds something that makes her heart race, like the letter she found in 2015 in the National Archives in Washington from her great-great-great-grandfather to his older brother. But such finds are rare. “If you try to restore a black cemetery, you might know who is buried there but you don’t know where,” she says. “You can get a death list by going through death registers, obituaries, Bible records, maybe mentions in newspaper articles…. You have to look at every scrap of paper you can possibly find, and even then,
RESTORED: Tombstones in historically black cemeteries are often hidden by overgrowth.
you can never get to 100 percent sure.” At Mount Calvary in Portsmouth, where seventy-seven U.S. Colored Troops are interred, she came across the gravestone of a Private Savage, the letters of his first name shallow and hard to read. She took photos from different angles and in varied lighting. She wet the stone; it didn’t help. So she pulled on her gloves and traced the letters of his first name, finding an A, an L, an F. She cross-referenced that with Civil War records and learned that the headstone belonged to Alfred Savage of Company D, Second U.S. Colored Calvary. She then found his name in the 1877 Portsmouth City Directory, an asterisk next to it clarifying that he was “colored.”
As a veteran he should have had a government-issued headstone, so she sought out permission from the family to order a replacement. She first contacted a family member in Cincinnati, who directed her to another family member in Georgia who was interested in genealogy, who directed her to an uncle who lived just ten minutes from the cemetery. On that descendant’s eighty-ninth birthday, Orton was able to take him and his nephew to see their veteran forefather’s grave. “Here are two guys talking about their family history at their ancestor’s gravesite,” she says, smiling at the memory, “and I helped make it happen.” Orton has considered having her own remains interred in an ancestral family cemetery. The laws in Virginia allow a developer to move a cemetery if it hasn’t been active in a quarter century, and the arrival of Orton’s remains would reset that clock. In general, though, she doesn’t think about death. She’s focused instead on rediscovering history. “When I come out here, I see families,” she says. “I see disappointment, triumph, tenacity, history. I’m too excited about that to find these spaces sad or creepy. One day I’m going to be in the ground, too, but until then I just think there’s so much to be done, and I’m happy to do even a little bit of it.” Another train passes as she peels off her gloves and loosens the laces on her boots. She pops open the back of her van and sets them inside, then takes one last look at the asphalt beneath her feet. Next week or maybe the week after she’ll be back, with other members of the Oak Lawn Cemetery Foundation, trying again to save a piece of history. n Latus is a longtime freelance writer and author. She lives in Chapel Hill and sometimes wears the wrong shade of blue. DUKE MAGAZINE WINTER 2018
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ForeverDuke Sanyin Siang ’96, M.B.A. ’02, executive director of the Fuqua/ Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics, was named one of the Top 20 Influencers on LinkedIn.
Courtesy Fuqua School of Business
Valerie Hillings ’93 is the new director of the North Carolina Museum of Art.
On its More in Common series, ABC follows Avery Bond ’15, who lives in a Durham neighborhood where neighbors are committed to a community of inclusion and support of people with disabilities.
Lisa Borders ’79 was named the first president and CEO of Time’s Up, an anti-sexual-harassment organization that is part of the #MeToo Movement.
Rev. William Barber M.Div. ’89, co-chair of the National Poor People’s Campaign, is one of twenty-five awardees of the prestigious 2018 MacArthur Genius Grant, an award that comes with a no-strings-attached fellowship of $625,000 to pursue his work building local coalitions fighting inequality.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
Newsmakers
Courtesy Luis von Ahn
Laura Gentile ’94 was promoted to senior vice president of marketing at ESPN.
Sujal Manohar /The Chronicle
Imani Dorsey ’18 was named Rookie of the Year by the National Women’s Soccer League.
Aditi Singh M.M.S. ’13 was appointed to serve as the general secretary of the Mahila Congress in India.
48 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
Wyatt Rivers ’16 performed on NBC’s The Voice.
Amy Arundale D.P.T. ’11 joined the Brooklyn Nets’ performance team as a rehabilitation therapist. Financial Times Live
Andrew Leon Hanna ’14 won the Bracken Bower Prize for the best proposal for a business book by an author younger than thirty-five. His proposal focuses on the rise of refugee-entrepreneurs in a global crisis.
Courtesy Wyatt Rivers
Luis von Ahn ’00, the cofounder of the popular language-learning platform Duolingo and the cyber-security systems CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, was the recipient of the 2018 Lemelson-MIT Prize, which recognizes a mid-career inventor whose patented product or process has significantly improved society.
Katie Jane Fernelius ’16 and Ishan Thakore ’15 reported and co-produced a radio documentary for BBC World Service titled Neighbourhood: The Battle for the Future of Lagos.
Dylan Hamilton ’10, a pediatric dentist from Durham, competed on Jeopardy! last fall.
7Have news to share
about your achievements and milestones? Submit a class note and read your classmates’ latest news by logging into alumni.duke.edu.
Sterly Wilder ’83, associate vice president for alumni affairs, traveled to Colorado, and remembers ...
I recently
me my own person and make me happy.” It was clear that Robin was very happy that night as she met with fellow alumni, whom she credits as some of her best friends and supporters. This beautiful tree ornament from the governor’s mansion reminds me of the warm crowd in the room as Robin and John circulated, getting to know Duke alumni, and the many new connections that were made that night among guests. Denver is home to nearly 3,000 Blue Devils, and Robin told me it’s her connection to Duke that keeps her motivated and inspired, that reminds her that she’s never truly hanging on by a string. A holiday party, a house full of Blue Devils. By the end of the night, even John asked whether he could be an honorary member of the family. We’ll take them both! n
Christina Holder
had the opportunity to travel to Denver for a Duke alumni holiday party at the governor’s residence at Boettcher Mansion, and that experience was made even more special because the first lady of Colorado—Robin Pringle Hickenlooper ’00—was the host for me and more than 200 Denver-area alumni. Robin studied public policy at Duke and received an M.B.A. from Northwestern University before rising to her current position as senior vice president of corporate development at Liberty Media Corporation. She assumed her other full-time job after her husband, John Hickenlooper, started his second term as governor of Colorado in 2014. “I’m always hanging on by a string,” she told me of her dual roles. “But it’s pretty wonderful to have a husband whose biggest expectation for me as first lady is to achieve in the spheres that make
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DOERS
You could call these alumni
Dr. Dolittles because they do much
to care for and understand animals.
Aaron Sandel ’10, assistant professor, the University of Texas at Austin, who teaches and researches chimpanzee behavior
Rachna Reddy ’12, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, who studies behavior of chimpanzees
Christopher Krupenye Ph.D. ’16, cognitive scientist who found that apes can recognize their peers’ false beliefs
istock
Martin Kratt ’89, co-creator of Zoboomafoo, the syndicated children’s show about lemurs
50 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
Emily Bray ’12, post-doc at the University of Arizona, who studies canine cognition
Martha Seeligson ’87, volunteer zoo keeper at the National Zoo
Tasha Axam ’97, doctor of veterinary medicine at the University of Georgia
Caroline Oeben B.S.E. ’85, owner/ veterinarian, The Cat Doctor
Catherine Workman Ph.D. ’10, senior director, critical species at the National Geographic Society
John Cascarano ’01,
Peter Wainwright ’80, professor at the University of California-Davis and expert on functional morphology in fish
founder of pet grooming products company Rarity Beauty, which operates as Fresh Dog and Fresh Cat
Logan Pallin ’14, Ph.D. candidate at the University of California-Santa Cruz, whose research detected a humpback whale baby boom near Antarctica
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ForeverDuke DUKEISEVERYWHERE
Board of Trustees Re-elections
Sesame Street Number of (New York City) alumni:
15,064
Three alumni have been nominated for re-election to Duke’s board of trustees by the executive committee of the board of directors of the Duke Alumni Association. Stephen (Steve) G. Pagliuca ’77, Carmichael Roberts Jr. ’90, Ph.D. ’95, and Laurene Sperling ’78 are eligible for reelection to a second six-year term on the board.
