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Harris, from Warner Robins, Georgia, is Duke's twenty-ninth Rhodes Scholar, winning from a pool of 935 applicants from 323 schools. "It's extremely humbling," Harris says. "It deepens my sense of responsibility. My family has always emphasized the importance of remembering that 'to whom much is given, much is expected.'" Harris' academic work has concentrated on the intersection of health policy and medical ethics, and he is completing a self-designed degree program focusing on those fields. He was drawn to these areas of study at a young age, motivated in part by learning about the infamous Tuskegee syphilis project in which, in the name of research, treatment was withheld from black men fighting that disease. His curriculum has included such courses as "Ancient and Modern Ethical Theory," "Philosophy of Medical Ethics," and "Human Rights in Theory and Practice," and research in foreign countries. He worked at a hospital in Tanzania to develop a curriculum in clinical ethics for foreign and Tanzanian physicians. During his two years at Oxford, Harris says he plans to build on these interests, taking courses in economics, politics, and philosophy. After the Rhodes, he plans to earn a law degree, master's in public health, or M.B.A., followed by a medical degree. Harris has served as chair of the Honor Council and as a member of the board of the Center for Academic Integrity, a national organization based at Duke, and was one of two student members of the ad hoc Curriculum 2000 committee. He is a professionally trained bass vocalist and a runner, and while in Tanzania climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Elizabeth Kiss, director of the Kenan Ethics Program and associate professor of the practice of political science and philosophy (and a former Rhodes Scholar), has taught and worked with Harris. "He has a combination of qualities that is extremely rare," she says. "He has a formidable intelligence, a great heart, charisma, the ability to listen to others and understand them even when they are being difficult, and remarkable cultural sensitivity. I have absolutely no doubt that he will make a significant contribution to the world."
A native of Salisbury, North Carolina, Dole was a member of Delta Delta Delta and was elected both May Queen and president of the women's student government. She has served as an officer of the alumni association, on the university board of trustees, and on the board of visitors of the Fuqua School of Business. She received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 1985. From Duke she went on to Harvard, where she received a law degree and a master's degree in education and government. Dole was a member of the Nixon Administration, and became secretary of transportation in the Reagan administration and secretary of labor in the Bush administration. She later served as president of the American Red Cross. Last fall, she withdrew from the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Dole had been invited to deliver the 1997 commencement address but was forced to withdraw because of a scheduling conflict; she spoke to the senior class in April instead. Her honors include the 1991 North Carolina Award for outstanding accomplishments and contributions in public service, along with the North Carolina Press Association's first award for "North Carolinian of the Year."
"The combination of Professor Bartlett's fine legal scholarship and her strong law school and university experience highly recommended her for the dean's position," says Provost Peter Lange. Bartlett, the A. Kenneth Pye Professor of Law, has taught at Duke since 1979, and was named University Scholar/Teacher of the Year in 1994. She writes and lectures extensively on such family law topics as child custody, joint custody, surrogate parenting, and the role of fault in divorce law. She is also an expert in the law as it relates to women and has published articles on gender theory, employment law, theories of social change, and legal education. Her 1990 Harvard Law Review article on feminist legal methods is one of the most often cited law review articles of the last decade. Bartlett says her goals for the law school include building strengths in international and comparative law, intellectual property, interdisciplinary studies, environmental law, and science and technology issues. She says she would also like to see the law school play a leading role in improving standards of legal professionalism, public perception of lawyers, and public awareness of the importance of law in society. Bartlett is a graduate of Wheaton College with a master's degree from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley. Before coming to Duke, she was a law clerk on the California Supreme Court, and a legal-services attorney in Oakland. She has been a visiting professor at UCLA and at Boston University, and a fellow at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park. She serves on the boards of directors of the Urban Ministries Center of Durham and of the Durham County Department of Social Services, and is married to Duke law professor Chris Schroeder.
"There is evidence that ordained ministry, despite many strong exceptions, is in some respects a troubled profession," says Jackson W. Carroll, director of the school's J.M. Ormond Center for Research, Development, and Planning, who will oversee the Lilly Pastoral Leadership Project. "Low morale is not uncommon among the clergy, and an apparently growing number of clergy are dropping out." "If seminary faculties, regardless of denomination, accept the work of the program and give it standing by incorporating it into their curricula, and clergy and their congregations are helped to understand and respond adaptively to the challenges before them, then we will know our work has been useful for ministry," he says. Project participants will represent Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations. The Lilly Endowment is a private foundation that supports community development, education, and religion.
