Duke - Mar - Apr 2010 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010 en True Blue https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/true-blue-0 <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <div class="media-header top2 "><p class="media-h-credit"><span style="font-size: 10px;">On Feburary 7, 2009, the Duke men's basketball team pulled off an astounding comeback against the University of Miami Hurricanes, rallying from sixteen points down in the second half. The Blue Devils went on to win by three in an overtime nail biter.</span> </p><div class="media-h-credit">Four days later, the game was still on the minds of many fans. They were on the Duke Basketball Report website offering their reflections and getting ready for that night's showdown with the Tar Heels. But one of the DBR's message boards was alive with debate over a topic that had nothing to do with the game—one that, over the years, has aroused curiosity and, at times, triggered heated debate among Duke students, alumni, visitors, and fans: What color, exactly, is Duke blue?</div></div><div class="media-header top2 "><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 480px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="179" width="480" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Layer_1.jpg?itok=MZawAa94" /><p class="caption-text"><br /><div class="media-h-caption">Blue noted: Snapshots from campus show cacophony of color.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="media-h-credit">An alumnus from the Class of '88 wondered: "Was the school's color always royal blue?" He recalled that the uniforms were darker in the past. "Was this a gradual shift? Was there a particular year when the color became lighter or was that a gradual migration?"</div></div><p>The daughter of two Duke alumni chimed in: "My mother attended Duke in the 60s. Everything she has is navy and white. Seems to me navy is the official Duke blue."</p><div class="media-header flr " style="width: 301px;"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 320px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="480" width="320" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/030410-lg-0089102.jpg?itok=8jmpestD" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Name that hue: University apparel comes in subtle array.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="media-h-credit"> </div></div><p>"I graduated in '65," wrote another poster. "I just look at my letter sweater. royal blue, it ain't." Another named KBCrazie issued a call to action: "I feel that all this color diversity defeats the notion that there's a 'Duke Blue.' "</p><p>In fact, there is an official Duke blue: It is designated No. 287 in the Pantone Matching System (PMS), a set of standards for graphic designers and printers to ensure consistent color reproduction. Still, the confusion is understandable. Achieving that color (darker than royal, lighter than navy) depends on a variety of factors often difficult to control, including the vagaries of material (fabric, paper, plastic, LCD), cost, and manufacturer. University officials, from the athletics department to the president's office, go through a complicated and inherently imperfect process whenever they choose the color of a T-shirt, bumper sticker, mug, athletic uniform, campus sign, logo for the annual report, or one of the thousands of items sewn, printed, painted, and published every year.</p><p>Coaches work within the contractual agreements made with sponsoring apparel firms. Different fabrics require different dyes, and manufacturers try to keep their costs low by offering buyers only a set palette of color choices. Painters must pick and choose from a set of color-matching systems and adjust their work accordingly. Printers and graphic designers must make decisions about readability and the time it takes for a particular color to dry.</p><p>As a result, although the administration makes an effort to oversee the color that Duke uses to represent itself—by publishing style guides, for example, and helping departments negotiate with contractors to ensure they get the colors they want—realistically, officials cannot authorize every one of the thousands of choices made every day by merchants, graphic designers, webmasters, and facilities managers.</p><p>Tallman Trask III, the university's executive vice president, looks at the Duke memorabilia—plush toys, basketball jerseys, and plaques—lining the shelves and bookcases of his Allen Building office. He notes the range of different shades represented in an accepting manner. "I'm looking right there, and I see eight colors of Duke blue," he says.</p><p>"I like to remind people that we do have an official color," Trask says. "Duke blue is Duke blue. That's not a choice." But, he adds, "on a list of things you worry about, it's just not up there."</p><p>Pragmatic considerations are one factor. History is another. Over the decades, the shade of blue designated as Duke's has changed because of priorities, tastes, trends, and technology. Indeed, how the university arrived at the standard color, PMS 287, is a story rooted in Randolph County, circa 1888, with Trinity College and its new president, John Franklin Crowell, a young minister who was a Yale University graduate.</p><p>Trinity's board of trustees decided to hire the twenty-nine-year-old Crowell in 1887. Within a year, the new president had introduced the relatively young sport of football—Harvard and Yale universities had played the first intercollegiate game <br /> in 1875—and was serving as the coach. In November 1888, Trinity took the field in Raleigh against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the first athletic contest between the two institutions.</p><p>The Carolina side wore light-blue uniforms for the first time in history, and Trinity players wore an approximation of Yale blue—a grayish dark blue—chosen by the student body to honor their coach and president. According to <span class="pubtitle">The Trinity Archive</span>, a cheer arose among the Trinity faithful at the game's close (Trinity won, 16-0), in answer to the Carolina cheer, which "literally woke Raleigh up" in the morning before the game. Carolina fans chanted:</p><blockquote><blockquote><p class="articletitle">Rah! Rah! Rah!<br /> For the white and blue!<br /> Hoop la! Hoop la!<br /> N.C.U.</p></blockquote></blockquote><p>The Trinity fans, in a move that presaged the cheeky chants of Cameron, answered:</p><blockquote><blockquote><p class="articletitle">Rah! Rah! Rah!<br /> For the deep dark blue!<br /> Hoop la! Hoop la!<br /> We beat [you].</p></blockquote></blockquote><p>In all likelihood, football, or at least the need for distinctiveness in competitions, prompted Trinity's decision to adopt a color of its own, according to William King '61, A.M. '63, Ph.D. '70, university archivist emeritus. "The Trinity people were always called 'The Methodists.'" They didn't like that designation, he says, and so "they were always looking for a way to distinguish themselves."</p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 480px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="179" width="480" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Layer_2.jpg?itok=FHTIjjCJ" /><p class="caption-text">Blue noted: Snapshots from campus show cacophony of color.</p></div></div></div><p>"I think it would be logical that if any other school had a color they would want one, too."</p><p>At the turn of the century, as intercollegiate competition grew in scope and frequency, Duke adopted a mascot with blue in its name, and more fight songs were created, including the still-popular "Blue and White." The song's ascendancy prompted a letter questioning whether white was an official university color. Robert Lee Durham, Class of 1891, and a member of that first football team, wrote to <span class="pubtitle">The Alumni Register</span>, precursor to <span class="pubtitle">Duke Magazine</span>, saying he had "never heard of any other color being officially adopted to accompany the blue" that had been selected by the student body in 1888. It is not clear whether white has an official designation, but historically it has been the color most often used as an accent to Duke blue.</p><p>According to several World War II-era alumni, Duke blue likely became a lighter shade, close to royal, in the 1940s because of the university's fierce football rivalry with the U.S. Naval Academy at that time. Tim Pyatt '81, university archivist, says anyone who calls Duke blue "navy" still draws flak from this group.</p><p>In 1961, President J. Deryl Hart Hon. '64 appointed a committee to choose a doctoral robe for the university. Three years later, Hart's successor, Douglas Knight (who coincidentally held three degrees from Yale), convened other committees to study and develop a shield and mace. Officials were seeking to breathe new life into the university's image, says King, and academic heraldry and dress were a part of that effort.</p><p>The doctoral-robe committee began soliciting proposals from academic-apparel companies about changing the color of the robes and hoods worn at commencement to a distinctive "Duke blue." There was just one problem: No one knew what it was.</p><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="221" width="300" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/030410-lg-007210blue015ppsilo.jpg?itok=Lq4Y5uuo" /><p class="caption-text">Significant swatches: A color for academic gowns emerges—correspondence with manufacturers.</p></div></div></div></div><div> </div><div><p>In a letter to Lester Simon, a gown manufacturer, dated June 4, 1964, Benjamin E. Powell '26, university librarian and chair of the gown committee, wrote that the "basic color of the gown—royal blue— bothers some of our colleagues. I know it is supposed to be one of the University colors, but I find no unanimity of opinion among the old timers here on the campus or among those who have put their thoughts on paper. Some say the blue is royal, others say Yale."</p><p>Later in the same letter, Powell writes: "Have you something between Yale and royal blue, something that loses a bit of the purplish tinge of royal without becoming too somber? I realize the problems we get into when we leave standard colors, but royal blue is not what we want; and though some say the Duke blue is Yale blue, out of deference to Yale we would rather not use it." (It's speculated that Yale may have borrowed<span class="pubtitle"> its</span> blue color from the University of Oxford.)</p><p>After months of unproductive negotiations with various apparel suppliers, Powell and his committee met with Elon Clark, a medical illustrator at Duke who was serving on the mace committee. Clark recommended using a shade of Prussian blue, which is less gray than Yale blue, lighter than navy, but darker than royal, to break the deadlock. The gown committee assented with enthusiasm and, in September 1965, recommended that Prussian blue be designated Duke blue and used for all academic gowns.</p><p>Prussian blue was one of the first artificial pigments to be manufactured and was developed by accident in the eighteenth century in what is now part of Germany. The color appears in many different shades depending on the concentration used and is difficult to produce as a dye. Today, the swatches of fabric that Clark brought into the committee meeting reside in University Archives.</p><p>After four more years of back-and-forth with gown manufacturers, university officials finally found a color they were satisfied with and registered it with Pantone. The first official Duke blue doctoral robes made their debut at the 1969 commencement exercises, and their color has remained the same ever since.</p><p>These days, you're most likely to see Duke blue in four broad areas: athletic uniforms, licensed products and apparel, campus signage, and publications and promotional materials. In 2009, Duke's athletics department signed a contract with Nike Inc., giving the apparel giant exclusive rights to supply all twenty-six varsity teams with uniforms, shoes, and other equipment. Before each season, a Nike representative contacts a team's coach to present various options for the look of that season's gear. Nike's designers determine the colors of the uniforms, although coaches sign off on them.</p><p>Before the Nike contract was signed, each coach ordered from his or her own manufacturer, and some of those agreements will remain in place for the next two years. As a result, the blue of the uniforms worn by this year's field hockey team, for example, supplied by Under Armour Inc., is quite different from the blue of this year's basketball jersey, supplied by Nike. One benefit of the new contract is that all athletic uniforms will be a standard Duke blue—albeit one closer to royal than PMS 287.</p><p>For fans looking to support Duke's teams, the first stop is often the campus bookstore or the mail-order catalogues, and the appearance of so many different colors of blue on the shelves and across pages is owing to Duke Stores' reliance on outside suppliers. Because different companies work with their own mills, and those mills use a variety of fabrics and dyes, coming up with an exact match for Duke blue is impractical.