Duke Blue

Blue: new trustee chair

 

Office of News and Communications

The board of trustees has a new chair: Daniel T. Blue Jr. J.D. '73, a Duke Law School graduate and veteran North Carolina legislator, succeeds Robert K. Steel '73, who had held the position since 2005.

Blue is currently serving as a state senator in the North Carolina General Assembly. From 1980 to 2002, he was a state representative. He served as speaker of the state House of Representatives in the early 1990s and was the first African American to hold that position.

In the 2002 Democratic primary, he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. Senate against Erskine Bowles, currently the president of the University of North Carolina system. In 2006, Blue returned to the North Carolina house; he was appointed to his current post in the senate earlier this year.

Blue received a bachelor's degree from North Carolina Central University in 1970. After earning his law degree, he worked in the law offices of former Duke president Terry Sanford before starting his own firm, Blue, Stephens & Fellers, in Raleigh.

Blue, who became a trustee in 1995, is the first African American to chair Duke's board. He has most recently served as vice chair and as chair of the budget and finance committee.