Instagram: @debgraus
Steve Pagliuca ’77
Courtesy Deborah Grausman
Can you tell us how to get to Sesame Street? Deborah Grausman ’02 can. Here, checking out Oscar the Grouch’s place, Grausman works as an actor, singer, voiceover artist—and currently is the voice of Smartie, an animated smart phone that Elmo uses as a learning tool. “Every day I get to spend on set at @sesamestreet is a special day,” Deborah wrote on her Instagram in January.
Pagliuca is co-chair of Bain Capital, a Boston-based global investment firm. He also serves as the global head of Bain Capital Private Equity’s technology, media, and telecommunications vertical and financial-services vertical. In 1989, he founded Information Partners, a technology-focused venture fund, for Bain Capital. Pagliuca, who earned his M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School in 1982, received the H.B.S. Association of Boston’s 2018 Business and Community Leader of the Year Award for his leadership and his dedication to numerous nonprofits in Boston and beyond. In 2017, he received the Voice of the Child Award from the Massachusetts Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC). In 2010, he received the American Dream Award from Habitat for Humanity for outstanding contributions to enhancing the Greater Boston community. And in 2005, he received the Bright Star Award for his community charitable activities. Pagliuca is also a managing general partner and co-owner of the Boston Celtics and president of the Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation, which helps children gain access to housing, health care, and other services in partnership with local charities. He is also a trustee of Bain Capital Children’s Charity. He and his wife, Judy, have four children: Joe Pagliuca ’07, who played for four
Steve Pagliuca ’77, Carmichael Roberts Jr. '90, Ph.D. '95, Laurene Sperling '78
years on Duke’s men’s basketball team; Jesse Pagliuca; Stephanie Pagliuca ’12, M.D. ’18; and Nick Pagliuca ’17, who was a member of Duke’s 2015 national championship men’s basketball team. Elected to the board of trustees in 2013, Pagliuca is chair of the Advancing Duke Science and Technology Task Force; he is a member of the Executive Committee, Audit and Compliance Committee, and External Engagement Committee.
Carmichael Roberts Jr. ’90, Ph.D. ’95
Roberts is a founding partner of Material Impact, a fund that builds valuable companies that solve real-world problems using innovative materials technology. He is also a member of Breakthrough Energy, a group chaired by Bill Gates that creates and builds companies that address climate change and long-term sustainability. Carmichael started his career in venture as a general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, where he financed and built several successful companies that create innovative products by applying material science, including 1366 technologies, Lyra Therapeutics, and Foro Energy. Roberts also cofounded several companies in which he served in an executive or chair capacity. He has also worked in business development. Roberts joined with prolific inventor George Whitesides and Harvard University to cofound Diagnostics For All Inc., a nonprofit organization that uses a materials platform to make low-cost diagnostics for poor and rural populations in developing nations. He currently serves as chair. Photos courtesy Duke Alumni Association
Roberts was a National Science Foundation Fellow at Harvard’s departments of chemistry and chemical biology. He earned his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management. In 1999, Roberts was named by MIT’s Technology Review as one of the world’s top 100 young entrepreneurs. He serves on the board of overseers of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and on the boards for the National Venture Capital Association, the Consumer Technology Association, and Massachusetts General Hospital Physician Organization. Roberts was recently selected by the Aspen Institute to participate in the Finance Leaders Fellowship program as a senior leader in the venture-capital industry. Roberts and his wife, Sandra Park M.P.P. ’93, J.D. ’96, live in Brookline, Massachusetts, with their three children. Elected to the board of trustees in 2013, Roberts is chair of the External Engagement Committee and is a member of the Executive Committee and the Advancing Duke Science and Technology Task Force. In 2017, he was appointed to the Duke University Health System board of directors, and he currently serves on the Audit and Compliance Committee. Roberts served on the board of directors of the Duke Alumni Association from 2007 to 2013, and on its executive committee from 2008 to 2013.
Laurene Sperling ’78
Sperling is managing trustee of the Sperling Family Charitable Foundation, where she directs its strategic philanthropy in several areas, including education, child and youth development,
very early childhood, health care, and poverty alleviation. A former corporate-finance professional with Paine Webber and Cowen, she has more than thirty years of experience with capital aggregation for corporate and nonprofit organizations seeking positive growth and impact. Sperling graduated from Duke with a major in management science and accounting, and after two years as a CPA with Ernst & Young, she went on to Harvard Business School to receive her M.B.A. in 1982. She is chair of the BELL Foundation, a national leader in after-school and summer programs for children at risk. In addition, she serves on the board of dean’s advisers for Harvard Business School, the Harvard Business School social enterprise board, the dean’s advisory board for Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, the board of Social Ventures U.S., the Brigham Health Women’s Health Leadership Council, and the board of Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Sperling and her husband, Scott, live in Wayland, Massachusetts. They have four children, including Zachary Adam Sperling ’13 and Melanie Elizabeth Sperling ’14. A member of the Duke University Library advisory board from 1997 until 2010, she served as chair from 2006 through 2010. She is also an inaugural member of the Duke’s Women’s Impact Network Leadership Council. Elected to the board of trustees in 2010, Sperling currently serves as vice chair of the board, chair of the Governance Committee, vice chair of the Executive Committee, and a member of the Committee on Honorary Degrees. n DUKE MAGAZINE
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THENNOW
“The biggest challenge I’ve seen in the course of my career is the fact that technology is far ahead of the law and regulations.” —John Yates ’78, J.D. ’81, on the changes in Atlanta’s tech ecosystem over more than thirty years
“For some people, it’s the first time they have heard about this in a small setting from a Republican, a member of the tribe, presenting a different point of view. And that creates some dissonance for them.” —Bob Inglis ’81, on his effort to convert members of his party on climate change
Retro The lending place
It took quite a while for Duke to establish a library on campus. | By Valerie Gillispie
T
track the books. The collections were gathoday, the libraries at Duke University are a hive of activity: As a space ered mostly through donations, and a small for reading, research, data analysis, number of purchases. The literary society the digital humanities, and socialcollections were available only to their own izing, the library is the heart of campus to members and faculty. By 1861, each society many in the Duke community. When the had 2,200 volumes, and a general college institution was first formed, however, this library of 650 titles was available for all students of the newly renamed Trinity College. central feature of today’s campus was absent. By 1887, when President John Franklin In fact, it would take decades for the library Crowell arrived from Yale, it was clear that to occupy a place of prominence. something needed to change. Crowell sugAlthough mentioned in the 1840 minutes gested merging all the libraries—those beof Duke’s long-ago predecessor, Union Institute, no library was created at the outset of longing to literary societies and the general the school’s opening. Creative students decollege library—into one centralized colleccided to fill the gap through the formation tion of about 10,000 volumes. In recognition of his influence, and perhaps lending of two literary societies, the Columbian, organized in 1846, and the Hesperian, estabcredence to the saying, “no good deed goes lished in 1851. Each organization had its own library, as BOOKED: The Trinity College library opened in 1903 and well as a student librarian to was funded by James B. Duke.