</p><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="473" width="350" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/030410-lg-dspfb031150010.jpg?itok=T-SsKtaR" /><p class="caption-text">Not Navy: Devilish blue figures appear lighter and brighter than the uniform of the midshipman on the cover of a 1943 football program. University Archives</p></div></div></div></div><div> </div><div><p>Duke and the Universities of Florida, Kentucky, and Kansas all use similar blues, and so suppliers will usually use the same color for each. Tom Craig, merchandise manager at Duke Stores, says that when it comes down to it, suppliers are interested in being economical. But, he adds, if the blue isn't close enough to Duke's color, the stores will not buy the products. "We stay away from anything that would be remotely close to a lighter shade of blue," he says, alluding to the color representative of the university eight miles down the road.</p><p>Craig notes a marked shift in popularity between the darker Duke blue, which is closer to navy, and the lighter Duke blue, which is closer to royal. Through the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, Duke Stores was selling much more of the dark blue than the light. Then the men's basketball team signed with Nike for the 1994 season. Nike introduced the royal-blue shade to the uniforms, and Duke consumers soon made the switch. Royal has been the stores' best-selling blue ever since.</p><p>The story of the color used for campus signage is less complicated and has a recent history of its own. The large signs that identify buildings along Campus Drive, at the medical center, and in university-affiliated locations around the Triangle are all the same color: PMS 2767C, which was designated as "Duke University Dark Blue" by the design firm that was contracted to work on the signs in the mid- 1990s. The signs were first developed for the medical center when the Duke University Health System was being organized. After the signs had been erected, administrators extended the design to the rest of campus for consistency's sake.</p><p>The blue in printed materials, like the magazine you're reading or the letterhead on that Annual Fund solicitation, is technically the easiest to standardize. The Pantone Matching System was specifically developed for use with ink and paper, and printed materials have the greatest likelihood of looking the way they were designed to.</p><p>There are two ways that a color can be applied in the printing process: by using what's called a spot color ink, or by using a color built from four different colors of ink. A spot color is a mixture of chemicals that produces a single color ink. PMS 287 is made up of three chemicals: twelve points of Pantone Reflex Blue, four points of Pantone Process Blue, and a half point of Pantone Black.</p></div><div><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="335" width="300" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://magazine-dev.oit.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/030410-lg-007210blue008.jpg?itok=MNpM9pWF" /><p class="caption-text">Significant swatches: A color for academic gowns emerges—correspondence with manufacturers, Elon Clark's choice of Prussian blue. Les Todd</p></div></div></div></div><div> </div><div><p>In a four-color printing process, varying percentages of what printers call CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) are used to build a final color. Small dots of each component color, in various concentrations, make up the whole. To build Duke blue for use on coated paper, the concentration of cyan present is 100 percent; magenta, 72 percent; yellow, 2 percent; and black, 12 percent. That said, the color will look different depending on factors such as the light (color looks different under fluorescent light than it does under sunlight, for example) and whether the paper is coated or uncoated (the pages of our print edition are coated); the variations in appearance can be quite drastic. The Duke blue that is used throughout <span class="pubtitle">Duke Magazine</span>, for instance, is 100 percent cyan, 70 percent magenta, 0 percent yellow, and 20 percent black, because that color, from a design standpoint, actually appears closer to the original 287 spot color.</p><p>The challenge for Roger Lewis, a sourcing manager for printed materials who helps university departments find reliable printers and graphic designers, is to make certain that Duke blue comes out right in the final product. One aspect of color-matching that Lewis often finds himself explaining to his clients is the difference in relative cost between a spot color and a built color. A four-color build is an inexact match, but it is easier to produce and more cost effective. A spot color is exact and therefore more expensive, making it rare in university publications.</p><p>When Trinity College first adopted a color, it was seeking to set itself apart from its larger, in-state rivals in athletic competitions. (And that was three years before basketball was invented.) Now Duke competes not only nationally as a basketball and academic powerhouse, but also globally for applicants, faculty members, grants, and prestige. In a crowded marketplace, Duke needs to stand out.</p><p>Denise Haviland is the university's director of communications and brand strategy, a new position created to make Duke's identity more coherent, recognizable, and visible—and, not incidentally, deal with things like inconsistency in the use of Duke blue. The color the university uses is important for many reasons, Haviland says. "It's not just distinguishing yourself from others," she says. The color "carries with it the reputation of the university." Above all, she adds, it strikes a subconscious, emotional chord.</p><p>As Duke expands around the world, beginning partnerships in places like Singapore and China and attracting students from all over the globe, it becomes increasingly important to have a distinctive—and replicable—color. For instance, Yale blue may be compared with Duke blue when high-school seniors anywhere in the world are deciding where they want to go to college, something that would have been virtually impossible only three decades ago.</p><p>One place this is acutely relevant is on the Internet, where the university is working to expand and unify its presence. The Duke homepage was recently redesigned, and in the process, Haviland and her colleagues created a university Web style guide. When Duke employees design websites or mass e-mail messages, they are now aware of the proper Duke blue "hexcode" (so called for its six-character length): No. 001A57.</p><p>Coding and pixels have joined thread and dye, ink and paper, pigment and plastic in the mix of materials that must be considered whenever someone at Duke decides which blue to use. Undoubtedly, new materials and different circumstances will call for new choices. But even as Duke blue has evolved from the grayish dark blue on a Trinity College blanket to the bright royal used on a classic World War II-era football program to the Prussian blue standardized as PMS 287, one thing has remained constant: Duke blue is Duke blue. It is that way to separate this university from all others.</p><p>And there is one thing it never has been, and never will be: Pantone 278, more commonly known as Carolina blue.</p></div></div> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Tuesday, June 1, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/030410-lg-0089102.jpg" width="625" height="320" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/aaron-kirschenfeld" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Aaron Kirschenfeld</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The university&#039;s official color, how it was chosen, and why it never seems to look the same.</div></div></section> Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500783 at https://alumni.duke.edu Mark Lazarus '86 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/mark-lazarus-86 <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><div class="media-header flr" style="width: 300px;"><img alt="The Loved Ones" src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-tlofinal04.jpg" style="height:432px; width:300px" /> <div class="media-h-credit">&nbsp;</div> </div> <p>Mark Lazarus, an independent-film producer, finds enchantment in screenplays. Not every one ever written. Not even every one he reads. And he reads hundreds until, like an archaeologist on a dig, he hits treasure. "When I read something great, a rare and wonderful experience, my body reacts," he says. "An antenna inside me vibrates. I get a frisson."</p> <p>As a producer, Lazarus has shepherded three Australian movies. His first, Australian Rules, based on the Australian award-winning young-adult novel Deadly, Unna? (the title is aboriginal slang for "Cool, Isn't It?") is about an intercultural friendship in a remote, racially tense seaside town. The film won international accolades including an invitation to the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and six Australian Film Institute award nominations. Lazarus' latest, a horror film titled The Loved Ones, garnered the Cadillac Midnight Madness People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival this past summer.</p> <p>"I'm not a horror nut, but I enjoy a little gore and suspense and tension," Lazarus says, adding that he also sought out horror to capitalize on the genre's current vogue.</p> <p>Despite its gore, the film, written and directed by Australian filmmaker Sean Byrne, is also a quiet tale of teenage angst and coming of age in a small town. Lazarus says he was drawn to its spare but effective dialogue and its breathtaking narrative twists and turns.</p> <p>Lazarus spent his formative years in Durham and, at Duke, majored in English, with a concentration in creative writing; minored in psychology; and edited Duke's literary magazine, The Archive. After graduating, he worked briefly as a journalist. He began his film career in the late 1980s as a producer of award-winning documentary shorts by his wife, Malla Nunn, an Australian filmmaker and novelist. He then enrolled in film school at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney, where he lives with his family.</p> <div class="media-header flr" style="width: 191px;"> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 191px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="Mark Lazarus '86 " src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-img1740.jpg" style="height:287px; width:191px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="media-h-credit">Daphne Howland ’87 <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p>At the heart of his work, Lazarus says, is finding a good story that translates well to film. But a film producer is a quintessential multitasker, and the job only begins with the right script. He must also acquire the work, find investors, handle personalities and details throughout production, and spearhead marketing and distribution.</p> <p>"Mark had to juggle so many balls at once, keeping the confidence of the investors while protecting my vision," says Byrne.</p> <p>Each film takes three to four years to complete, and, while some producers roll from project to project, Lazarus has found steady work between productions in other areas of the film industry—with private production companies and, currently, with the government's film commission, Screen Australia, where he evaluates the finances and creative potential of homegrown feature films and television dramas.</p> <p>"A nation like Australia has to subsidize its film and TV industry," he says. "It must, so its people can see themselves on screen, which they consider an important part of the culture."</p> <p><br /> <em>Daphne Howland '87 is a freelance writer living in Portland, Maine.&nbsp;</em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, April 1, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/daphne-rubert-howland" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Daphne Rubert Howland</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Finding the big picture.</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500365 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/mark-lazarus-86#comments Extra Credit: Coach K Moments https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/extra-credit-coach-k-moments <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <div><p class="articletitle"><span class="style2">(2)</span><span class="faqquest"> Duke</span> 95<br /><span class="style2">(4)</span><span class="faqquest"> UNC </span>81</p></div><div><p class="articletitle">After Carlos Boozer '03 went down with a foot injury against Maryland in the regular season's penultimate game, Coach K reinvented the Blue Devils for their showdown with the Tar Heels. He moved freshman Chris Duhon '04 to point guard and Jason Williams '02 to shooting guard and had his team fire three pointers with abandon. The team, which also included Duke notables Shane Battier '01, Mike Dunleavy '03, and current assistant coach Nate James '01, won six games in a row before Boozer rejoined the team in the Sweet Sixteen. Duke then went on to win its third national championship, beating Arizona in the finals.