Winter 2016 Issue

Senior Daniel Woldorff is a white male in a field criticized for being, well, white and male. As the startup scene grows in Durham, North Carolina, what do the players behind the entrepreneurial renaissance here think about this criticism?

Mohamed Chamas is a junior from Beirut, Lebanon.

In this piece, Maddie explores the relationship between her Jewish upbringing and her white identity. Through the lens of childhood friend Darrien Fann, she examines how their friendship has impacted her view of race and her own whiteness.

Four alumni have been nominated to Duke’s board of trustees by the executive committee of the board of directors of the Duke Alumni Association. William A. Hawkins III B.S.E. ’76 is eligible for re-election to a second six-year term. Kathryn (Katy) Hollister ’81, J.B. Pritzker ’87 and L. Frederick Sutherland ’73 will be new to the board and begin serving six-year terms as of July 1, 2017. Duke’s charter calls for the election of one-third of its trustees by graduates of the university.

As a popular cultural attraction in North Durham, the Duke Homestead offers residents and visitors a chance to explore the beginnings of the Duke family’s remarkable tobacco business. What most visitors do not realize, however, is that the homestead was part of the university for more than forty years.

We hear that another Blue Devil—NBA Commissioner Adam Silver ’84—had something to do with recruiting you to lead the WNBA. Is that true?

Being named the chief academic officer of West Point has great meaning for CINDY JEBB A.M. ’92, Ph.D. ’97. It’s where, as a young woman, she found her place.She discovered the United States Military Academy while browsing through a magazine. Jebb was an athletic high school student, so an article on West Point’s women’s basketball team—nicknamed the Sugar Smacks— caught her attention.

Learning his way in AfghanistanJoshua Partlow ’00, a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, has reported extensively throughout South America and the Middle East. His first book, A Kingdom of Their Own: The Family Karzai and the Afghan Disaster, analyzes the war in Afghanistan through the lens of the ruling family, exploring the disconnect between President Hamid Karzai and American officials throughout his tenure as leader. Here, Partlow explains the initial kernel for the book:

When Laurie Bley stepped on stage in Johannesburg to welcome attendees to MMX16, the annual Duke Menell Media Exchange, she entered to the strains of “The Room Where It Happens,” the song from the Broadway show Hamilton in which Aaron Burr yearns to go behind closed doors, to enter the chambers of power. Bley explained that, by attending the two-day conference, the nearly 400 African journalism students, working journalists, newsroom managers, journalism educators, bloggers, and nonprofit leaders there had chosen to enter that metaphorical room, and all of them shared that power.

Gunther Peck, an associate professor of history and public policy, teaches nineteenth-and twentieth-century American social and cultural history, comparative immigration and labor studies, and environmental history. This past fall he taught a course called “Historicizing Whiteness.” Has whiteness historically been wrapped up with class formation?

THE CATALYST: Neurobiology professor—and amateur guitarist— Dale Purves has long been fascinated by music. While his research focuses on vision and visual perception, he also has delved into audition—first to confirm his visual findings in another sensory system, and then to explore the basis for the importance of music. “Music has a lot to say about audition because of the universal interest we human beings have in music and the relative absence of this interest in other animals. Most animals couldn’t care less about music,” says Purves.

Vincent Price named Duke presidentIn an afternoon ceremony at Penn Pavilion on December 2, Vincent Price, provost of the University of Pennsylvania since 2009, was introduced to the Duke community as its tenth president.

The evening begins with a local beer on the rooftop of The Durham Hotel. It’s breezy outside, and not yet dark, with a gibbous moon just starting to rise. Customers emerge from the elevator and ritually peer over the edge, taking in the aerial view of a downtown that ten years ago would have looked abandoned.

If you’re approaching Dick Brodhead to sum up his presidency—is “exit interview” really a good term?—there are a couple of things you discover. One is that he’s not comfortable reeling off his roster of presidential achievements. Another is that he’s delighted, for the purpose of conversation, to let go of the suit jacket, leave the administrative enclave of the Allen Building, and find a corner for conversation in the restored and reinvigorated West Union Building.