“Pastors have, throughout history, been some of the most compelling speakers ever. People have been entertained by pastors for decades.” —Dan Abrams ’88, on why he’s launching a live-streaming Christian sermon channel aimed at millennials
54 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
Photography Duke University Archives
unpunished,” Crowell was elected “librarian-in-chief.” He embraced the role, and wrote: “It has created a new era in the history of the College. Not only has instruction been increased in effectiveness, but the extraordinary interest shown by students in their work individually is going to be one of the best advertisements for the College we could have made.” It was said that the president personally spent an hour a day answering reference questions (this practice does not continue today). Passionate about the cause, Crowell even spent one Christmas holiday studying other East Coast libraries for ideas.
was appointed librarian. Without any formal training in librarianship, Breedlove was sent by then-President John C. Kilgo to be educated in the practice at Amherst College. Kilgo repeatedly stated that the library “is the one department that measures the future development of the College,” and he was willing to invest in the training of his first professional librarian. Soon after, in the summer of 1900, James Buchanan Duke agreed to build a library that could hold 100,000 volumes, and he included $10,000 for books—his first gift to the school. The new library was completIt was said that the president personally spent an hour a ed in December 1902. day answering reference questions. Breedlove wrote about the transfer of materials in his history of the libraries, and his frustration at the outcome is evident. Writing in a rather coy third-person, he recalled, “The librarian wanted to stay on the campus and supervise the moving, but President Kilgo insisted that he take his Christmas vacation and he, the president, would STUDIOUS: The supervise the moving.” Not surprisingly, Crowell could library’s reading It seemed President Kilnot keep up his librarian duties as room, above, and, go did indeed move a well as spearhead the college’s 1892 right, librarian small number of books, move from Randolph County to Joseph P. Breedlove but then decided to go Durham. A new professor, Stephen hunting and put his superintendent of grounds in charge. B. Weeks, arrived in 1891; he was Breedlove and Professor John Spencer Bassett, who had long named librarian and chairman of the Reading Room Committee, which were unpaid duties in addition to his faculty been involved in supporting the library, spent three days and work. Nevertheless, he actively sought to make Trinity into nights desperately trying to restore order. a center of scholarly study for North Carolina and Southern At the February 1903 dedication of the building, journalist, editor, and publisher Walter Hines Page delivered a history. An article by Weeks called “The Renaissance: A Plea message from James B. Duke, who was in New York. Page for the Trinity College Library” ran in many publications reported that Duke had stated, simply, “Tell every man across the state and called for a “library strong in historical to think for himself.” And at last, the school had a purmaterials…. We need missionaries to go from house to house pose-built, dedicated library. It has since grown from fewer for us in a search for these scattered but precious documents than 40,000 volumes in 1903 to nearly 7 million today. New and papers.” Here, we see evidence of the very beginning of libraries have been added, and older ones are updated, such the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke. as the planned expansion and renovation of Lilly Library. Donations of materials began to pour in. The collections and spaces enjoyed today are built upon an Weeks left after a couple of years, and the role of librarian early foundation of creativity, innovation, and enthusiasm was largely fulfilled by student workers. The other improvements he had suggested were likewise neglected due to lack for how a library can transform a campus. n of funding. Gillispie is the university archivist. This changed in 1898. Joseph P. Breedlove, Class of 1898,
Photography Duke University Archives
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ForeverDuke In Memoriam
1930s MORE DUKE MEMORIES ONLINE
Find links to full obituaries for Duke alumni at
alumni.duke.edu
Virginia L. Tillotson Hutcheson ’34 of Dalton, Ga., on Nov. 24, 2016. Norman A. Hyams ’37 of San Rafael, Calif., on Aug. 17, 2015. Grace-George Koehler Pancake ’37 of Staunton, Va., on July 23, 2016. M. Adelaide Buffington Snyder Salinis ’38 of Southampton, Mass., on June 28, 2018.
1940s
Elise D. Curry Brownell ’41 of Selbyville, Del., on June 25, 2018. Robert R. Everett B.S.E.E. ’42 of Mashpee, Mass., on Aug. 15, 2018. Ernestine Rose Chambers R.N. ’43 of Baltimore, on July 8, 2018. Eric S. Dougherty ’43 of Columbus, Ga., on Feb. 21, 2017. Ralph L. Reed B.Div. ’43 of Charlotte, on March 4, 2018. Elizabeth M. Taylor Zipf ’43 of Charlottesville, Va., on June 25, 2018. Henry H. Nicholson Jr. ’44, M.D. ’47 of Charlotte, on June 30, 2018. Nancy J. Pelletier Pansing Wymond ’44 of Marietta, Ohio, on Jan. 1, 2015. Elise T. Ford Knapp ’45 of New Haven, Conn., on Oct. 21, 2018. Nancy Barber Patton ’45 of Asheville, N.C., on Aug. 17, 2018. Margaret E. DeWitt Van Wylen ’45 of Holland, Mich., on Aug. 4, 2018. Cicely A. Laws Anderson B.S.N. ’46 of Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 3, 2018. Harry T. McPherson ’46, M.D. ’48 of Chapel Hill, on Aug. 8, 2018.
The Iron Dukes is known for building champions in athletic competition, in the classroom, and in the community. To continue our trajectory of excellence, we must continue to provide the necessary support for the future successes of our su world class student-athletes. Now is the time to make investments that will build champions. @theirondukes The Iron Dukes The Iron Dukes theirondukes Daniel Jones ´20, Football, Redshirt Sophomore
Mia Gyau´21, Women’s Soccer, Sophomore
The Iron Dukes Office, 367 Scott Family Athletics Performance Center, Box 90542, Durham, NC 27708-0542 (919) 613-7575
56 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
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ForeverDuke Van T. Newman Jr. ’46 of Columbia, S.C., on Oct. 16, 2018. Emma J. Pace Pippin ’46 of Zebulon, N.C., on Sept. 23, 2018. Harry P. Raymond Jr. ’46 of Orlando, Fla., on Aug. 19, 2018. W. John Bentley Jr. ’47 of Nashville, Tenn., on July 27, 2018. Beverly Neely Jackson ’47, M.D. ’51, H ’52 of Fuquay-Varina, N.C., on Nov. 15, 2016. Caroline G. Llewellyn Lent N ’47 of San Diego, on April 5, 2018. Robert E. Lieving B.S.C.E. ’47 of Huntington, W.V., on Sept. 2, 2018. Irene Morris Reiter A.M. ’47 of Philadelphia, on Aug. 8, 2018. Frances A. Taylor Buzard ’48 of Midland, Texas, on Aug. 20, 2018. Claire O. Caskey A.M. ’48 of Clemson, S.C., on Sept. 1, 2018. Ray M. Galloway ’48 of Wilmington, N.C., on July 15, 2018. George L. Irwin ’48 of Greenville, S.C., on July 11, 2018. Donald R. Jones Jr. ’48 of Atlanta, on Aug. 22, 2018. Roland M. Knight ’48 of Greenville, S.C., on Aug. 21, 2018. Sally Bell Potter ’48 of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., on June 16, 2018. Jean Prather Tallman ’48 of Severna Park, Md., on May 22, 2018. Eleanor W. Clardy Wester ’48, Cert. P.T. ’49 of Henderson, N.C., on Aug. 18, 2018. Joe W. Gerstein ’49, J.D. ’52 of Atlanta, on Aug. 24, 2018. Arthur W. Ordel Jr. M.F. ’49 of Keswick, Va., on Sept. 17, 2018. Robert M. Rosemond ’49, M.D. ’53, H ’53 of Sanford, Fla., on July 21, 2018.
1950s
Clyde V. Bryant ’50 of Aiken, S.C., on Sept. 15, 2018. Will J. Clardy Jr. ’50 of Auburn, Wash., on July 29, 2018. William W. Farley H ’50 of Raleigh, on Sept. 7, 2018. John F. Hosner M.F. ’50 of Blacksburg, Va., on Sept. 13, 2018. Gentry H. Lowe Jr. ’50 of Wheaton, Ill., on Oct. 16, 2018. Jack A. Pitt B.S.M.E. ’50 of Blacksburg, Va., on Sept. 13, 2018. Robert R. Roush ’50 of Humble, Texas, on Sept. 5, 2018. Henry Sharp Jr. A.M. ’50, Ph.D. ’52 of Lexington, Va., on Sept. 23, 2018. C. Richard Strauch ’50 of San Diego, on Aug. 5, 2018. William L. Fair M.D. ’51 of Chillicothe, Mo., on Aug. 5, 2018. Norman C. LeGore ’51 of Vineland, N.J., on Sept. 22, 2018. Elliott B. McConnell Jr. ’51 of Boerne, Texas, on Aug. 9, 2018. Paul B. Starnes ’51 of Columbus, N.C., on July 13, 2018. Lena McArthur Smith Wilmer ’51 of Stone Mountain, Ga., on Aug. 9, 2018. Richard B. Dannenberg ’52 of Purchase, N.Y., on July 20, 2018. Margaret A. Speas Pennell Hazlehurst ’52 of Asheville, N.C., on June 21, 2018. Margaret V. Kohl Smith B.S.N.Ed. ’52 of Nazareth, Pa., on Sept. 9, 2018. Lester J. Stauts Jr. ’52 of Chesterbrook, Pa., on July 14, 2018. James F. Stottlar ’52 of Champaign, Ill., on June 22, 2018. Edward R. Strain Jr. Ph.D. ’52 of Greenwood, Ind., on Aug. 31, 2018.