</p></div><div><div><h3 style="font: .9em normal Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #009;">March 4, 2001—Dean E. Smith Center, Chapel Hill</h3></div></div><div><div style="padding: 0 20px 0 0;"><p class="articletitle"><span class="style2">(1)</span> <span class="faqquest">Duke</span> 104    <strong>OT</strong><br /><span class="style2">(6)</span> <span class="faqquest">Kentucky</span> 103</p><p class="articletitle">In this iconic game, Grant Hill '94 connected on a long inbounds pass to Christian Laettner '92, who buried a buzzer-beating shot from just behind the foul line, sending Duke to the Final Four. The Devils went on to win their second straight national title, beating the "Fab Five" from the University of Michigan in the finals.</p></div></div><div><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/AY-iq58_oz4" frameborder="0" width="420" height="315"></iframe></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em;"><h3 style="font: .9em normal Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #009;">March 28, 1992—NCAA East Regional Final, Philadelphia</h3></div></div><div><div style="padding: 0 20px 0 0;"><p class="articletitle"><span class="style2">(6)</span> <span class="faqquest">Duke </span>79<br /><span class="style2">(1)</span> <span class="faqquest">UNLV</span> 77</p><p class="articletitle">In the 1990 NCAA championship game, the Runnin' Rebels humiliated Duke, winning by thirty points, and rolled through the next season undefeated. In the NCAA tournament semifinal, the Devils beat UNLV in a nail biter, with Bobby Hurley '93 hitting a huge late-game three pointer. Duke went on to beat Kansas in the finals to claim the university's first basketball national title.</p></div></div><div><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/okNOOcPmnZM" frameborder="0" width="420" height="315"></iframe></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 1em;"><h3 style="font: .9em normal Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #009;">March 9, 1986—ACC Tournament, Greensboro</h3><p class="articletitle"><span class="style3 style2 style2">(1)</span><span class="faqquest"> Duke</span> 68<br /><span class="style2">(6)</span> <span class="faqquest">Georgia Tech</span> 67</p><p class="articletitle">Coach K's first conference championship came from the hustle and hard work of seniors Johnny Dawkins '86; Mark Alarie '86; Jay Bilas '86, J.D. '92; David Henderson '86; and a team that also featured freshman Danny Ferry '89 and junior Tommy Amaker '87, M.B.A. '89. After losing earlier in the year to a Georgia Tech team that included ACC greats and future NBA players Mark Price, John Salley, Craig Neal, and Bruce Dalrymple, Duke pulled out a one-point win and went on to the NCAA championship game, losing to Louisville.</p></div><div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em;"><h3 style="font: .9em normal Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #009;">March 30, 1991—NCAA Final Four, Indianapolis</h3></div></div><div><div style="padding: 0 20px 0 0;"><p class="articletitle"><span class="style2"> (u)</span><span class="faqquest"> Duke</span> 66  <strong> OT</strong><br /><span class="style2">(11)</span> <span class="faqquest">UNC</span> 65</p><p class="articletitle">Gene Banks '81 donned a tuxedo and threw roses to the crowd before the game to help celebrate senior night, then buried a turnaround jump shot at the buzzer to force overtime. Banks rebounded a Vince Taylor '82 miss and scored the game winner with nineteen seconds remaining, giving Coach K his first victory over Dean Smith's Tar Heels.</p></div></div><div><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/aV1B2Bp0EIg" frameborder="0" width="560" height="315"></iframe></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em;"><h3 style="font: .9em normal Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #009;">February 28, 1981—Cameron Indoor Stadium</h3></div></div><div><p><a class="onlinetitl" style="text-align: center;" href="http://twtpoll.com/gq6qxl" target="_blank">Vote for your favorite, and view the real-time results here.</a></p></div> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, April 1, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/aaron-kirschenfeld" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Aaron Kirschenfeld</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In February, head men&#039;s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski celebrated his 1,000th game in thirty years of coaching at Duke. The editorial staff has compiled its own list of the five most memorable games he&#039;s coached. Which of the five is the most memorable, and why? </div></div></section> Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500372 at https://alumni.duke.edu Playing by the Rules https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/playing-rules <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Has it really come to this?</p><p>In the high-stakes arena of college athletics, prospective basketball recruits can be as young as twelve years old. Other than regulation training meals and nutritional supplements like energy drinks, universities can only provide student-athletes with snacks consisting of bagels, fruit, and nuts—no cream cheese, no peanut butter, nothing else. Businesses can take out advertisements congratulating a winning team, as long as the company's product is not shown or identified. A coach is allowed to attend the funeral of a prospective student athlete's family member—as long as the student-athlete has signed a National Letter of Intent to matriculate at that coach's institution. Even the word "day" has to be defined (12:01 a.m. to midnight, in case you were wondering).</p><div class="media-header fll " style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-sketch2.jpg" alt="Illustration by Alex Williamson" width="350" height="452" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Illustration by Alex Williamson</p></div></div></div></div></div><p class="articletitle">Welcome to the convoluted, cumbersome, constantly changing landscape of athletics compliance, as governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). In thick manuals that are revised every year, the association dictates what can and can't be done by anyone (everyone) associated with college sports—coaches, academic institutions, student-athletes, fans, and the media. These manuals—one for each of the NCAA's three divisions—spell out the rules and regulations that govern the athletic activities of its 1,281 member institutions.</p><p>It's tempting to wonder what the rules of play might be if current compliance regulations were applied to the fledgling game of basketball, invented in 1891 when physical-education instructor James Naismith nailed up a couple of peach baskets so his players could get exercise during the winter. Maybe the baskets would have to come exclusively from growers of the fruit's white-fleshed, clingstone variety. Or perhaps the nails used to attach the baskets would have to be of the galvanized, spiral-shank, diamond point, high-carbon variety. And that's before the first player even walks onto the court.</p><div id="container-addins" style="display: block;"><div id="addins" class="sidebar">Not surprisingly, all of these rules take people to police them. For a Division I university like Duke, the stakes are high, and violating even a seemingly innocuous rule can have relatively large consequences. Cindy Hartmann, Duke's associate director of athletics and compliance, used to enjoy intercollegiate sporting events as a varsity basketball player and as a spectator. But now, she says, she can't help seeing such contests from a what's-wrong-with-this picture perspective. "I cannot take off my compliance hat when watching college athletics," she says. "It's impossible."</div></div><p>From her perch on the sidelines or a chair in front of her television, Hartmann says she automatically scans uniforms to make certain logos are the right size and in the right place. If she observes an assistant coach talking to someone on his cell phone, she wonders if it's a recruiting call. If there's a prospective student-athlete among the spectators, she keeps an eye on media reps to see whether they try to corner the prospect for an interview.</p><p>Last year, during an ESPN segment on allegations of improper recruiting at a football powerhouse, Hartmann watched as the camera crew taped the coach chatting up a recruit—a blatant violation of a number of NCAA rules. Earlier in her career, she might have been surprised. But as a longtime athletics administrator whose posts have included a stint on the NCAA's Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet, she's grown accustomed to seeing a wide spectrum of questionable or inappropriate actions on and off the field, from honest mistakes to egregious behavior. "As much as I love all kinds of sporting events, both pro and amateur, I can't help but see athletic competition differently than the average fan."</p><p>Hartmann is one of four full-time staff members in Duke's athletics department devoted exclusively to compliance issues. A fifth staff member, Chris Kennedy Ph.D. '79, deputy director of athletics, oversees all compliance activities, in addition to other responsibilities. The main categories that consume the majority of the staff members' time are in the areas of recruiting, eligibility, and financial aid. Each person has his or her area of expertise, but they all endeavor to stay up to speed on compliance issues across the board.</p><p>"The NCAA manual is our annual compliance bible," says Hartmann. "At last count there were more than 4,000 rules, and we have an NCAA database that incorporates 10,000 interpretations and educational columns."</p><p>Here's an example from the <span class="pubtitle">2009-10 NCAA Division I Manual</span>: "If an institution's uniform or any item of apparel worn by a student-athlete in competition contains washing instructions on the outside of the apparel on a patch that also includes the manufacturer's or distributor's logo or trademark, the entire patch must be contained within a four-sided geometrical figure (rectangle, square, parallelogram) that does not to [sic] exceed 2¼ square inches."</p><p>As arcane—and even silly—as some of the rules are, the consequences for not abiding by them can be enormous. Violations of rules fall into two categories: major, such as illegal recruiting or giving student athletes banned drugs such as anabolic steroids; and secondary, usually minor or unintentional, such as sending an e-mail message to a recruit during a "dead" period for recruiting or giving away more than the official allotted number of complimentary game tickets to a student-athlete's family. The most egregious primary violations can result in significant fines, the invalidation of a team's entire season (including championships), loss of some or all scholarships, and years of probationary status for an entire athletics program.</p><p>It's usually the major violations that make headlines. The harshest punishment meted out by the NCAA so far was in the mid-1980s against Southern Methodist University's football program for frequent and blatant recruiting violations. The sanctions included a two-year ban on all TV and bowl-game appearances, the loss of three assistant coaching positions and fifty-five scholarships, and cancellation of the 1987 season.</p><div class="media-header flr " style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-image2final.jpg" alt="Illustration by Alex Williamson" width="350" height="489" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Illustration by Alex Williamson</p></div></div></div></div></div><p>More recently, this past December, Pat Murphy, Arizona State University's head baseball coach and three-time Pac-10 Coach of the Year, resigned (or was fired, depending on reports) the day after the NCAA sent a letter to the school citing a number of alleged violations. (Arizona State was already on probation for earlier violations.) This past fall, the NCAA stripped the University of Memphis basketball team of its winning 2007-08 season, including a Final Four appearance, because, among other violations, recruited player Derrick Rose allegedly got someone to take the SAT for him. Although John Calipari, the Memphis coach at the time, was not charged with any wrongdoing, it was the second time a team under his leadership had a Final Four appearance vacated. The first was in 1996, when he was at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.</p><p>Chris Kennedy, who joined Duke's athletics staff in 1977, says he's not overly concerned about the university's being hit with allegations of major violations. "At Duke there has been a culture of compliance from the very beginning," he says. "You don't come to Duke as a coach or as an athletics program employee if you're not interested in being good, promoting academic success, and doing things the right way. You just wouldn't fit in.</p><p>"So I don't worry about a coach trying to hire a kid's father or anything like that. I do worry about things we can't control, things that are outside the institution. But I think we've structured our program in a way that we can demonstrate we've done everything we possibly can to comply with the rules."