The drug therapy, dubbed "facilitated angioplasty," involves giving patients a quick cocktail of drugs that dissolves clots and stops them from reforming, and an hour later, performing an angioplasty to clear plaque from heart arteries that are now open. According to Duke cardiologist E. Magnus Ohman, the strategy appears to offer a better outcome than thrombolytic treatment ("clot-busting" drugs) or angioplasty alone, or even medical therapy followed by angioplasty within several days. Another study shows a more select use of artery tubes called stents could save up to $162 million each year. The cost analysis, performed by Duke Medical Center cardiologists, showed the financial savings could be achieved without compromising the quality of patient care. As the popularity of stenting has grown, many cardiologists now automatically implant a stent, even when an excellent result is achieved with the balloon alone. Stents are used in more than 500,000 procedures in the United States every year. "We have shown that there is a group of patients whose arteries are very unlikely to renarrow after angioplasty and who get stent-like results without needing the stent," says cardiologist Warren Cantor, who led the analysis. "The amount of potential health-care savings ranges from $114 million to $162 million." Finding the optimal methods for such aggressive therapies becomes even more important in light of a third Duke study. Researchers have found that, contrary to what most physicians may expect, even very elderly people with heart blockages have better long-term outcomes if treated with such methods as heart bypass surgery or angioplasty. Investigators found that patients seventy-five years and older who were given angioplasty or bypass surgery to treat multiple blocked arteries lived significantly longer than those who were treated conservatively with medicines only. Cardiologists say the study, the largest of its kind reported, has the potential for changing the way aged heart patients are treated, after the findings have been confirmed with future randomized treatment comparisons. Finally, it appears that pounds of prevention are worth ounces of cure. The fourth Duke study shows that the more overweight a person is, the younger he will be when heart disease strikes, which will result in more years of illness and fewer years to live compared to leaner patients. Moreover, in this study, the heavier the patient, the more statistically likely that he or she had high blood pressure, diabetes, high blood levels of cholesterol, and a family history of heart disease. These patients also had heart disease longer than normal-weight patients. Treating obese patients cost an additional $10,000 in the twelve years after their initial cardiac event, compared to normal-weight patients.
"With computers in more than 40 percent of American households, and over a quarter of those households regularly going online, there's no question that the Internet is transforming daily life in this country," Jenkins says. "Our schools, our city, state, and federal governments, our churches and synagogues --in fact, all of the institutions that affect our communities--are adjusting to the dawn of the Information Age. I hope that, by studying the transformative impact of the Internet and technology in an interdisciplinary fashion, whoever fills this new position will be able to offer unique insights that will guide our development as a society." Duke president Nannerl O. Keohane says the new professorship addresses two of the university's highest priorities--attracting and retaining top faculty, and expanding interdisciplinary approaches to critical social issues. The University Professorships are a select group of endowed chairs awarded to distinguished scholars whose work transcends disciplinary boundaries. Jenkins began her high-tech career in 1983 at Microsoft as a software developer, where she is credited with convincing Bill Gates of the importance of the use of personal computers in education. After four years, she moved to Steve Jobs' NeXT as director of market development. She is now president of the Internet Policy Institute, a Washington-based research and educational group of corporate, academic, and other nonprofit leaders that focuses on issues affecting and affected by the global development and use of the Internet. She is past chair of Highway 1, a nonprofit, Washington-based organization that Jenkins established in 1995 to improve communications between the U.S. government and the public via high-technology communications. Jenkins serves on the university's Washington Regional Campaign Council, the Trinity College Board of Visitors, and the Advisory Committee on the Future of Information Technology in Teaching and Research. She is a past member of the university's Council on Women's Studies.
"Music is a different dimension of the human experience," Coon says. "We hope that's what we're providing by bringing these pianos to the university." The instruments, manufactured by Kawai, have been placed at the Mary Lou Williams Center, the Crowell Building coffeehouse, Mitchell House (the arts residence hall), Teer House, the Center for Jewish Life, the Wilson Recreation Center, Trent Drive Residence Hall, and three sites in the medical center. Jane Hawkins, associate professor of the practice of music, says the program came in response to student requests for more practice areas on West Campus. She learned of a program whereby Kawai, through its local merchants, works with colleges and universities to place pianos on their campuses. The instruments are tested and tuned, then later sold and replaced with new pianos. With her research in hand, Hawkins went to Coon and together they began to explore a partnership with Kawai and the Piano Shoppe. The sale of the pianos on loan to Duke will be held on campus in April.
