Winter 2021 Issue

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FEATURES

  • Center for Documentary Studies and Scene of Radio podcast host John Biewen
    You know about John Biewen’s bicycle if you have listened to episode eleven of season two of “Scene on Radio,” the podcast he created as part of his work as audio director at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. Season two of “Scene” was titled “Seeing White,” and in fourteen crystalline episodes, it addressed the issues of race in America by naming the elephant in the room: whiteness.
  • Afghanistan landscape
    FOR THE UNITED STATES, the war in Afghanistan was the most protracted war in history—longer than World War I, World War II, and Vietnam combined. Shortly after the seemingly chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces in mid-August, the magazine convened a conversation among three individuals with very different perspectives on—and experiences with—the U.S. in Afghanistan.
  • Beatrice and Elliott, Coquerel's sifakas from the Duke Lemur Center, settles in at the Chester Zoo in the U.K.
    Britt Keith hustled around the kitchen and out into the yard for fresh clippings like an anxious mother hurriedly packing her kids off to school. She gently stuffed a handful of sumac, sweetgum, and tulip poplar leaves into brown paper lunch sacks labeled “Izzy” and “Slausy,” then tore the bags open a bit because Sifakas aren’t big on problem- solving. Carrots, sweet potatoes, in-the-shell nuts and a few other special treats were poured into Ziplock bags.
  • The Peruvian Navy rushed sick Madre de Dios villages to regional hospitals at the request of Duke researchers
    The flight from Lima to Cusco takes an hour and twenty minutes, and the road from Cusco into the highlands climbs to nearly 20,000 feet. From there it descends, unpaved and passing along cliffs and through cloud forest and eventually into jungle over the course of ten, twelve hours. At the bottom is a little town, and from there one travels by river, because there are no more roads.
  • Green turtle after nesting at dawn at Sandy Point in St. Croix
    Late one sun-drenched afternoon in May, on the southwest tip of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Kelly Stewart Ph.D. ’08 was kneeling on the empty beach of the Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge when the park ranger pulled up on his all-terrain vehicle to see what she was doing.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

  • The year 2020 changed the world as we know it. These Duke alumni showed us that in the midst of unspeakable difficulty, we can lift up each other, come together, make change that has the power to change us all. The Duke Alumni Changemaker Award is a one-time award honoring individuals across schools who made a difference for their communities and the world in pandemic year 2020. 
  • ANIMALS AND MICROBES
  • Before becoming a student again in 2011, I worked for PopCap Games. We made Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies, and I was COO for a while and ran worldwide game studios. When I turned forty, I decided to leave and do something different with my life. My heart had always been in science. I lived in Seattle, where there’s an endangered population of Southern Resident killer whales. I kept thinking this would be an interesting career to have, to try and help with the conservation and recovery of populations like those.
  • Duke recently announced a new residential plan, QuadEx, which will connect the East Campus freshman dormitories to one of seven quads on West Campus. As QuadEx is being launched, we might look back at another time when residential life underwent a massive change.
  • Manjusha Kulkarni ’91, a Los Angeles community activist and attorney, knew she had to act. She met with the family of the injured student, worked with local school district officials on behalf of the family, and held a press conference to take a stand against violence against Asian Americans—a soaring statistic in 2020’s pandemic year. The boy’s family, weighing the thought of leaving the U.S. in the face of such a personal threat, said they appreciated Kulkarni’s advocacy so much that they changed their minds. “They felt like they belonged,” she says.
  • People often warn, “Don’t start a company with your friends.” But Kevin Gehsmann B.S.E. ’19, Clark Bulleit B.S.E. ’19, now a first-year medical student at Duke, and Tim Skapek B.S.E. ’20, all former Duke football players and Pratt School of Engineering alumni, didn’t listen to that advice. Leveraging their Duke experience, the trio founded PROTECT3D, a company that makes custom protective splints, pads, and braces for athletes using 3D printing.
  • Each fall, the university community gathers to celebrate the founding of Duke—members of the Duke family and the giants on whose shoulders we have stood, those men and women who helped make our university the extraordinary place it is today. Many of these names are on buildings, quads, classrooms, and iconic spaces. However, there are also many who have given their all to Duke through their service and commitment, the unsung heroes who make our campus beautiful every day, who take care of our students and facilities…the list goes on.
  • We asked Maureen Farrell ’01 about The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion (Crown), which she cowrote with Eliot Brown—the saga of the rise and fall of one of the most-valuable and most-hyped start-ups and its unusual leader. Duke Magazine: What struck me in this book is that there’s something about the idea of a visionary that really captures people and that was a big driver in this story.
  • As the summer of 2021 lengthened and autumn began to approach, the website for “Mathemalchemy”—the unique, hallucinatory, room-sized mathematical mixed-media sculpture under construction by mathematicians from all over the world—showed a countdown to its unveiling. On August 15, 2021, at noon, in Gross Hall on West Campus, students, supporters, and the dozens of mathematicians who created parts of it would join together to unveil it.
  • When Faulkner Fox planned her inaugural political-theater workshop for fall 2020, she didn’t predict an imminent summer of activism. At first, she’d thought it would be an in-person class attending in-person theater, but then the coronavirus made that impossible. Months later, a second global phenomenon: The Black Lives Matter movement surged in response to murders like George Floyd’s, which Fox (and her students-to-be) experienced in real time. Fox hadn’t been anywhere. She hadn’t even been inside a grocery store, but then she was in the streets, marching for racial justice.
  • How much energy does a dolphin burn in a day? Not only what’s the caloric cost, but can a dolphin afford to forever be dodging boats? That’s so much effort. And how many burned calories keep a mammal warm in cold seawater? How much lost biomass—that’s sea life in this context— is too much before a dolphin can’t get enough to eat? How do you even measure that, anyway? You go where you know there are dolphins, and you ask them nicely.
  • It’s been a while since the Great Recession, when millions of people lost jobs, homes, their savings, between late 2007 and mid 2009. Nobody has called the last decade the Great Recovery, but many people have managed to rebuild their wealth portfolios. Though not everyone.
  • Back in a distant era, the fall of 1983, I learned that Duke would be launching a new alumni magazine and hiring a founding editor. Quite an attractive opportunity: A startup magazine. A research university. A first plunge into the exotic South.
  • Bentley Choi is gearing up for a busy semester. It’s her second year at Duke, and, in classic Blue Devil fashion, she’s taking on a lot. She’s prepping for the LSAT. She’s an R.A. in Edens. She’s finalizing the proposal for a major of her own design. She’s realigning herself from biology and quantitative research to the more qualitative side of public health.

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