WINTER HALF-PAGE
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INVEST IN YOUR CLASSMATES. WE DO. We are a private VC fund exclusively for Duke alums investing together in toptier venture-backed companies—founded or led by fellow alums. If you are accredited and looking for a smart, simple way to add VC to your portfolio, you should check us out. Towerview Ventures is now open to new investors. LEARN MORE visit www.avgfunds.com/towerview email invest@towerviewventures.com call (603) 945-3877
Each of the various funds of Towerview Ventures is a different series of Launch Angels Funds, LLC, doing business as Alumni Ventures Group Funds (AVG Funds). Each of the Towerview Ventures Funds involves a different investment portfolio and risk-return profile. The manager of each fund of Towerview Ventures is Launch Angels Management Company, LLC, doing business as Alumni Ventures Group (AVG), a Massachusetts-based venture capital firm. AVG is a for-profit company that is not affiliated with, officially sanctioned or endorsed by Duke University or any other school. This advertisement is for informational purposes only, and no offering of securities is made with this advertisement. Offers are made only pursuant to formal offering documents, which describe risks, terms, and other important information that must be considered before an investment decision is made. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and this fund involves substantial risk of loss, including loss of all capital invested. This advertisement is intended solely for accredited investors who accept the responsibility for conducting their own analysis of the investment and consulting with their professional advisors to receive personalized advice with respect to their analysis of this potential investment. Contact Ali Byrd at ali@towerviewventures.com with questions, or requests for additional information on AVG or this fund may be sent to info@avgfunds.com.
ForeverDuke Warren W. Webb Ph.D. ’52 of Nashville, Tenn., on Aug. 6, 2018. Anthony Winston A.M. ’52, Ph.D. ’55 of Morgantown, W.V., on July 30, 2018. Richard D. Floyd III H ’53, H ’60 of Lexington, Ky., on Aug. 8, 2018. Doris J. Blalock Hamlin R.N. ’53 of Greensboro, N.C., on Aug. 14, 2018. L. Ronald Hurst ’53, M.D. ’57, H ’64 of Spartanburg, S.C., on Sept. 6, 2018. Homer L. Isbell H ’53 of Maryville, Tenn., on Aug. 3, 2018. William H. Jones III ’53 of Morehead City, N.C., on Oct. 13, 2018. J. Scott Osborne Jr. G ’53 of Roanoke, Va., on Aug. 15, 2018. Sidney R. Smith Jr. ’53 of Chapel Hill, on Oct. 17, 2018. William T. Winslow ’53 of Goldsboro, N.C., on Aug. 6, 2018. Charles E. Buckley III M.D. ’54, H ’61 of Durham, on June 29, 2018. Leslie C. Campbell ’54 of Hoschton, Ga., on Oct. 20, 2017. Aurelia E. Gray Eller ’54 of Winston-Salem, on Sept. 10, 2018. Joe L. Ervin M.Div. ’54 of Lincolnton, N.C., on Aug. 29, 2018. Patricia A. Moeller Gaylord ’54 of Charlotte, on Sept. 28, 2018. William M. Hames ’54 of Atlanta, on July 30, 2018. Clayton R. Lacy ’54 of Roanoke, Va., on June 30, 2018. Lloyd A. Liatti B.S.M.E. ’54 of Cleveland, on Aug. 8, 2018. Janice B. Cresap Pryor ’54 of Miami, on Aug. 15, 2018. Susan M.J. Briggs Strickland B.S.M.T. ’54 of Asheville, N.C., on June 14, 2018. Martha C. Forbus Suski ’54 of Chesapeake, Va., on July 27, 2018. Fred C. Aldridge Jr. B.S.C.E. ’55 of Haverford, Pa., on Sept. 5, 2018. Gus J. Coutlakis ’55 of McLean, Va., on July 11, 2018. C. Swanson Dodd Jr. ’55 of Henderson, N.C., on Aug. 5, 2018. Robert D. Kennard ’55 of Rising Sun, Md., on Oct. 21, 2018. Betty P. Northington ’55 of Atlanta, on Aug. 18, 2018. George J. Wynne ’55 of Willis Wharf, Va., on Aug. 4, 2018. John D. Bates ’56 of Scottsdale, Ariz., on May 24, 2018. Odessa Southern Elliott ’56 of New City, N.Y., on Aug. 22, 2018. Robert M. Failing M.D. ’56 of Santa Barbara, Calif., on Sept. 1, 2018. Thomas C. Kirkman Jr. B.S.E.E. ’56 of High Point, N.C., on Sept. 21, 2018. Mary Ann Austin Nable ’56 of Sandy Springs, Ga., on July 11, 2018. Calvin A. Pope ’56, J.D. ’58 of Tampa, Fla., on June 11, 2018. David T. Rogers ’56 of Fairfax, Va., on Aug. 26, 2018. Richard C. Shay ’56 of Bonita Springs, Fla., on Jan. 29, 2018. Robert E. James Sr. B.Div. ’57 of Lake Junaluska, N.C., on July 30, 2018. Daniel F. McKeithan Jr. ’57 of River Hills, Wis., on Sept. 21, 2018. Andrew K. Scharps Jr. ’57 of Reno, Nev., on Sept. 21, 2018. Mary Louise Cofer Stark ’57 of Monroe, Ga., on July 22, 2018. Gayle Chandler Winsor B.S.N. ’57 of Asheville, N.C., on Sept. 15, 2018. Shelbia J. Looper Lengel ’58 of Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 27, 2018. Julia A. Gardner Parks B.S.N. ’58 of Tuscarora, Nev., on July 17, 2018. David A. Quattlebaum III ’58, LL.B. ’61 of Greenville, S.C., on June 27, 2018. Elizabeth A. Cannon Rollins B.S.N. ’58 of Greensboro, N.C., on Aug. 16, 2018. Beverly D. Mann Shores ’58 of Cincinnati, on June 24, 2018. Gary W. Bradford ’59 of Georgetown, Texas, on Oct. 14, 2018. Nancy deLong Kent ’59 of Colorado Springs, Colo., on Sept. 1, 2018. M. Arthur Nesmith Jr. M.D. ’59 of Gainesville, Fla., on Oct. 16, 2018. Mary F. Sayre Tilbury B.S.N. ’59 of Indianapolis, on Oct. 13, 2018. Rosalie B. Bryan Tipton ’59 of Houston, on Aug. 14, 2018. Hilda A. McConnell Willis Yost ’59 of Charlotte, on Aug. 24, 2018.