</p><p>For years, Kennedy was the sole athletics staff member in charge of compliance issues at Duke. That responsibility was a small part of his larger job, an arrangement that was practiced at nearly all other colleges and universities. But as the market for professional sports grew into a multi-billiondollar enterprise, the feeder systems for pro sports—primarily Division I college programs—became concomitantly lucrative. The better a school does in the NCAA basketball tournament, for example, the more money— from ticket sales and broadcasting revenue, for example—it receives.</p><p>Complicating matters further is the fact that college athletics programs must increasingly seek outside revenue, particularly in the current economy. Schools vying for the best players want to make sure that pricey enticements such as state-of-the-art practice facilities, tasty training-table meals, and strong academic support services will provide a competitive edge in recruiting. In 1989, an independent body, The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, was formed to address the commercialization, and excesses, of college sports. Its first report, "Keeping Faith With the Student Athlete: A New Model for Intercollegiate Athletics," issued in 1991, called for major changes in the way athletics programs were run, to make certain they didn't eclipse the educational mission of colleges and universities.</p><p>In its most recent study, "College Sports 101: A Primer on Money, Athletics, and Higher Education in the 21st Century," the commission reports that "the fast-evolving world of sports business includes event promoters, television networks, marketing firms, ticket brokers and sponsors from all sectors of the corporate world, creating new questions about intellectual property for both the institution and the student-athlete, the appropriate distance between athletes and commercial presence, and the ability to maintain amateur athletics in a commercial marketplace." Paradoxically, the NCAA has grown from being primarily a regulatory body to a major financial beneficiary of college sports revenue. (The NCAA basketball tournament, with its valuable broadcasting rights and advertising slots, is the primary annual revenue producer for the association.)</p><p>Players and their advocates question the conflicts of interest potentially posed by such an arrangement. A number of current and former student-athletes are suing the NCAA and its official commercial partners for using players' likenesses to sell video games. Although such lucrative deals are legal—one of the leading sports game producers, EA Sports, has signed exclusivity licensing deals with the NCAA and ESPN for marketing their products and brands— the games barely skirt the rules the NCAA has in place for protecting players' amateur status. In these games, players' names are not used, but their likenesses, jersey numbers, and team positions are identical to those of the actual players.</p><p>During a 2008 Knight Commission hearing, Wallace I. Renfro, at the time the senior adviser to then-NCAA president Myles Brand, defended the association even as he acknowledged the irony of strictly regulating amateur sports while making large sums of money off of them. "The problem is that we mistakenly extend the concept of amateurism to the enterprise itself. To be clear, student-athletes are amateurs. Intercollegiate athletics is not," he said.</p><p>To be sure, most of the rules and regulations in the NCAA manuals evolved from legitimate concerns, such as addressing inequities between schools, and providing equal opportunities to all colleges, regardless of endowment or size, to recruit and retain the best players. And so there are rules about the maximum number of pages permitted for media guides, or the use of color in publications, or how mail can be sent (priority versus standard). A more cynical view is that when there's money to be made, people will look for ways to circumvent the rules. Regardless of the perspective, it's a fact that the college sports with the highest potential for professional monetary success for team owners, athletes, and advertisers—football, basketball, baseball, and hockey—are more likely to be where NCAA violations occur.</p><p>NCAA rules and regulations are proposed, approved, and amended by representatives of its member organizations, and a lot of those rules and regulations are driven by competition—the perception that another coach or team may be benefiting from an unfair advantage, however great or small. As Chris Kennedy notes, "Someone sees an assistant coach on the sidelines of a bowl game calling a recruit and says, 'Hey, that's an unfair advantage because I can't call a recruit from the sidelines of a bowl game.' So legislation is proposed and passed that you can't do that.</p><div class="media-header flr " style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-image32.jpg" alt="Illustration by Alex Williamson" width="350" height="489" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Illustration by Alex Williamson</p></div></div></div></div></div><p>"I can't tell you how many mutations of legislation covering stationery there have been in the last twenty years. You can't do postcards; you can only do postcards. You can't use color; you can use color. And it's constantly, constantly changing."</p><p>More vexing than the sheer volume of dos and don'ts handed down every year is the issue of adjudication. Sports analyst and former varsity basketball player Jay Bilas '86, J.D. '92 says the process of enforcing the rules is fundamentally flawed. "The NCAA doesn't have to reveal where an allegation is coming from, but the school bears the responsibility of conducting an internal investigation to answer those allegations. Now, schools are using these rules as a recruiting mechanism. A school competing with another school for the same recruit can lodge a secondary violation allegation with the NCAA, and then that school has to take the time to prove that the allegation is unfounded. It happens all the time."</p><p>In the summer of 2008, for example, the NCAA notified Duke of a potential violation. An anonymous voicemail message alleged that basketball player DeMarcus Nelson '08 had been seen doing workouts with a professional trainer. It was then incumbent upon Duke to point out that Nelson had already graduated, and that, as a professional athlete, he wasn't breaking any rules by hiring a trainer.</p><p>And that's not an extreme example. In the spring of 2009, when John Wall, the top-ranked high-school point guard in the country, was being recruited, a Blue Devil fan unaffiliated with Duke started a Facebook group called "John Wall, come to DUKE!!" The group violated the NCAA rules governing recruiting, since, according to the NCAA, the fan was "a representative of the institution's athletics interests"—albeit tangentially. Duke officials wrote a cease-and-desist letter to the fan, asking him to take down the page. He complied, but if he hadn't, Duke would have been guilty of a secondary violation.<br /> <br />More recently, junior basketball player Nolan Smith received a two-game suspension this season for playing in a summer pickup game that hadn't been sanctioned by the NCAA. (The NCAA forbids players to participate in games it hasn't approved in advance, because, its rule-makers reason, such participation could, in some cases, violate a players' amateur status.) Smith admitted he should have checked with the Duke athletics department before joining the game. Duke reported the violation<br />to the NCAA and suspended Smith for the two games. But Coach Mike Krzyzewski told Raleigh's <span class="pubtitle">News & Observer</span> that he's not a fan of penalizing players for such unintentional and inconsequential actions. "I think kids should be able to play wherever they want to play."</p><p>With thousands and thousands of rules governing their every move, it's no wonder that players and coaches are occasionally caught off guard. But when it comes to interpreting these myriad rules, even the people charged with understanding them can find themselves at a loss. Bilas tells a story about three compliance staff members of a college athletics program who were unclear about a particular rule. The three each placed separate calls to the NCAA—and received three different interpretations of the rule. Then, Bilas says, the staff members compared notes and chose the interpretation they liked best.</p><p>Given the murky nature of interpreting rules, secondary violations—Smith's pickup game error, or an email message sent to recruits a day before it is permissible—are seen as the cost of doing (amateur) business. In 2008-09, Duke reported twenty secondary violations, all of which were inadvertent in nature and minor in scope, according to both Duke officials and the NCAA. In one instance, an alumnus read that a local high-school player had committed to Duke and took the student athlete out for lunch (a no-no). To offset this violation, the student was required to donate to charity the twelve dollars that his lunch cost.</p><p>On another occasion, two student-athletes appeared as part of a crowd shot during taping for a TV commercial. They were neither paid nor identified as athletes, but their appearance violated rules prohibiting them from endorsing commercial products. In nearly all of the cases, members of the athletics staff discovered the violations and notified the NCAA.</p><p>Cindy Hartmann, the associate athletics director, says even though violations are going to happen, it's incumbent upon colleges to do their best to abide by the rules. To that end, she says her primary role is educating internal and external constituencies about the complicated world of compliance. "Creating a higher level of awareness is a critical factor for us," she says. "It's a continual process. We send out compliance tips of the week through e-mail, publish a monthly newsletter [<span class="pubtitle">The Compliance Chronicle</span>], and meet with coaches and students on an ongoing basis. Timeliness and frequency of information is essential.</p><p>"We also work hard to develop a sense of trust among athletics department staff members so that they understand we are on the front lines looking out for them, not coming behind them to assess what they have or haven't done. If you have that level of trust, that's when you'll get the knock on the door or the phone call asking about whether something is okay."</p><p>Still, she says, "there are always going to be people out there who try to work around the rules, who don't care about the consequences of their actions. People involved in college athletics, even with the best of intentions, are going to make honest mistakes. NCAA rules are laborious, but at the end of the day, they are in place to protect the kids who are playing the game."</p><p>And for observers who question whether there is any turning back to a simpler time—when a phone call meant a personal conversation, not a possible recruiting violation, and a pickup game was a spontaneous celebration of sportsmanship, not a cause for concern—the answer can be found, in various iterations, throughout the NCAA manual: Don't bet on it.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, April 1, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/030410-lg-sketch2.png" width="1050" height="452" alt="Illustration by Alex Williamson" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">As a result of efforts to provide a level playing field for NCAA member institutions, policies governing college sports have become increasingly Byzantine. Interpreting them has become an industry unto itself.</div></div></section> Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500371 at https://alumni.duke.edu Encounters With an Ever-Present Past https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/encounters-ever-present-past <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>In front of Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a cluster of Duke students consulted a good book—if not exactly the Good Book—as one of them read aloud: "One expects the central shrine of Christendom to stand out in majestic isolation, but anonymous buildings cling to it like barnacles. One looks for numinous light, but it is dark and cramped…. One desires holiness, only to encounter a jealous possessiveness: The six groups of occupants—Latin Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrians, Copts, Ethiopians—watch one another for any infringement of rights."</p><p>That disturbingly apt description came from <span class="pubtitle">The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide</span>, by Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, the main text toted by students for a two-week study tour of Israel. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which sits on the spot where, according to some traditions, Jesus died and was buried, became the starting point for the students, just a couple of hours after their late-December flight to Israel.</p><p>Israel provided the prelude to a seminar that continues this spring on campus, "Holy Land Archaeology: Political and Religious Issues." A "semester-plus" experience that embeds students internationally is an educational innovation—made all the more appealing by the extending of financial aid toward the $3,000 program cost. The course centers on sites that, because of their location or their representation in ancient texts, are contentious.