Fall 2015 Issue

Samantha Bouchal, a first-year at Duke, is a first generation college student. For her, college is all about gaining knowledge, but she’s been struck by some of the social nuances while on her intellectual journey. Produced for The Short Audio Documentary course taught by John Biewen at the Center for Documentary Studies.

That Was Fast,” shouted a Slate headline the day after the Supreme Court ruled in June in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. A good friend of mine put it another way by e-mail: “The marriage ruling happened overnight. I can’t believe it.” Indeed, even as summer turned to fall, this is what I’ve been hearing, repeatedly, from friends both gay and straight. I know their words are well meaning and congratulatory, but they’re frustrating as well, because they’re not exactly true.

Freshman Melissa Gerdts was on a European cruise in celebration of her high-school graduation when she found herself in Paris for a stopover. Little did she know that the chance visit would reveal an unexpected connection with a fellow Duke family halfway around the world. Gerdts was in Paris on July 2, the date of the Duke Send-Off party to welcome the university’s newest class.

As the former cabinet secretary, senior adviser, and associate counsel to President Barack Obama, Gray spent more than five years inside the White House—advising the president and working on policies such as the Affordable Care Act. Prior to her tenure in the White House, Gray was the deputy director of the National Economic Council and worked as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Gray currently is a partner at O’Melveny & Myers LLP in New York, where she specializes in policy, regulatory issues, health care, and governmental issues.

Lessons in Global Giving

In this simple, verdant may pea lives the opportunity for learning and lessons in stewardship. It’s growing in the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden, a sustainable, organic food garden within the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. Brody, a master gardener and columnist from Kinston, North Carolina, dreamed of establishing a place where children could learn and experience the joys of gardening. Her daughters, Marilyn Brody Lane, Marsha Brody Shiff, and Hynda Brody Dalton, along with her grandson Daniel S. Shiff ’85 M.B.A.

It was a bucket of cold water thrown by an unlikely assailant.In a talk at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, Eric Mlyn, executive director of DukeEngage, worried that programs like his may actually be perpetuating an unhealthy idea.“My worry,” he said, “is that we’re teaching this generation of students that the solution to the education problem in the United States is tutoring children.”

The Sanford School’s one-of-a-kind Geneva Program on global policy and governance is expanding.This past summer the school piloted an additional site for the highly selective program for graduate and professional students— in London.Three students from Duke and one from Princeton served internships as part of a new track on global social innovation, a partnership between Sanford and Duke’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative.

A water company has customers who don’t pay their bills. A month goes by, then another, and another. The late fees accumulate.“This is your last warning,” the water company writes. “If you don’t pay your balance and late fees, we’ll have no choice but to shut off your service.”Nothing.Eventually the utility sends out a service technician to turn off the water. The customer rushes down to the utility office and pays the balance and the penalties. The utility sends the technician out a second time to restore service.

As he sat on a plane taking him home to Las Vegas, Michael Harris looked out the window and saw a familiar building. As the U.S. Capitol passed beneath him, he thought, “I have found my calling in life.”The Sanford public policy major had finished his junior year at Duke and was returning home after participating in Sanford’s Duke in DC program. He’d spent many eventful hours during his internship in the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.“The program taught me things I couldn’t learn in a classroom,” Harris says.

Hardy Vieux ’93 has never been in anything resembling a rut.

Matt Cullinan M.P.P. ’90 has enjoyed a long and successful career as an academic administrator, first at the University of Notre Dame, where he earned his bachelor’s and doctorate in history, later at Wake Forest University. He joined the Sanford board of visitors in 2006 and became chair earlier this year. The board of visitors provides advice and support to the school regarding curriculum, programs, development, external relations, and other matters.

I’ve always considered myself a baseball fan. Growing up, I sat glued to the television, watching my beloved Tigers struggle their way through the AL Central division. When I was eleven, they managed to fight their way to the World Series for the first time in twenty-two years, after their star player, Magglio Ordóñez, hit a three-run homer to beat the Oakland Athletics. But as much as I felt connected to the sport, my athletic ability was honed on tennis courts, and I never felt the urge to venture onto the diamond myself.

FEATURED BOOKWriting in Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted, Ian Millhiser J.D. ’06 takes a critical look at how the Supreme Court has shaped the law and thus the lives of ordinary Americans. Here he discusses why he wrote the book.

Katie Fernelius spent the summer systematically falling in love.As a student of the Center for Documentary Studies and a global cultural studies major in the literature program, Fernelius designed an extensive final project that could combine storytelling and the delicious discomfort of unfamiliar cities and languages. “How do we connect across difference? How do we know ourselves, and how do we know others? What does it mean to be a global citizen?” her project asks. “Essentially, I pitched this as an experimental documentary that explores these questions.”

The latest book by Annabel Wharton, William B. Hamilton Professor of art history, is Architectural Agents: The Delusional, Abusive, Addictive Lives of Buildings Do buildings have human qualities? Buildings are like humans in that they have bodies, they are born, they reach a certain maturity, they decay, and they die. But they always leave a mark, just like humans.

Usually, the Freshman Convocation is held in Duke Chapel. This year, we’ve decamped to Cameron Indoor Stadium because the chapel is closed for repairs. Indeed, just about everything at Duke is closed for repairs. If you came to campus last spring or summer, you saw that Duke Chapel, the Rubenstein wing of Perkins Library, Page Auditorium, West Union, the football stadium—even the quads were closed for repairs.

THE CATALYST: The popularity of break dancing, programming vocaloid music, and playing video games creates subcultures that inform both individual identity and a larger cultural identity in East Asia. Students explore these phenomena, among others, in this course created by visiting cultural anthropology professor Dwayne Dixon A.M. ’08, Ph.D. ’14.

An objection to a book’s content takes on a life of its own