1960s
Lester G. Brady M.Div. ’60 of Columbia, S.C., on July 10, 2018. David D. Drummond Jr. B.S.M.E. ’60 of Nashville, Tenn., on Sept. 18, 2018. Carol Thomas Guice ’60 of Hattiesburg, Miss., on May 25, 2018. Nilah P. Meier-Youngman M.A.T. ’60 of Anderson, Ind., on Aug. 31, 2018. Walter D. Padow ’60 of Plantation, Fla., on Oct. 2, 2018. Larry E. Parsons B.S.C.E. ’60 of Rocky River, Ohio, on Aug. 29, 2018. Carolyn J. Mister Roberson ’60 of Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 1, 2018. Kenneth P. Walz ’60 of Big Rapids, Mich., on Sept. 22, 2018. Martin G. Buehler B.S.E.E. ’61, M.S. ’63 of Pullman, Wash., on May 16, 2018. Merrie Jo Seymour Stattenfield ’61 of Columbus, Ind., on Aug. 6, 2018. Walter B. Mead A.M. ’62, Ph.D. ’68 of Germantown Hills, Ill., on Aug. 8, 2018. John L. Rauschenberger M.F. ’62 of Swannanoa, N.C., on Sept. 6, 2018. Robert N. Thomas LL.B. ’62 of Sebastopol, Calif., on Aug. 1, 2018. Norman A. Fordyce Jr. ’63 of Emporia, Kan., on June 22, 2018. Edward A. Johnson B.S.C.E. ’63 of Jamestown, N.C., on June 29, 2018. Theodore A. Keith ’63 of Winston-Salem, on Sept. 8, 2018. David J. Truitt ’64 of Salem, Ore., on July 18, 2018. George J. Baer II ’65 of Houston, on June 24, 2018. Susan J. Dunkel A.M. ’65 of Sebring, Fla., on Aug. 20, 2018. H.G. Jones Ph.D. ’65 of Pittsboro, N.C., on Oct. 14, 2018. George P. Kelley B.S.C.E. ’65 of Montclair, N.J., on June 18, 2018.
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ForeverDuke Richard V. McCloskey H ’65 of Malvern, Pa., on July 8, 2018. James A. Brown Jr. Ph.D. ’66 of Arlington, Va., on Aug. 1, 2018. James R. Harvey B.S.E.E. ’66 of Orlando, on Aug. 29, 2018. Berna J. Williams Wadey ’66 of Winston-Salem, on Aug. 21, 2018. J. Frederick Grassle Ph.D. ’67 of Princeton, N.J., on July 6, 2018. William J. Hart ’67, M.H.A. ’70 of Lake Bluff, Ill., on Sept. 26, 2018. William H. Osborne Jr. M.Div. ’67 of Salisbury, N.C., on Sept. 19, 2018. C. Michael Abbott J.D. ’68 of Atlanta, on Oct. 8, 2018. Kenneth M. Calestro ’68 of Columbus, Ohio, on Aug. 14, 2018. Barrett W. Dick H ’68 of Bradenton, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2018.
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Stuart M. Foss J.D. ’68 of Birmingham, Ala., on Aug. 20, 2018. Jeffrey J. Park ’68 of Milwaukee, on Aug. 30, 2018. Guy D. Clifton ’69 of Lone Tree, Colo., on Sept. 29, 2018. Ann Howe Billings Harwell Hilton ’69 of Nashville, Tenn., on Aug. 12, 2018. Leslie T. Lytle A.M. ’69, Ph.D. ’73 of Cincinnati, on July 9, 2018.
1970s
Brenda E. Armstrong ’70, H ’79 of Durham, on Oct. 7, 2018. Constance N. Stopper Berman ’70 of Media, Pa., on Aug. 21, 2018. Charles H. Fetzer A.M. ’70 of Oriental, N.C., on Aug. 1, 2018. William L. McGuffin Jr. M.D. ’70 of Wetumpka, Ala., on Sept. 17, 2018. James M. Seamon ’70 of Punta Gorda, Fla., on June 20, 2017. Robert V. Dodd M.Div. ’71 of Matthews, N.C., on June 1, 2018. Merwin D. Grant J.D. ’71 of Mesa, Ariz., on Oct. 11, 2018. Richard L. Moose Ph.D. ’71 of Rural Retreat, Va., on Aug. 30, 2018. William S. Reese ’71 of Coral Gables, Fla., on July 10, 2018. David W. Adkins M.Div. ’72 of Stephens City, Va., on Sept. 14, 2018. Donald E. Byrne Jr. Ph.D. ’72 of Harrisburg, Pa., on July 10, 2018. Mary E. Dinkins ’72 of Durham, on Sept. 4, 2018. Jack T. Feldman ’72 of Baltimore, on Sept. 7, 2018. Howard C. Wiener III J.D. ’73 of Washington, D.C., on July 9, 2018. Deborah M. Dickens Ramey M.A.T. ’74 of Memphis, Tenn., on June 17, 2018. David G. Burleson Ph.D. ’75 of San Antonio, on Aug. 18, 2018.
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Good Question An Exploration in Ethics
Photography: Betsy Ferney/LittleElephantPhoto.com
Ihistory s writing an ethical enterprise?
When writing about places and people in history, ethical questions arise. What are my ethical responsibilities as a writer and a scholar? The answers are not always clear. Historians balance responsibilities to ourselves, our work, and the public. When writing about the past, we have obligations to the dead and the living: to treat historical subjects honestly, fully, and with integrity. And to our readers we also have a responsibilit y: to give a full sense of our subject even if we may not like or agree with all that they were about. At the end of the day, we aim to foster an informed critical engagement with the past. And, with that, enhance critical thinking in the present. I believe that there is something important—a moral imperative— about dwelling in complexity. We should all work to face ourselves fully, as individuals and communities, and ask hard questions about who we have been and who we want to be. Writing history offers me a way to do that.
Studying history pushes you to take a step back. You have to think seriously and subtly about other people, their ideas, and their lives. You have to make imaginative and empathetic leaps in order to create explanations for why certain events in history happened the way they did. You have to see that people always work with some kind of logic, even if it seems illogical or abhorrent. You have to name contexts as the frame of both constraint and possibility. You must work with complex understanding rather than take comfort in simple explanations. When writing about people whose thinking seems alien, you must treat them with as much care as folks who feel familiar. For example, I often quote historian Barbara Jeanne Fields, who reminds us that taking former slaveholders seriously doesn’t mean taking them literally. Most of us aren’t staunch defenders of chattel slavery, but we have only partially dismantled the world slavery helped to build. Fragments remain. You cannot successfully deal with people’s choices and legacies if you refuse to understand them. When I write about topics that are especially painful—violence against children, lynching, torture —clinical detachment seems both horrible and
is something “There important—a
moral imperative— about dwelling in complexity.”
necessary. Horrible because you never want to forget the humanity embedded in your stories. Necessary because the temptation is to see the perpetrators as less than human. When we write about “horrible people,” the reader often has the easy comfort of thinking they, themselves, could never act that way. But it is not responsible or ethical to reassure the reader that “that was then (or them) and this is now (or us).” I try to be clear that there are few exceptional horrors or pathologies— we are connected to other things, both the places and things where we are now in time and space and the places and things that are further afield. In deciding what to make of those connections, we are shaping our ethical choices.
Adriane Lentz-Smith
Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics Associate Professor, Department of History, Duke University Host, The Ethics of NOW conversations
The Kenan Institute for Ethics is an interdisciplinary “think and do” tank committed to understanding and addressing real-world ethical challenges facing individuals, organizations, and societies worldwide. Learn more at dukeethics.org.
ForeverDuke Daniel C. Hankey ’75 of Marietta, Ga., on Aug. 7, 2018. Dean R. Lambe Ph.D. ’76 of Teaneck, N.J., on Sept. 14, 2018. Ellen Lancaster ’76 of Walnut Creek, Calif., on July 25, 2018. Patrick H. Moulton H ’76 of Nashville, Tenn., on Aug. 7, 2018. Lea F. Courington J.D. ’77 of Dallas, on June 30, 2018. Stuart L. Peacock M.F. ’77 of Little Rock, Ark., on Sept. 16, 2018. Michael D. Becker M.H.A. ’78 of Monticello, Fla., on Aug. 29, 2017. Brenda C. Coleman ’78 of Chicago, on July 4, 2018. Nancy Elizabeth Sullivan ’78 of Woodstock, Va., on July 3, 2018. Glen O. Brindley H ’79 of Temple, Texas, on Aug. 1, 2018. Richard B. Cartwright M.Div. ’79 of Alexandria, Pa., on Aug. 3, 2018. Joe M. McCaig M.H.A. ’79 of Cantonment, Fla., on July 7, 2018. Jon C. Yergler J.D. ’79 of Winter Park, Fla., on Sept. 6, 2018.