</p><p>Two longtime religion professors, Carol and Eric Meyers, are teaching the course with their Ph.D. student, Ben Gordon. Gordon has a master's from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, studied the Talmud and Bible in Jerusalem, worked as a translator and manuscript editor for the Israeli Antiquities Authority, and helped supervise archaeological excavations in Sepphoris, in Israel's Galilee region—where the Meyerses have long led excavations.</p><p>Their course enrolled nineteen students, mostly juniors and seniors and predominantly religion majors, along with one master of divinity student and one master of arts student. This was the first visit to Israel for almost all of the students; for at least one, it was the first time abroad.</p><p>Days typically began with breakfast at 7 o'clock (weekends included), were filled with visits to ancient sites (with accompanying lectures), and ended with after-dinner discussions. The required readings would have filled a thick notebook; every student was assigned to present supplementary material, usually in places relevant to the readings.</p><p>Many in the group are from strong Christian backgrounds. Still, they said they were drawn to a trip that hinged on critical assessment rather than a faith-based pilgrimage. That attitude flavored their experience in places like Nazareth Village, a re-created community that allows the visitor to "step into the life Jesus knew." The village is built on a patch of green in modern Nazareth. Actors dressed in period costumes work at the imagined first-century C.E. carpenter's workshop, an olive press, a weaver's space, and a donkey stable. In the "synagogue," one of the students was recruited to read the New Testament passage in which Jesus identifies with the Isaiah prophecies. Some found the whole setup hokey; others appreciated a New Testament version of Colonial Williamsburg.</p><p>In a distinctively Jerusalem juxtaposition, the students passed through a security screening to the Western Wall, a sacred site for Jews. It had been part of the perimeter wall for the foundation of King Herod's massive expansion of the Second Temple, later destroyed by the Romans during the first Jewish-Roman war in 70 C.E. From there, the students went through a different security screening and up to the Dome of the Rock, Islam's earliest major sanctuary, completed in 691 C.E. (Muhammad is thought to have ascended to heaven from the rock.) The Dome of the Rock is built on top of the destroyed temple. But a number of Muslim scholars don't accept the idea that the temple ever existed there. In 2000 a visit to the area by Ariel Sharon, then Israel's opposition leader, along with his armed accompaniment, was the sparkfor a Palestinian uprising.</p><div class="media-header flr " style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-200912310862.jpg" alt="Layers of controversy: The Western Wall visited by juniors Peter Farmer, left, and Grant Meeker." width="350" height="197" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Layers of controversy: The Western Wall visited by juniors Peter Farmer, left, and Grant Meeker.</p></div></div></div></div></div><p>That was far from the trip's only example of battling ideologies. Along the Golan Heights, bordering Syria, the Duke bus passed gun emplacements from the 1973 war. A stay in Haifa was introduced with a reference to Hezbollah missiles being hurled from nearby Lebanon in 2006. In Tiberias, the students learned that the local Arab population had been evacuated by British forces during the 1948 War of Independence and had never returned. Traveling to the Palestinian West Bank, as they did over several days, the students passed through border checkpoints; just beyond the checkpoints were graffiti reading "Free Palestine" and "To exist is to resist." A few blocks from where they were staying in Jerusalem, they walked by the prime minister's official residence and saw protests against a temporary crackdown on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Signs declared, "We stand with Gilad Shalit," referring to a young Israeli soldier held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2006.</p><p>So while the course was built on the events and artifacts of past millennia, students observed, inescapably, that a fraught history is reflected in today's fractious Holy Land.</p><p>Throughout the trip, the Meyerses and Gordon illuminated decades of archaeological experience: They told tales of biting scorpions, collapsing ladders, pressure groups trying to influence the presentation of artifacts, a run-in with a fox in an ancient water channel, and Eric Meyers' helping test voice projection at the Mount of Beatitudes—the site associated with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.</p><p>A prominent biblical scholar, Carol Meyers has also worked on numerous archaeological field projects. One of her books, <span class="pubtitle">Discovering Eve</span>, is a landmark study of women in ancient Israel. (During the trip, she talked about how the practice of making and distributing bread gave women considerable economic power in ancient cultures.) Her <span class="pubtitle">Women in Scripture</span> is widely considered the most comprehensive study of women in Jewish and Christian scriptures. Eric Meyers, director of the Center for Jewish Studies in Duke's religion department, has directed digs in Israel for almost forty years. He was editor of the journal <span class="pubtitle">Biblical Archaeologist</span>; wrote, among other books, the <span class="pubtitle">Cambridge Companion to the Bible</span>; edited the five-volume <span class="pubtitle">Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East</span>; and served as president of the American Schools of Oriental Research.</p><p>Both Meyerses have consulted for media productions, including A&E's <span class="pubtitle">Mysteries of the Bible</span>, Dreamworks' <span class="pubtitle">Prince of Egypt</span>, and the public-television series <span class="pubtitle">Civilization and the Jews</span>. Recovering ancient civilizations through archaeological ruins, Carol Meyers said in Jericho, poses problems. "One important problem is that archaeology itself is destructive. In order to keep going down from one layer to the next, you have to be removing something. And then you're asking the question, Is that structure too important to be tearing it down?"</p><p>There are issues not just of how to present the past, but also of how to interpret it. In areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the interpreting was often minimal. One example was the ancient city of Samaria—reached through narrow, twisty streets that the bus gingerly negotiated—where the excavated Roman forum, theater, walls, and towers presented a forlorn picture. The Duke group encountered no other visitors except for a couple of Dutch missionaries and a local shopkeeper inexplicably sporting a boa constrictor around his neck.</p><p>In Jerusalem, Eric Meyers observed, "I love archaeology. I live my life in the dirt. But I can't forget that stones don't tell the entire story." Gordon offered another perspective as he was leading a discussion in Maresha, in the south of Israel, where students gamely descended into underground cisterns, tombs cut into the rock face, and a columbarium once used for raising pigeons. Given the gaps in the literary record, archaeology can "shed light on a dark age," Gordon said. Biblical literature, he added, "sometimes doesn't deliver the goods."</p><div class="media-header top2 "><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-200912290091.jpg" alt="Layers of controversy: In Jerusalem, Carol Meyers and Ben Gordon take the lead around the Dome of the Rock." width="670" height="250" border="0" /><div class="media-h-caption"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: auto;"><div class="caption-inner">Layers of controversy: In Jerusalem, Carol Meyers and Ben Gordon take the lead around the Dome of the Rock.</div></div></div></div></div><p>Even before the Jewish state was established in 1948, archaeology had become "the national pastime and obsession," Eric Meyers wrote in an article, "Archaeology and Nationalism in Israel: Making the Past Part of the Present," that was part of the students' assigned reading. "At the very core of Zionism is the belief, supported by archaeology, that Jews had lived in the land for at least 3,000 years, and hence were entitled to it."</p><p>The appropriating of archaeology works both ways. In the same article, Meyers mentions the published report of a mosaic discovered in Gaza. The description overlooked the mosaic's Hebrew inscription; the area of discovery was under Palestinian control, and one commentator quoted by Meyers singled out the account as symbolizing an effort to "de-Judaize Gaza."</p><p>On the trip, one guest speaker stood out for the students. Katia Cytryn-Silverman, a specialist in Islamic archaeology who immigrated to Israel from Brazil, teaches in the department of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and directs excavations in Tiberias. Cytryn-Silverman talked about "the unique position of Islamic archaeology in an Israeli nation." She mentioned difficulties in attracting funding, finding scholars who are able to bridge the cultural divide, and even earning status for the field within the academy.</p><p>Asked by a student how she deals with pressure to tell the story of the past from an Islamic perspective, she responded, "I try to be as neutral as possible. But what happens when you excavate a site so tightly connected to the Jewish past, and the Muslim past turns out to be nearly as glorious? Jewish patrons are not enthusiastic about funding the excavation of an early Islamic mosque in a Jewish town. Muslim patrons are not enthusiastic abound funding a Hebrew University excavation. It can be difficult."</p><p>According to Robert Wright, author of the new, critically acclaimed book <span class="pubtitle">The Evolution of God</span>, there's a standard biblical version of early Israelite history: the Israelites escape slavery in Egypt, wander in the desert, and finally arrive at Canaan, the promised land. The Israelites march in, conquer Jericho with Yahweh's help, and then do likewise with a series of Canaanite cities. Wright quotes William Foxwell Albright, sometimes called the founder of biblical archaeology, as arguing, in his 1940 book, <span class="pubtitle">From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process</span>, that artifacts unearthed in the Holy Land supported that picture: The backward-looking Canaanites were replaced by Israel, "with its pastoral simplicity and purity of life, its lofty monotheism, and its severe code of ethics."</p><div class="media-header flr " style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-200912300536.jpg" alt="Learning circle: Eric Meyers, Ben Gordon, and Carol Meyers, from left, gather students in Masada’s excavated synagogue." width="300" height="450" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Learning circle: Eric Meyers, Ben Gordon, and Carol Meyers, from left, gather students in Masada’s excavated synagogue.</p></div></div></div></div></div><p>Jericho, the lowest and the oldest town on Earth, where a massive defensive wall went up around 8,000 B.C.E., provided a setting for the Meyerses to challenge that statement. (It was also one of the places where Palestinian children, drawn to the novelty of visiting Americans, gathered to observe the Duke students observing the site.) Judeo-Christian tradition marks this as the place where the Israelites, led by Joshua, began their conquest of the land after escaping bondage in Egypt. As the Duke bus pulled up, Eric Meyers couldn't resist leading the students in singing "Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho."</p><p>But recent decades of archaeological research—including excavation of Jericho and other cities supposedly conquered by the Israelites—have failed to bolster "the narrative of conquest of the land," the Meyerses said. There isn't even much evidence of a slower, more peaceful influx of desert wanderers, a gradual displacement of Canaanites by Israelites. Wright observes in his book that "it looks more and more as if the Israelites were Canaanites" and not foreign invaders.</p><p>Jericho tapped into the occasional tension between biblical passages and archaeological findings. A visit to Jerusalem's so-called City of David, a curious agglomeration—much of it enveloped in scaffolding—of ancient massive foundations, crumbling stone walls rising several stories, and water networks that once supplied an underground reservoir, put the tension in even sharper relief. Eric Meyers called this arguably the largest—and the most politically charged—archaeological dig in the world. It's funded by a settlers' group called Elad (an acronym for "To the City of David"), which is committed to "Judaizing" Silwan, a mostly Arab neighborhood adjacent to Jerusalem's Old City; some of the excavation activity going on there has literally undermined Arab homes. On its website, Elad refers to the City of David as "the actual location of the Biblical City of Jerusalem captured by King David over 3,000 years ago," calls it the only place on Earth "where the only guidebook needed is the Bible itself," and claims that its founder was inspired in large part by "the longing of the Jewish People to return to Zion."