The data show surprising evidence for an evolutionary link between HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS, and a group of retroviruses that first entered the human genome up to 30 million years ago, the researchers report in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Retroviruses are those that use RNA as their basic genetic template, rather than DNA as in most organisms. The genetic makeup, or genome, of every human being contains genes that were first introduced through infections by retroviruses, which, like HIV, inject their genetic material into the target cell, where, converted to DNA, it becomes a permanent part of the cell's DNA. If the infected cell happens to be the precursor of a germ cell, like sperm, the largely benign viral genetic material has the potential to be passed from generation to generation. Although lead researcher Bryan Cullen doesn't see any immediate applications of this understanding to the treatment of AIDS, he does think that these findings could help in the future development of vectors, or viral "shuttles," to carry gene therapy to target cells. "It appears that all the infections that led to the viral genes being in our genome occurred before we became 'human' a few hundred thousand years ago," Cullen says. As a comparison, he adds, it is estimated that HIV-1 emerged from chimpanzees about a hundred years ago.
"I've seen almost no reporting [in Japan] of the hysteria and worry over trading cards and their potential for promoting gambling or a New York stock exchange mentality that you have seen in the U.S.," Anne Allison says. "Rather, the general view is that Pokemon is innocuous or even positive. [People say] it encourages intellectual skills in learning how to distinguish all the Pokemon, that it helps kids in forming friendships. Mothers say that it fosters communication at home." Allison, an associate professor of cultural anthropology, is a specialist on mass culture in contemporary urban Japan. In Japan on Fulbright and Social Science Research Council senior fellowships, she is researching popular Japanese heroes and super heroes that get circulated through comics and television programs, are mass marketed through toys and other merchandising, and are exported around the world as global commodities. She has now turned her attention to Pokemon. Pokemon began as a game and has exploded into a mass merchandising opportunity, she says. The game was picked up as a serialized comic, or manga. Next came an animated television show, a movie, trading cards, and associated merchandise--everything from Pokemon toys to Pokemon curry. Rather than regard Pokemon with suspicion, Allison says the Japanese embrace the fad. She calls the marketing of Pokemon brilliant, a campaign that crosses media and products to create an interdependency. Children watch the TV program to get hints on how to play the game, for example. "One form of Pokemon bleeds into another so kids are surrounded by Pokemon in their everyday lives."
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uke senior Julian Harris has managed a hat trick of scholarships. He is an A.B. Duke Scholar; last year earned a Truman Scholarship to pursue graduate studies in public service; and then, in December, won one of thirty-two Rhodes Scholarships.
ormer presidential candidate Elizabeth Hanford Dole '58, the first woman to head two federal cabinet agencies, will deliver Duke's 2000 commencement address on May 14.
ongtime Duke law professor Katherine T. Bartlett has been named the new dean of the Duke University School of Law, succeeding Pamela Gann J.D. '73.
wo recent studies overseen by Duke Medical Center researchers point the way to new treatments for heart attacks--one by drug therapy, and one by backing away from an invasive procedure. Two other studies examine the effects of age and of obesity on cardiac health and care.
imberly Jenkins '76, M.Ed '77, Ph.D. '80, a leading advocate for innovative uses of technology in education, is giving Duke $2 million to establish a professorship that will examine the effect of technology, particularly the Internet, on society. The Kimberly J. Jenkins University Professorship of New Technologies and Society will encourage an interdisciplinary approach to examining the impact of technological innovations on society and culture, with initial emphasis on the Internet's transforming impact.
ix uprights and four baby grands have been placed on West Campus and at Duke Medical Center as part of a new initiative administered by Duke's Office of University Life. The pianos, on loan from the Piano Shoppe of Cary, are for students and faculty who wish to practice or play for friends and passers-by, says Sue Coon, dean of university life and organizer of the project.
uch like archaeologists who search the fossil record looking for clues about the past, Duke Medical Center researchers have done their own genetic sifting and have found a striking similarity between viral genetic material that has always existed in humans and HIV, a relatively new virus to infect humans.
Duke cultural anthropologist in Japan studying the Pokemon phenomenon says the children's game that has exploded into a mass merchandising success is viewed differently in Japan than it is in the United States.
Bruce W. Jentleson is the new director of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. Formerly director of the University of California-Davis' Washington Center, and a foreign policy adviser to the Clinton administration, Jentleson will also hold the position of professor of public policy studies and political science. He is a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. A political scientist specializing in international relations, he has substantial experience in government, including work on the foreign policy staff of then-U.S. Senator Al Gore and on the State Department Policy Planning Staff. He is the author and editor of seven books. He earned his master's degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and his Ph.D. in political science from Cornell in 1983. He assumed his new post January 1.
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