1980s
David L. Kennedy ’80 of Fayetteville, N.C., on Oct. 3, 2018. Joseph J. Billadello H ’81 of St. Louis, on Aug. 8, 2018. Thomas C. Havens ’82 of Port Washington, N.Y., on Aug. 27, 2018. Joseph L. Littles M.B.A. ’84 of Wallace, S.C., on March 21, 2015. Jenifer A. Kohout ’86 of Anchorage, Alaska, on July 23, 2018. Annette E. Jimenez Murphy ’86 of La Jolla, Calif., on Jan. 14, 2017. John A. Flyger A.M. ’87, J.D. ’87 of Rockville, Md., on July 8, 2018. Mark E. Lynch Jr. ’87 of Cooper City, Fla., on Dec. 14, 2016. Jennifer M. McHugh ’88 of Newtown Square, Pa., on Aug. 7, 2018. James B. Wilson M.B.A. ’89 of Aurora, Ill., on Sept. 18, 2018.
1990s
DUKE PERFORMANCES DUKE UNIVERSITY’S WORLD-CLASS PERFORMING ARTS PRESENTER
Dennis E. Everett M.B.A. ’90 of Charlotte, on Oct. 14, 2018. Holly M. Hammarstrom B.S.E. ’91, M.S. ’93 of London, on July 8, 2016. Michael Smith M.B.A. ’92 of Atlanta, on July 11, 2018. Gregory S. O’Neill A.M. ’93, Ph.D. ’97 of Washington, D.C., on Sept. 5, 2018. William M. Fackler M.T.S. ’94 of Jacksonville, Fla., on Aug. 22, 2018. Talfort E. Thompson ’94 of Good Hope, Ga., on Aug. 7, 2018. Christopher C. Westlake M.B.A. ’97 of Bozeman, Mont., on Sept. 5, 2018. Judson A. Wolfe M.F. ’97 of Houston, on Aug. 30, 2018. William J. Colwell A.M. ’99, J.D. ’99 of McLean, Va., on July 15, 2018. Giampiero Cotellessa LL.M. ’99 of Casalecchio di Reno, Italy, on Aug. 10, 2018.
2000s
Thibaud Van Rillas LL.M. ’01 of Paris, in May 2018. Luke A. Haseloff M.B.A. ’06 of New York, on Sept. 11, 2018.
2010s
Zachary D. Shrock M.S. ’17 of Temple, Texas, on Sept. 22, 2018.
DUKEPERFORMANCES.ORG 64 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
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uke TIP offers high school students life-changing summer opportunities to study advanced topics on the Duke University campus or in unique field locations. Learn more at tip.duke.edu/fieldstudies.
We’re also hiring now for instructional, administrative, and residential life positions working with gifted students in grades 4–12 online and on college campuses across the Southeast. Teachers, professors, advanced degree candidates, and undergraduate students with at least two years of college experience are all welcome to apply for the summer of 2019. Email jobs@tip.duke.edu for more information or visit tip.duke.edu/employment to learn more.
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WORKINPROGRESS
A LOOK AT STUDENT PROJECTS AS THEY DEVELOP
Strange Loop Vijay Rajkumar A.M. ’18
Vijay Rajkumar
T
he labyrinthine sculpture pictured here, Strange Loop, is the second of two art installations I produced as part of my master’s thesis and was installed on campus at Smith Warehouse for the month of October. My thesis is an exploration of how artificial neural networks, the underlying computational framework of many contemporary artificial-intelligence (A.I.) systems, could be co-opted for the production of art. I propose an approach to design that combines machine-learning algorithms and human-aesthetic intuition, informed by contemporary and historical research of art history, to produce an original hybrid artform. Inspired by work from artists like Olafur Eliasson, James Turrell, Richard Serra, and Robert Irwin, Strange Loop is an immersive installation that plays with mechanics of perception through the manipulation of light and space. Central to
66 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
the installation is an array of colorful banners, suspended in midair, that span the spectrum of light visible to humans. Textures on these banners result from an algorithmic process that repurposes a neural network trained to recognize objects in images to instead generate imagery based on what the A.I. system understands. Featured textures, ranging from abstract lines and contours to more figurative forms of faces, flowers, and architecture, reflect the hierarchical, filtering structure by which both artificial neural networks and the human visual system process information. In encountering and moving through Strange Loop, audiences find themselves looking at looking: The installation models a world in which contemporary human perception is filtered not only through color, but also through the abstraction of data and machine intelligence. n
FUQUABusiness Prepared exclusively for FUQUA
Alumni
FUQUAFOCUS
Tools for a new kind of leadership Students learn to respond to the demands of the workplace and the world. ENGAGING: Associate Professor Ashleigh Shelby Rosette's class, Women in Leadership, has proven to be a popular and timely addition to Fuqua's course catalog. Justin Cook
FUQUAupdate
Changes to Weekend Executive M.B.A. program mean greater accessibility, more students
M
ore working parents and West Coast residents are applying to the Weekend Executive M.B.A. program since the in-person residency requirement has been reduced to one weekend per month, says Mohan Venkatachalam, senior associate dean for executive programs. Previously, students were required to report to Fuqua every two weeks for Friday and Saturday classes. Now, the residency is once a month on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then on Hybrid Saturday, students have the option of attending in person or virtually.
student speaks, the camera shifts so that person appears on the smaller monitor. “So the virtual student gets the experience of being physically present,” Venkatachalam says. “They get the sense of being in the class. The time they are giving on Saturday is no different than students attending physically. That way we maintain the rigorous academics of the program.” The class also has a “co-pilot” who recognizes virtual students; if they have a question or comment, the co-pilot advises the faculty member. “[Co-pilots] will put their hand up and act as a medium between virtual students and the faculty member,” Venkatachalam says. The co-pilot identifies the student, and the faculty mem“...the virtual student gets the experience of being physically present." ber acknowledges that student, who then appears on the screen. Venkatachalam credits state-of-the-art conferencing Because it enables one fewer monthly trip to the technology with making this new schedule with HyDurham campus, Hybrid Saturday alleviates a disrupbrid Saturday work. Students may participate virtually tion to students’ work schedules and makes the Weekend Executive MBA more accessible. using an electronic platform. There are two monitors “You can imagine a working parent with a young in the back of the room. On the bigger screen, the child facing the challenge of lining up child care for content streams via video, while the faculty member is two weekends every month,” he says. n teaching before students seated in the room. Anytime a 68 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
istock
Professor Wesley Cohen recognized as Citation Laureate
New certificate program digs deeper into
W
Courtesy Fuqua School of Business
esley M. Cohen, professor of economics and management and the Snow Family Professor of business administration at Fuqua, was recognized as one of 17 Citation Laureates for 2018 by Clarivate Analytics for his work on innovative labor. The honor recognized Cohen’s contribution to advancing understanding of the innovative performance of firms, industries, and nations. Cohen studies innovation and the conditions, corporate structures, and relationships that nourish innovative performance. His work helps managers and policymakers understand how best to foster innovation. The citation honors researchers whose work is deemed to be of Nobel stature in physics, chemistry, economics, physiology and medicine. n
BIG DATA
F
uqua’s new certificate in Management Science and Technology Management (MSTeM) will equip students with skills in analytics and management technology, says Russ Morgan, senior associate dean for full-time programs. “We are very excited to be offering more robust programming in an area of study that is so important to business today,” Morgan says. “Every aspect of business is being enhanced by analytics in some way. People who can identify insights, explain the business implications effectively, and put action behind that information have a huge competitive advantage.” The certificate is available to current Daytime M.B.A. students and requires the completion of eight electives from a menu of qualifying classes. “Data Analytics,” and “Innovation and Cryptoventures (Use of Blockchain)” are examples of courses that are targeted to better prepare students for careers that are more analyt“We have a large ics-focused. “We have a large number of students number of students who go into technology companies, and who go into technology we want to make sure we are helping companies, and we want them prepare for positions at Amazon, to make sure we are Microsoft, or Cisco, or another tech helping them prepare firm,” Morgan says. This will be the third certificate offered for positions at Amazon, for Daytime M.B.A. students, following Microsoft, or Cisco, or certificates in Health Sector Management another tech firm.” and Financial Excellence. MSTeM qualifies for a designation as a program specializing in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), which has work implications for students who graduate with the certificate and go to work in STEM-related jobs. Homeland Security’s STEM designation for the MSTeM certificate means it allows international students three years of work authorization in the United States, compared to one year for non-STEM courses, Morgan explains. Students who are eligible receive an additional twenty-four months of Optional Practical Training (OPT). n istock DUKE MAGAZINE
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COVER STORY
S
continued from page 67 . . .