</p><p>If David were shown to be a true historical figure, and if his palace in Jerusalem were to be revealed, that would "strengthen Jewish claims to a contested part of Jerusalem beyond its pre-1967 borders," as a recent <span class="pubtitle">Time</span> account put it. In Jerusalem, the students' City of David tour was led by excavator Eilat Mazar, the granddaughter of Benjamin Mazar, one of the first officially recognized archaeologists in the new state of Israel. She talked excitedly about uncovering pottery shards that, she claimed, neatly tied together the local archaeology and the biblical narrative.</p><p>The Tel Dan Stele from northern Israel, discovered in the early 1990s, offered the earliest extra-biblical reference to the House of David. But no evidence positions David in any particular spot "along the continuum from tribal chieftains to mighty kings," one of the course readings noted. Based on construction techniques and pottery finds, many experts aren't convinced that the City of David excavations are actually from the time of David, the tenth century B.C.E. It's also by no means clear that David's palace is what was uncovered.</p><p>The case for the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran, where the students were almost overwhelmed by busloads of touring Nigerian Evangelicals, is clearer. Between 1947 and 1956, some 900 manuscripts packed in clay storage vessels were discovered in caves here by two Bedouin shepherds. More than 2,000 years old, the scrolls consist of texts from the Hebrew Bible, non-canonical psalms, and rules governing the community. A few days earlier, the students had seen the scrolls on display in the Israel Museum's Shrine of the Book, a building constructed in the shape of a huge ancient storage vessel and located next to the Israeli Knesset on "Parliament Hill"—a symbolic embrace by the modern Israeli state of what are, in essence, founding documents of the Jewish faith.</p><div class="media-header top2 "><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 670px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-200912300454.jpg" alt="Rallying point: A class on—and in—Masada." width="670" height="250" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Rallying point: A class on—and in—Masada.</p></div></div></div></div></div><p>Archaeologists believe the scrolls were hidden away from the approaching Romans by the local inhabitants, the Essenes, members of a Messianic Jewish sect with a strict regimen that would influence Christian monastic communities. At the time of the discovery of the scrolls, the area was under Jordanian control; since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, the Israeli Antiquities Authority has maintained jurisdiction. During the Duke trip, the media were reporting that Jordan's tourism minister wanted to regain possession of the scrolls, citing the 1954 Hague Convention that protects cultural property during armed conflict. The scrolls had just traveled to a Toronto museum, and the minister was asking Canadian officials to block their return to Israel.</p><p>As the students gathered alongside the ruined walls of Qumran's "scriptorium," where excavations uncovered writing tables and inkwells, Eric Meyers relayed a Duke connection to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Back in 1950, Duke was one of four stops on a U.S. tour for a visiting exhibition of some of the most important scrolls. Displayed under armed guard in Duke Chapel, they drew some 30,000 visitors. Reportedly, the university was invited to purchase three of the scrolls for $250,000; Duke officials turned down the offer.</p><p style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #ffffff;">A more recent and more somber history was presented as the students visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, which derives much of its emotional power from suggestions of ordinary lives snuffed out—photos from the shtetls, diary pages, and piles and piles of shoes. A wall text says most Europeans, influenced by a long history of anti-Semitism, "reacted with apathy to the murder of Jews," even though Jews "had lived in their midst for centuries."</p><div class="media-header top2 "><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 670px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-201001031007.jpg" alt="On-site history lesson: Eric Meyers gives an authoritative" width="670" height="250" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">On-site history lesson: Eric Meyers gives an authoritative overview of Herodion.</p></div></div></div></div></div><p>Eric Meyers talked about having attended a ceremony recognizing the parents of some friends included in the Yad Vashem "Righteous Among the Nations" project, which pays tribute to the non-Jews who helped Jews (in this case, thousands of children) during that dark time. His voice breaking, he sketched his personal Holocaust story through family members in Germany. The fate of his grandfather, a well-to-do textile manufacturer and music enthusiast, was never clear. His grandmother escaped and, after years as a displaced person, was reunited with her family. She would never say anything about what had happened, Meyers said.</p><p>Across thousands of years, there were emotional and ideological ties between Yad Vashem and Masada, an isolated rock cliff overlooking the Dead Sea. Most of the construction in Masada was carried out by King Herod, the great builder—and a great scoundrel, as Eric Meyers characterizes him, who acquired multiple wives and executed various family members. Herod ruled from 37 to 4 B.C.E. (The trip would take in other sites associated with Herod, including Herodion, which served as a summer palace, fortress, monument, district capital, and burial ground; and Caesarea, headquarters of the Roman government in Palestine and site of a huge artificial harbor and equally impressive amphitheater used for sporting events.)</p><p>After a steep uphill cable-car ride, the students worked their way through ancient storerooms, a bathhouse, ritual baths, a synagogue, and a defensive wall. Josephus Flavius, a first-century military leader and author of <span class="pubtitle">The Jewish War</span>, reported that when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E., Masada filled up with refugees. According to Josephus' history, three or four years later, the defenders decided to commit suicide in the face of the invading Romans. He describes how the defenders killed family members, and then, "having chosen by lot ten of their number to dispatch the rest, they laid themselves down, each beside his prostrate wife and children, and flinging their arms around them, offered their throats in readiness." The Masada museum includes pottery shards, each one inscribed with the name of an individual—perhaps testifying to a grim fate driven by the drawing of lots.</p><div class="media-header top2 "><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 670px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-200912300540.jpg" alt="Rallying point :Envisioning the Roman assault on Masada’s outer walls." width="670" height="250" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Rallying point: Envisioning the Roman assault on Masada’s outer walls.</p></div></div></div></div></div><p>But on the windswept edge of Masada, with a view that stretches into Jordan, the Meyerses cast doubt on the story of mass suicide. According to Jewish law, which calls for the shedding of blood only in self defense, that would be "the ultimate affront," said Eric Meyers. He added that the absence of physical evidence, namely skeletal remains, casts further doubt on the story. And he described the rallying cry of "Masada shall not fall again" as "an awkward metaphor" for a Jewish state that feels constantly besieged. Carol Meyers said Josephus' work "is not historiography in the modern sense," and that he would have had "no compunction about embellishment to get the point across." Modern interpreters have to grapple with the truth-bending conventions of ancient stories, she added.</p><p>Masada echoed in other ways for the Meyerses. The two had met when she was a senior at Wellesley College headed for a Ph.D. in biblical studies and he was doing a master's at Brandeis University (he went on to Harvard University for his Ph.D.). They were the only two students awarded fellowships at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. As part of the fellowship, they spent their first dig together in the Negev Desert. During the next academic year, in Jerusalem, they were students at the Hebrew University; over winter break, they both worked at the excavations in Masada. That was exactly forty-five years before they stood on the site with their Duke students.</p><p>Masada had an archaeological echo in Gamla, in the Golan Heights, another rebellious Jewish city overtaken by Roman forces. According to Josephus, the city, surrounded by cliffs, could only be accessed through a steep, winding trail—the same trail used by the students. The students walked into the ruins through piles of rubble—the precise point where the Romans<br />breached the city walls. Gamla supports Israel's largest nesting colony of birds of prey. In one patch of the brilliant, blue sky, students watched circling vultures; in another, they watched Israeli Air Force jets in training maneuvers.</p><p>Gamla overlooks the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, an area that has strong drawing power for the Meyerses. For years they've been drawn to Sepphoris in particular, along the ancient roadway that linked the Mediterranean Sea with the city of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. With colleagues from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, they launched the Joint Sepphoris Project in 1985. Two years later, Thomas L. Friedman reported in <span class="pubtitle">The New York Times</span> that the Meyerses' team had "discovered, in excellent condition, a 1,700-year-old mosaic that includes the stunning portrait of a woman who is being called the 'Mona Lisa of Roman Palestine.' "</p><p>As Carol Meyers recalled the nerve-racking process of packing it in a layer of gauze and rolling it up to be sent off for restoration, the students surrounded the mosaic. It's now reinstalled in the reception-hall floor of the palatial Roman-era building, whose original function is obscure. In Sepphoris' small museum, the students crowded around images of the Meyerses excavating there in the 1980s; the students avidly took photos of the photos.</p><p>Sepphoris provided a good lesson in how archaeologists reveal a city's Jewish character. On the site, the Meyerses pointed to the prevalence of ritual baths, structures determined to be too small for hygienic bathing but perfectly suited to ritual immersion. They mentioned the recovered fragments of stone vessels (considered enduringly pure in Jewish tradition) and the absence of pig bones (avoiding consumption of pork conformed to biblical dietary laws). And they debunked a theory that considers the city to have been a Gentile Hellenistic center in the first century C.E. That view, unsupported by either archaeology or research on the culture of Galilee at the time of Jesus, has led to claims that the Hebrew language and literature and Jewish culture were not prime influences on Jesus, who is thought to have visited the city. From there, said the Meyerses, it's a quick and unfortunate leap to denying Jesus' Jewish roots.</p><p>As they took the leap across 6,000 miles and a couple of millennia and returned to campus in mid-January, the students were resigned to forgoing their Mediterranean staples of falafel, hummus, and shawarma, a wrap of shaved lamb or turkey bathed in meat juices. But they outdid their peers with New Year's Eve memories: a five hour Arab meal in Bethlehem, complete with plastic Santa Clauses, a DJ spinning Arab tunes at a deafening volume, an impromptu chorus of "Jingle Bells" in Arabic, a rousing group sing of "Happy Birthday" in English, a gyrating conga line, and midnight hugs across generations and ethnicities.</p><p>At their first on-campus course meeting, one of the students said he was "surprised at how in Israel the past reaches out to the present in such a visible and tangible way." A second said it was eye-opening to learn about the divide between biblical "maximalists" and "minimalists" among scholars—those who look to the Bible as illuminating archaeology and those who consider it fantasy. A third remarked on what it's like to get to know a subject by actually experiencing the space. There's no comparison with merely observing it as a tourist or seeing it represented in a textbook, she said. Another noted how frequently the Duke group encountered religious-pilgrimage and Zionist-youth groups. How different it was, she said, to be looking at ancient sites—places of enduring religious and ideological significance—guided by scholarly skepticism.