A new kind of leadership
within George M.B.A. ’19 already knew a lot about leadership when he came to Fuqua. As the lead manager for the Enterprise Architecture team at Caesars Entertainment, he’d been tasked with architecting and executing technology integration solutions for one of the largest IT transformation initiatives under way in the gaming industry. But it became clear to him that his technical abilities were only a part of what he needed to move forward. As he thought through next steps, he considered what he didn’t know.
goal by constantly asking if Fuqua is meeting the needs of both sides of the market. “Fuqua has always recruited high-quality students,” he says. “But the other side of the coin is re-evaluating the skills employers are demanding. What are the unmet needs recruiters are looking for? What types of talent?” One of those needs is a demand for workers with the ability to find solutions to real-world business problems in data analytics, he says. That led to the creation of the Master of Quantitative Management (MQM) programs, which provide training in analytics and communication. Daytime M.B.A. students also have the opportunity to dive into analytics through Fuqua’s new certificate in Management Science and Technology Management (MSTeM). Companies have been slow to grasp how big data can transform their organizations, says Jeremy Petranka, the assistant dean for the Master of Quantitative Management: Business Analytics program. “There’s still a divide between the wranglers of data and the users of data,” he says. “It still feels like people are viewing analytics as an add-on tool and not as a potentially central tool to help run an organization.” These tools have been around for decades, Petranka explains. But now companies can use high-speed computers to spit out answers in an afternoon SYNERGY: Student leaders connect with their teams to create an instead of days. The ten-month MQM environment that fosters excellence. program produces graduates who know what questions to ask in order to get the answers that solve business problems. “Students are learning how to frame the question: How “As I progress through my career and specifically work do you use these tools to ask questions in each business toward becoming a leader focused on technology and innovation, I’ve had a humbling epiphany that there is a lot that domain? And how do you communicate those insights?… I need to learn,” he says. “The value is right at Fuqua with That’s the world we are in,” Petranka says. “We are not the emphasis on enabling my team to do the best work they auto mechanics. We are the racecar drivers.” can. I saw a mutual fit between Fuqua and me and being Fuqua is one of the first top business schools to have a successful.” specialized master’s focused on analytics. George is just the kind of student Fuqua Dean Bill Bould“Big data,” Petranka says, “is the wave of the future.” ing wants to attend the school—those with what he’s termed Of course, to take advantage of any program at Fuqua triple-threat leadership capability, a combination of the raw requires access to the school; already, for many students, intelligence known as IQ, emotional intelligence or EQ, and technology has brought campus closer. Still, a tweak to a decency quotient or DQ. An effective leader must have the the Weekend Executive M.B.A. program has made it even smarts, the ability to connect and relate, and an interest in more accessible. the success of the whole team. Students are now required to come to campus only once The school’s curriculum and accessibility are evolving to a month for three days, instead of twice a month for two. A reflect the skills needed in a changing society where techHybrid Saturday class is mandatory but students can attend nology is so rapidly advancing. physically or virtually. Senior Associate Dean Russ Morgan takes aim at that George, who is married with a four-year-old daughter,
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was able to attend Fuqua because of this change. He’s based in Las Vegas and it takes him a workday to travel because of the five-and-half-hour flight, along with several hours waiting in the airport. There are a lot of demands on his time, including getting his daughter to school, and his wife works full-time. “The hybrid week is a lot easier and workable in my schedule,” says thirty-six-year-old George. “My employer is highly supportive. Twice a month would be harder.” The flexibility in the schedule seems to have attracted more women to the program, as well as people who live beyond the Southeast region of the U.S. That’s important because Fuqua is also striving for more diversity and inclusion across the board in what Morgan calls both “observable and unobservable” factors.
of these questions come down to their own values. I’m giving them the motivation to reflect on those values. It’s muscle memory. If you practice flexing those muscles, it makes it easier to come to a decision when the time comes. That’s how I think about the role of my class.” Also inspiring students to reflect is a “Women in Leadership” class taught by Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, an associate professor of management and organizations and a scholar at the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics. While the pilot course only meets once a week for six weeks, it covers a lot of terrain. The first class, “Stereotypes, Bias, and Barriers,” lays the foundation for the course’s purpose. Subsequent topics include navigating male-dominated organizations, sexual harassment and gender discrimination, and work/life balance. The class also delves into intersection-
“Where you really benefit as a team is when you are exposed to ideas, experiences, and cultures that you don’t directly know." “We want to see diversity in work experience, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, international representation from various countries, various regions of the U.S. and socioeconomics. Some of these are harder to measure,” he says. The goal isn’t just cosmetic; diversity and inclusion are key ingredients in fostering the innovative leadership Fuqua aims to cultivate. “Where you really benefit as a team is when you are exposed to ideas, experiences, and cultures that you don’t directly know,” Morgan says. “Students are not just learning from faculty and staff, they learn from their classmates.” The importance of this cross-cultural understanding can be seen in a business climate in which CEOs are expected to take positions on social and political issues in an increasingly polarized world. Professor Aaron Chatterji offers an “Advanced Corporate Strategy” class to introduce students to CEO activism and how social issues and politics affect business. Chatterji says his course is not common in business schools. He’s seen courses about non-market strategies, which cover understanding government and legal institutions and how they work, but not with a focus on politics in business. “I wanted to fill that gap. An overview of leading political issues draws implications for business and gives them practice in responding. We discuss inequality, diversity, fake news, climate change, and the #metoo movement and how it’s changing the job description for CEOs,” Chatterji says. He notes that social media often hypercharges these issues, fueling consumers to react one way or another. CEOs have to be pretty careful in taking positions, Chatterji says. Some may turn off certain customers, and others have received support. “I’m not trying to give students the answer,” he says. “A lot
ality—how women differ by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion, along with a multitude of other identities. “It brings the idea to the forefront that gender can influence the trajectory of women’s careers at different points,” Rosette says. When Rosette initially offered the class, she was expecting about twenty to twenty-five students sitting in a roundtable forum. She was surprised when more than eighty people registered. Sixty people are in the class, and several students were put on a waiting list. “This is a good problem to have,” she says. Among the students who made it in was second-year M.B.A. McKenzie Beaver, who was an associate director of client services for a consumer-insight agency before coming to Fuqua. Beaver says she immediately signed up for the class because she remembered Rosette’s energy and enthusiasm during a speech about women in leadership roles Beaver heard as a prospective student. “Her class looked at leadership from a variety of angles,” says Beaver. “It opened my eyes to the way women are often stereotyped and how we can overcome those stereotypes. If we recognize prejudice, we can fix and address the issue.” As Beaver is continuing on her path to possessing modern leadership skills, George says he’s already begun to apply what he’s been learning in the Weekend Executive program. Over the past year, he’s assisted with moving back-office systems to a leading cloud platform, delivering significant efficiencies to its financial organization, and he says he has been better able to negotiate with his peers and vendors. “So far the program has exposed me to a lot of concepts around leadership and accounting,” George says. “I’m seeing great results.” n DUKE MAGAZINE
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FUQUAFOCUS:
FAC U LT Y P R OF I L E
Associate Professor Keisha M. Cutright explores the links between personal psychology and consumer behavior.