</p><p>And there was praise for the Duke group dynamics. Many of the students, even those with previous study-abroad credentials, found it remarkable that none of their peers complained about the workload or the stresses of long days. It was a group that, even to an outside observer, was unfailingly engaged and good-humored.</p><p>Some thought back to their last day in Israel. Along a Tel Aviv beach, they had been treated to a fiery, Turneresque sunset—streaks of reds and oranges above the blue-green Mediterranean. It was an evocative end-of-trip metaphor for the Holy Land itself: something both marking time and timeless; something at once fragile and fraught.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, April 1, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/Untitled-1.png" width="670" height="265" alt="Herodion unveiled: the tunnels, baths, corridors, and courtyards of an ancient administrative center. Photos by David Blumenfeld" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Beginning with two weeks in Israel, a course on Holy Land archaeology explores the roots of controversies and competitions that have stretched over millennia. </div></div></section> Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500369 at https://alumni.duke.edu Documentary Doings https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/documentary-doings <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p class="articletitle">In April, the thirteenth annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will bring up the curtain on numerous documentary-film premieres—and a new executive director.</p><p>Deirdre Haj, an experienced documentary producer who was formerly a theater and film actor, will take over from Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies, who has been serving as interim head of the festival.</p><p>Full Frame, which is sponsored in large part by Duke, is a four-day festival devoted to the theatrical exhibition of nonfiction film. Set within a single city block in downtown Durham, the festival landscape fosters community and conversation among filmmakers, film professionals, and audiences.</p><p>This year's career award will be presented to filmmakers Liz Garbus and Rory Kennedy, who together have produced and directed a wide range of work exploring social issues through the lives of everyday people, including examinations of the U.S. legal system, AIDS, and human rights.</p><p>The thematic program, which operates alongside the general competition, will be on the subject of labor, and Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, directors of the 2009 film <span class="pubtitle">The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant</span>, will be curators. The festival will take place April 8 to 11.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, April 1, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Full Frame hires new director, prepares for April festival </div></div></section> Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500367 at https://alumni.duke.edu Journal of Tours of Duty in West Africa https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/journal-tours-duty-west-africa <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <div class="media-header flr " style="width: 325px;"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 325px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-biblio.jpg" alt="A.F. Elliot, "Journal of tours of duty in West Africa,"" width="325" height="262" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">A.F. Elliot, "Journal of tours of duty in West Africa," unpublished manuscript with drawings, watercolors, and photographs. 1866-1879. Les Todd</p></div></div></div></div></div><p class="articletitle">Surgeon Major A.F. Elliot M.R.C.S, a British physician who served with the British Army in West Africa, kept detailed journals during the time he was stationed in modern-day Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and Ghana. The journals record six of his tours of duty, spanning the years 1866 to 1879—a time of great upheaval in colonial West Africa.</p><p>Most significantly, his sixth tour of duty from 1873 to 1874 took him to Cape Coast Castle in Ghana—a former center of slave-trade operations and the regional capital of Britain's colonial government at the time. There, attached to the 2nd West Indian Regiment, he recorded a graphic firsthand account of the Third Anglo-Ashanti War, including descriptions of the fighting between the British and Ashanti forces and treatment of the wounded.</p><p>Away from the battlefield, Elliot chronicled the customary treatments of British soldiers and vaccinations and other aid for Africans, especially children. He also took frequent hunting trips; sketched wildlife; met tribal royalty and an emigrant from America to Liberia, likely a former slave; visited a "lunatic asylum"; and witnessed numerous floggings and a tribal circumcision ceremony. After attending an inquest for "a Kroo boy called Jim" in Sierra Leone, Elliot writes that the boy "was badly horsewhipped by a native master on Sunday and died on Thursday, the body was exhumed—the jury's verdict was <span class="pubtitle">natural causes </span>[emphasis his]."</p><p>The Englishman's ambivalent response to his unfamiliar and uncomfortable surroundings is evident. Complaints of "this horrible stagnant West Africa" and speculations on how to "civilize" the African population are juxtaposed with sympathy for the mistreated and drawings, watercolors, and photographs recording his fascination with the world around him.</p><p>Remarkable for their detail, length, distinctive voice, and variety, the journals are an invaluable resource for understanding the British colonial presence in Africa.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, April 1, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Biblio-file: Selections from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.</div></div></section> Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500366 at https://alumni.duke.edu Forum: March-April 2010 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/forum-march-april-2010 <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <div class="articleTitleBlock"><div class="articletitle-blogstyle">Forum</div></div><div class="media-header flr" style="width: 200px;"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-duketwitteradmockup.jpg" alt="Wall Street" width="200" height="238" /><br /><br /><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-001covercmyk.jpg" alt="Scaling Back: Sizing Up a Smaller Duke" width="200" height="261" /><div class="media-h-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </div><h3 class="media-h-credit"><strong>Duke Re-dedicated</strong></h3></div><p>I applaud the university for re-dedicating the campus war memorial [<a href="http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/memorializing-dukes-war-dead">"Memorializing Duke's War Dead," January-February 2010</a>]. As a Duke graduate who is currently serving in the U.S. military, the re-dedication is especially meaningful for me.</p><p>Updating the memorial represents an enormous step forward by recognizing the ongoing contribution that Duke and its alumni make to our national security.</p><p>As an undergraduate, I studied at the school of engineering and walked past the war memorial nearly every day. As an Army ROTC cadet, the memorial reminded me of the very serious nature of my commitment to the military and the sacrifices that I would be expected to make after leaving Duke.</p><p>I am sure that other alumni serving in our nation's military share this or similar memories of the memorial. Unfortunately, as much as the memorial reminded me of my personal commitment to the country, the fact that the university had not updated the memorial since World War II subtly communicated to me that the university was less cognizant of the recent or ongoing contributions of Duke's military alumni.</p><p>The memorial should serve as a reminder that Duke graduates continue to contribute to our national security by serving in the U.S. military around the world. Consider that the U.S. military personnel have been in Afghanistan for almost ten years, yet the university is just now recognizing the alumni service in that war.</p><p>The closing paragraph of the university's mission statement is the imperative "to contribute in diverse ways to the local community, the state, the nation and the world." Duke's military graduates are fulfilling this obligation every day. The university and the broader Duke community should maintain an awareness of our graduates' service. Do not let another fifty years pass before the memorial is updated.</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Neil N. Snyder B.S.E. '98<br /> Leavenworth, Kansas</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">The correspondent is a major in the U.S. Army.</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><h3 id="two" class="articletitle"><strong>Legibility Issues </strong></h3><p class="articletitle">The plea against tinted backgrounds and colored ink in the magazine [<a href="http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/forum-january-february-2010">Forum, January-February 2010</a>] struck a chord with all of us older readers, I am sure. Printers and experienced editors know that the readability of a printed page is enhanced by high contrast between text and background, by serifs on the typeface (to help in distinguishing between similarly shaped letters), and by well-proportioned spaces between letters, words, and lines.</p><p class="articletitle">Young designers and misguided publishers evidently don't know this and don't care about the readability of the text; they seem to think that liberally mixing colors and typefaces to produce something arty is the way to capture readers' attention. In fact, the result is distracting if not entirely off-putting.</p><p>In the case of an alumni magazine, that choice is especially wrong-headed. The re aders for whom the magazine should be most appealing are the older alumni, who presumably have money and are inclined to donate it. Where is the sense in producing a magazine that is difficult for their old eyes to read? Their natural tendency to think of Duke fondly and generously will give way to understandable annoyance.</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Brian Vaughn J.D. '71<br /> Oakland, California</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><h3 id="three" class="articletitle"><strong>Farsightedness Needed</strong></h3><p class="articletitle">Congratulations on another fine article ["<a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/sizing-up-a-smaller-duke">Sizing Up a Smaller Duke</a>," November-December 2009] on an important—perhaps the most important—topic for Duke and many other universities over the next several years. Anticipating that this topic may generate another article or two, I offer some thoughts that may be useful.</p><p>As you note in your article, the medical center is in a strong financial position, and this is a very good thing for Duke in the near term. However, this strong financial position and the proposed significant investments in new buildings and staff is predicated on the assumption that the nation can and will afford a continuing rise in healthcare costs and therefore in income to medical centers such as Duke's. This poses a financial and, to some extent, an ethical dilemma for Duke and its national peers with respect to their position vis-à-vis the national good.</p><p>The other thought concerns the ability of Duke and other universities to anticipate a downturn in the economy. No one can predict when such a downturn will occur precisely, but history and our knowledge of human nature suggest that every twenty or thirty years such a financial correction will occur. Given the long planning horizon that a university may wish to take, one might observe that the steps we are now taking to "rightsize" the budget should not end when the current crisis ends, but should be continued to allow Duke to take better advantage of the next downturn. For example, see [Fuqua School dean] Blair Sheppard's comment about the market for faculty recruiting in the article. Any university that can invest in faculty and staff hiring today will be in an advantageous position tomorrow.</p><p>Had we been more frugal in the past, we could be more aggressive in recruiting today. The dilemma is how to convince a leader today that she or he should put aside reserve funds for their successor to invest tomorrow, i.e., ten or twenty years from today.</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Earl H. Dowell<br /> Durham</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Dowell is William Holland Hall Professor of mechanical engineering.</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><h3 id="four" class="articletitle"><strong>Bonk is a Hit</strong></h3><p class="articletitle">I grinned with genuine pleasure upon reading that professor James Bonk is in his fiftieth year of teaching chemistry [By the Numbers, November-December 2009]. In the mid-'70s, I was a freshman chemistry major in his formidable class. In those days there was a silly fad sweeping the campus: One could take out a "contract" on a person and cause them to be hit with one (or several) cream pies.</p><p>One day, some foolish bloke "pied" Bonk in the middle of his lecture and hightailed it out of there. Bonk shot the class a sly grin, then took off after the miscreant like Jesse Owens in Berlin. We all piled out onto the Gross Chemistry balcony and watched Bonk easily overtake and bring to justice his hapless assailant. Little did the fellow know that Bonk, a tennis coach, was in fantastic shape. Kudos to professor Bonk for his long, distinguished career, and for giving me a great memory.</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Francis "Hank" Henry '78<br /> Carrollton, Texas</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><h3 id="five" class="articletitle"><strong>Realm of Research</strong></h3><p class="articletitle">In "Strange Science" [<a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/q-and-a-strange-science">Q&A, November-December 2009</a>], author Stacy Horn claims "you can't say [Rhine's results] are the result of sloppy controls, fraud, or wishful thinking." Yet many have done so, and for good reason.</p><p>In his 1952 book,<span class="pubtitle"> In The Name Of Science</span>, Martin Gardner explained that Rhine, in experiments with Zener (ESP) cards, counted both hits and misses as positive evidence, explaining away the misses as "displacement," because incorrect guesses usually matched some nearby card—up to two or three cards ahead or behind the target. Even strongly negative results were reinterpreted as a psychic "avoidance of the target." Gardner reports many other obvious fallacies in Rhine's analysis.</p><p>Rhine's wishful thinking is evident in this sentence: "We need to find something about ourselves that exists independently of the body." But the selective gathering of evidence to support a predetermined conclusion is advocacy, not scientific inquiry. Indeed, one who engages in mental gymnastics to recast clearly negative results as positive evidence is, at best, a wishful thinker—and, at worst, a fraud.</p><p>Gardner considered Rhine sincere, but as the intervening years have seen no reproducible evidence for psychic phenomena, it is to Duke's credit that it no longer funds such "research."</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Carl Westman '89<br /> Chattanooga, Tennessee</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><h3 id="six" class="articletitle"><strong>Admirable Entrepreneurs</strong></h3><p class="articletitle">I loved reading the article "<a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/hothouse-inc">Hothouse Inc</a>." in the November-December [2009] issue of <span class="pubtitle">Duke Magazine</span>. I, too, graduated in 2006 and have since started my own company, Lark Tours. I completely agree that this recession has been a great time to become an entrepreneur. Yes, money is tight and the lifestyle is modest (at best), but this is the kind of setting that separates the quality companies from the rest. If you made it through 2009, chances are you can make it through any year.</p><p>The future looks bright, and I'm really happy to hear that other Duke alumni are forging ahead with new ideas and businesses. Sometimes you think that everybody from Duke is either on Wall Street, at a consulting firm, in law school, or in med school, but clearly that is not the case. Best of luck to all you entrepreneurs out there! I think 2010 will be a great year for all of us.</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Basil Camu '06<br /> Raleigh</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><h3 id="seven" class="articletitle"><strong>Climate Curiosity</strong></h3><p class="articletitle">Barry Yeoman's article on Tim Profeta's work in Washington on behalf of Duke's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions ["<a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/pragmatic-problem-solver">Pragmatic Problem Solver</a>," November-December 2009] was enlightening, except for a couple of statements that reflect bias and not objectivity—unbiased objectivity, the factor we learned in beginning science courses but is now sorely missing in the current climate-change discussions.</p><p>As a former president of two publicly owned environmental companies, I have experienced the too-often "scientific theory" becoming "fact"—for a while, that is, until new "facts" are discovered.</p><p>For instance, in Yeoman's first paragraph, he states that a difficult issue facing Congress is "how to slow the devastating pace of global warming." Where has it been devastating? Has anyone proved Hurricane Katrina was the result of global warming? How about the farmers in Siberia and Canada who will reap tremendous agricultural advantages of a warmer climate?<br /> Are the Sahara Desert droughts really the result of recent global warming? Are we seriously just accepting the "accuracy" of computer models for the next fifty years of climate hinged on man-made emissions of carbon dioxide? They are a very small part of the atmosphere's total CO2 content. Also, greenhouse gases are only a small part of the myriad climate variables, which include cloud cover, water vapor, wind patterns, ocean oscillations, Earth's elliptical orbit and wobble, solar winds, and sunspots.</p><p>The senator's aide was quoted as stating the three types of people involved are deniers, pursuers of other agendas, and those like Tim Profeta "who understand it and want to do something about it." My hope is that Duke will lead the way in adding a fourth: those who understand the dynamics of scientific rigor and honestly allow all scientists to publish their studies covering all sides to what is really future speculation concerning a host of difficult-to-predict climate variables.</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Roger J. Colley '60<br /> Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><h3 id="eight" class="articletitle"><strong>Fairness, Balance</strong></h3><p class="articletitle">The article "<a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/speaker-spectrum">Speaker Spectrum</a>" [Gazette, November-December 2009] describes a talk given by John Bolton, in which he advocated "immediate and forceful intervention in Iran." Bolton led the charge for our unnecessary and disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. Now he wants to drag the U.S. into a worse war in Iran, not to benefit America, but to make Israel more secure.</p><p>Bolton accused President Obama of "putting the interests of other countries before those of his own," which is ironic, because Bolton has been referred to for years as an "Israel-firster," someone willing to place Israel's interests first and America's last.</p><p>Meanwhile, Iran is not a direct threat to the U.S., and we should be dialoguing and trading with them, not threatening harsh sanctions or military action. Bolton is as wrong on Iran as he was on Iraq.</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Ray Gordon P '04<br /> Bel Air, Maryland</p><p> </p><p class="articletitle">I applaud you for inviting John Bolton to campus. I was beginning to wonder about you guys. Balance is good—keep it up!</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Al Sherwood B.S.E.E. '72<br /> Chanhassen, Minnesota</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><h3 id="nine" class="articletitle"><strong>Only a Word</strong></h3><p class="articletitle">In the [November-December 2009] issue, you quote [President Richard H.] Brodhead as stating: "Great universities don't only advance in times of prosperity."</p><p>Given the context of the article containing this quote, I assume what he meant to say was: "Great universities don't advance only in times of prosperity."</p><p>But then, given his academic background is in English, perhaps I am wrong, and he indeed meant that great universities may also remain static or retreat in times of prosperity.</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Frank Preissle '58<br /> Columbus, Ohio</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><h3 id="ten" class="articletitle"><strong>Federal Aid</strong></h3><p class="articletitle">I noted the article "<a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/yellow-ribbon-scholars">Yellow Ribbon Scholars</a>" [Gazette, September-October 2009], relating to returning veterans pursuing Duke degrees and a "new fund-matching partnership with the VA" now evolving. It appears that the present GI Bill for returning veterans still does not match the wonderful World War II bill that provided benefits for those veterans returning and seeking higher education.</p><p>That was the "gold standard." It provided full tuition at any institution that would admit the veteran and paid for books, supplies, and fees; the veteran also received a monthly stipend. There was no need to work out "matching" deals with the VA.</p><p>I accomplished my undergraduate work and had sufficient benefits to allow for some graduate work. It is unfortunate that Congress did not offer the same type of GI Bill to today's veterans, much smaller in number than those of the World War II period.</p><p class="articletitle pubtitle">Joseph Cooper '50<br /> Pittsboro, North Carolina</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, April 1, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500364 at https://alumni.duke.edu Si, Se Puede https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/si-se-puede <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <div class="media-header top2 "><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 670px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-004010huerta098.jpg" alt="Labor advocate: Huerta praised role of unions in pursuit of economic justice." width="670" height="251" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Labor advocate: Huerta praised role of unions in pursuit of economic justice. Megan Morr</p></div></div></div></div></div><p class="articletitle">Organized-labor activist Dolores Huerta issued a call to activism at Duke Chapel during the university's annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration.</p><p>Huerta, who is a cofounder of the United Farm Workers of America, interspersed her talk with a mix of civil rights history, activist politics, and humor. She emphasized the importance of labor unions in not only empowering and educating the working poor, but also as a means of economic justice.</p><p>"Dr. King understood the importance of labor unions," Huerta said. "Many told him not to go to Memphis to march with the garbage workers. But he had an understanding that underneath it all—the discrimination and social inequities—was a need for economic justice."</p><p>Huerta also made some pointed political remarks, criticizing right-wing radio hosts and bank bonuses, and she advocated for the election of more women to public office.</p><p>Other events during the commemoration included a performance by the African Children's Choir, a performance group that travels the world raising awareness of poverty in Africa and Rabbi Alysa Stanton, the first African-American woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the U.S. Stanton presented a monologue called Layers of Healing, Layers of Hope at an event hosted by a number of campus and student organizations.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, April 1, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Huerta headlines King commemoration, urges action </div></div></section> Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500363 at https://alumni.duke.edu Road Scholars https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/road-scholars <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <div class="media-header top2 "><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 663px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/030410/images/030410-lg-156809mobile001cmyk.jpg" alt="Step right up: research on the move." width="663" height="362" /><p class="caption-text"><div class="media-h-caption">Step right up: research on the move. Megan Morr</p></div></div></div></div></div><p class="articletitle">Natural disasters, union picket lines, and even the North Carolina State Fair are all rife with opportunities for social-science research. But they also present challenges, say Duke researchers.</p><p>Enter the Research Mobile, a new forty-foot-long mobile laboratory that arrived on campus at the end of the fall semester. Researchers at the Duke Interdisciplinary Initiative in Social Psychology plan to use the mobile lab to conduct interviews and computer-based tests on subjects in the field. The unit is equipped with five soundproof cubicles with computers and audio-visual recording equipment, a larger room for small-group studies, and a psychophysiology measurement system capable of monitoring heart rate, blood pressure, galvanic skin response, and respiration.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2010-04-01T00:00:00-04:00">Thursday, April 1, 2010</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/mar-apr-2010" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mar - Apr 2010</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Research Mobile Collects Fresh Data </div></div></section> Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18500362 at https://alumni.duke.edu