K
eisha Cutright grew up in a Southern Baptist family in Cincinnati. “I didn’t realize how religious the household was until I went to college. I didn’t think we were different than the masses,” she says. Eventually, her family’s system of beliefs would lay the foundation for the associate professor of marketing’s groundbreaking research. Cutright’s research explores the psychological drivers of consumer behavior, including religion, personal control, culture, and emotion. Her work has been published in top-tier academic journals, including the Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of Marketing Research, and mainstream newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal and Fast Company.
Justin Cook
Cracking codes of consumerism
another because both allow individuals to express their feelings of self-worth,” she writes in the report. In 2015, Cutright was named one of the world’s forty best business-school professors under the age of forty by the Poets and Quants news website. When the website staff asked about the professors she most admired, she praised her “very patient Ph.D. advisers at Duke: Jim Bettman and Gavan Fitzsimons.” At the time, Cutright was working as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. She received her bachelor’s in business administration from Ohio State University and her Ph.D. in marketing from Fuqua in 2011. When she returned to Fuqua in 2016 as a faculty member, her professors became her peers. “I loved my colleagues and students at Wharton, but Fuqua has always felt like home,” she says. “We theorize that brands and religiosity may serve as “The ‘Team Fuqua’ spirit is one that resonates not only among our stusubstitutes for one another because both allow individuals dents, but also our faculty, and makes to express their feelings of self-worth.” it a really special place.” Before returning to the classroom as In her February 2018 research paper, “In God’s Hands: a faculty member, Cutright worked in brand management at How Reminders of God Dampen the Effectiveness of Fear Procter & Gamble for three years, on the Charmin brand. “I Appeals,” Cutright found that people thinking about God loved my job and coworkers, but from a marketing standpoint, aren’t as interested in products that offer precautionary benI was interested in understanding consumers’ needs beyond efits when the advertising is rooted in fear. Cutright worked particular product categories.” She’s had that interest in psychology since high school, she says. She views teaching marwith Eugenia Wu of the University of Pittsburgh. keting as understanding customers and their underlying needs. Her findings suggest marketers should think twice about She sees her research as valuable to consumers because she using fear-based advertising in highly religious areas of the examines what influences their everyday behavior. “If you are country or among people who are more likely to be religious, making decisions that are not optimal, you can change that,” as in older populations. “You could likely sell the same product, but you should use a different tactic.” she says. “My most surprising research that comes from the religion How does Cutright describe herself as a consumer? The wife realm is the more religious you are the more likely you are to and mother of three says her primary goal is to be efficient. “I buy generics,” she says. In that 2011 study, “Brands: The Opilook for the things that get the job done without a lot of work ate of the Nonreligious Masses?” she found that when you can or searching. I’m not as price-sensitive as I was before. I want express yourself through religious beliefs and positions, you to find things quickly and know they will show up reliably. I don’t need to express yourself through a brand. “We theorize do most of my shopping on Amazon. That’s my ideal place to that brands and religiosity may serve as substitutes for one get it done.” n 72 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
FUQUAFOCUS:
A LU M N I P R OF I L E
The potential profit in people
Alumnus Oris Stuart sees the value in diversity and inclusion.
Courtesy Fuqua School of Business
O
ris Stuart M.B.A. ’89 knows how to find comso much more than that. Diversity is a reflection of our experimon ground with people. ences, our upbringing, our values, our religious beliefs, and our “I firmly believe through a series of questions philosophy on life. Inclusion is the act and behavior.” you can find a significant amount of commonalStuart explains that in basketball, insiders like to say, “Diity with most people you come in contact with,” versity is who is on the team. Inclusion is who is getting in he says. “When you look at hobbies, religious beliefs, and the game.” values, there are so many more similarities between us than Earlier in his career, Stuart was a senior business manager and a strategy, operations, there are differences.” and technology consultant As executive vice pres“Diversity is who is on the team. ident and chief diversity for Deloitte, Providian, and and inclusion officer at the Inclusion is who is getting in the game.” Wingspan Technology. National Basketball AssociBut it was during his time ation, Stuart is responsible at Fuqua that Stuart gained for developing and overseeing diversity and inclusion stratethe insight and exposure that allowed him to pivot from techgies globally for the NBA, WNBA, NBA G-League, and the nology to diversity and inclusion, a growing field. NBA 2K League. “At Fuqua, I learned the foundation principles of what He provides strategic guidance, leadership, and best pracdrives businesses. I learned organizational behavior and detices on diversity and inclusion matters to the league offices velopment,” he says. “So as a diversity and inclusion leader, I and teams; leads efforts to increase the number of minority understand how you work with people and get the best out and women-owned suppliers; and drives efforts to attract, deof them in a business context. It allows me to talk to business velop, and retain diverse talent leaguewide. “Diversity is most leaders about the value of inclusion and diversity in business often associated with physical dimensions that we represent: terms.” race, ethnicity, gender, and age,” Stuart says. “But diversity is Stuart also leads the NBA’s global diversity and inclusion council to ensure engagement on the league’s diversity and inclusion strategies at all levels. He’s been with the NBA since June 2015. Before joining the NBA, he spent two years as a senior partner with Korn Ferry, one of the largest executive-search and talent-management firms, where he led its inclusion and diversity practice and served as the global consulting leader for the company’s life sciences practice. He provided organizational, strategic, and technology advisory services that helped directors, chief executives, and senior leaders address challenges in global talent. He also served as the chief executive officer for Global Novations, a preeminent diversity and inclusion consultancy and training firm. During his tenure with Global Novations, Stuart supported clients across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America; guided the expansion of the firm’s technology and consulting platforms; oversaw a tenfold increase in the firm’s size; and engineered its ultimate acquisition by Korn Ferry in 2012. “The power of diversity and the power of inclusion are to develop new approaches and new ideas,” he says, “and to break through the old and break through the mold.” n DUKE MAGAZINE
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FUQUAWOMEN ON THE RISE
1971
The FIRST FEMALE M.B.A. STUDENT matriculated
living Fuqua alumnae
ALUMNAE IN THE
C-SUITE CEO of the American Academy of Pediatrics CEO of Art.com CMO of the Graduate Management Admission Council CMO of CIGNA CFO of Merge Records CDO of Microsoft COO of the Emily Krzyzewski Family Life Center CLO of Vanguard
STUDENT MEMBERS in the Association of Women in Business
333
FEMALE GRADUATES in the 2018 M.B.A., M.M.S., and M.Q.M. classes
The percentage of women in the DAYTIME M.B.A. CLASS OF 2020 (8 percentage point YOY increase)
42% WOMEN’S FORTE FELLOWSHIP recipients across three M.B.A. programs in 2018-19
43%
of PROFESSIONAL DAYTIME M.B.A. STUDENT CLUB PRESIDENTS are women
Current M.B.A. Association CO-PRESIDENT
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PROGRAMS Admissions Weekend for Women Celebrates 15 years The Duke M.B.A. Weekend for Women event offers all prospective female students a unique opportunity to sample Duke in the company of other women and those who support their success.
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Inaugural Women in Leadership Course Launched in 2018 “I want to help students to better comprehend—and, most important, navigate—the barriers and obstacles that women—and men—sometimes face when they seek and occupy leadership roles.” - Ashleigh Shelby Rosette Associate Professor of Management and Organizations
STUDENT BODY
ALUMNAE
6,412
330
Return on inspiration
Analyzing international challenges. Leveraging corporate insights. Scaling social change. Giving to Duke supports the greatest ambitions of our students today to create unprecedented value in the world tomorrow.
Made possible by you. Keller Scholar Juliana Collamer M.B.A.’20 says Duke donors are her “fairy godparents.” Donors’ hard-earned dollars fund her merit scholarship and contribute to making her dreams come true by arming her with business skills to tackle social issues, and enabling her to generate social good for international nonprofit organizations like Rise Against Hunger while she is a student at The Fuqua School of Business.
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WINTER 2018
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History, memorials, and inclusion on campus
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Photo taken while Arabic studies major Marivi Howell-Arza ’19 traveled to Jordan to learn more about mental health as a sustainable development goal in the region. After graduation, Marivi aims to pursue a career as a clinical social worker to better serve refugees who are in the process of resettlement.
