Duke - Jan - Feb 2006 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/issue/jan-feb-2006 en Books: January-February 2006 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/books-january-february-2006 <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"><table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" style="width:100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" style="width:100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <p><strong><img alt="The Research University Presidency in the Late Twentieth Century: A Life Cycle/Case History Approach By H. Keith H. Brodie and Leslie Banner" src="/issues/010206/images/lg_books2.jpg" style="height:219px; width:153px" /></strong><br /> The Research University Presidency in the Late Twentieth Century: A Life Cycle/Case History Approach<br /> By H. Keith H. Brodie and Leslie Banner.<br /> Praeger Publishers, 2005.<br /> 352 pages. $35.</p> <p>This book on the role of the presidency in research universities provides an inside look at the dynamics of the university during the late twentieth century. H. Keith H. Brodie, president emeritus of Duke, is a psychiatrist, and Leslie Banner is a writer and higher-education specialist who served as Brodie's special assistant during his presidency.</p> <p>The book is a study of leadership as reflected in the case histories of eight university presidents who were appointed during the 1980s. These represent twelve universities, a number of individuals having presided over more than one institution. It so happens that of the twelve institutions, six are private and six are public, and this is a useful balance. Of the presidents interviewed, two had served in presidencies in both public and private universities, and one had served as president of three different public universities.</p> <p>The backgrounds of the writers, one as a president and psychiatrist, the other as a writer and editor in the study of literature, have led them to examine the presidency in terms of developmental psychology and personal narrative. More than half the book is taken up with edited transcriptions of presidential narratives. The earlier part of the book is a comparative analysis of these narratives, organized around the various stages through which a presidency passes. It compares the presidential term with the Eriksonian principle of the life cycle, which holds that each stage of human development requires successful engagement with certain basic conflicts if the individual is to reach maturity.</p> <p>The working hypothesis the authors developed was that the presidency could be represented by four phases: the prelude phase, including courtship, appointment, and preparation; the honeymoon phase; the plateau, or settled phase of an administration; and the exit phase, extending from a president's first thoughts of resignation to his or her actual departure from office. The authors argue that the limitation of the analysis to presidential terms that began in the 1980s, its restriction to former presidents of AAU Research I universities (the major doctoral-awarding research universities), and the fact that all presidents interviewed had departed from the positions they described and could therefore speak freely about them, allowed them to draw meaningful comparisons and generalizations from a relatively small sample. Given the variety of both individuals and institutions involved, it is perhaps scarcely surprising that there is little consistency between the narratives involved, and that few generalizations emerge.</p> <p>Chapters one through four deal successively with each of the four phases, quoting at length from the presidential narratives and comparing one with another. In the interviews, the presidents provided both descriptions and "their own frank, personal evaluations of their experiences," according to Brodie and Banner. The hope was that, by using this method, the authors might "discover whether the epigenetic principle would hold true, that is, whether one must resolve conflicts associated with one stage of the presidency before moving on to achieve success in the next."</p> <p>The four chapters comparing presidential responses and the chapter (five) on the summary of findings are intended to demonstrate whether the "developmental model would yield useful insights," whether illustrations of conflicts and attitudes common to their positions could be drawn from interviews, and whether the life cycle hypothesis would have predictive value.</p> <p>The results of the analytical study are limited. The authors conclude that "approaching the university presidents in terms of a life cycle provided a useful paradigm for helping others to understand the conditions under which presidents must operate." This is less apparent in the conclusions than it is in the individual interviews. Furthermore, because the interview questions were oriented toward finding specific points of conflict, the resulting responses scarcely provide a balanced representation of the overall outcome, or even the issues, of particular presidencies. The summary of findings is, in many ways, a summary of the detailed comparisons and contrasts given in the first four chapters.</p> <p>The chapters containing the presidents' interviews are gold mines. The narratives themselves are full of insight, though it would have been helpful to have known precisely what were the questions to which the presidents responded. The personal accounts are reflective, remarkably candid, and rarely self-congratulatory. They give a wholly realistic view of the broad sweep of each of the various terms of presidential experience and service. They also emphasize in their individual variety why it is so difficult to make generalizations about the role of the university president.</p> <p>We should not be surprised or discouraged that this is so. A faculty member, it has been said, is one who thinks otherwise. What is true of faculty members is also true of university communities and their presidents. To anticipate that there are close similarities or profound commonalities among them, or to anticipate that any hypothesis could provide significant predictive value is, perhaps, to be a trifle optimistic. But we should be grateful to the authors of this work for the novel study they have undertaken. The individual narratives demonstrate the complexities, subtleties, frustrations, and rewards of leadership in that most complex and vital institution, the research university.</p> <p>Overall, this is a valuable book, one that will be particularly helpful to incumbent and intending presidents. It gives a useful insight in the day-to-day life of a president, grappling with real-life issues, with all the turmoil and frequent inconsistency that mark the advancement of knowledge.</p> <p>— <em>Frank H.T. Rhodes</em><br /> <em>Rhodes is president emeritus of Cornell University.</em></p> <hr /></td> <td> <p><strong><img alt="Selected Poems By James Applewhite" src="/issues/010206/images/lg_books1.jpg" style="float:left; height:230px; width:153px" />Selected Poems<br /> By James Applewhite '58, A.M. '60,<br /> Ph.D. '69.<br /> Duke University Press, 2005.<br /> 172 pages. $18.85. </strong></p> <p>Who that shall point as with a wand," William Wordsworth asks in The Prelude, "and say, 'This portion of the river of my mind/Came from yon fountain?' " It will be clear to anyone who reads Duke English professor James Applewhite's newly released Selected Poems that the river of this poet's mind originates in eastern North Carolina. The collection, which gathers work from his nine previous books, may include poems that find themselves in other geographies--Minnesota, Italy, the Grand Tetons, and Wordsworth's own Lake Grasmere for instance--but their maker rarely lets us forget that he is a poet whose subjects are locally inspired.</p> <p>"You must find in the general store," Applewhite remarks in "The Descent," "More than you came for." And this seems to be a presiding theme for many of these selections as, along the way, he expresses a mournful love for the place in which he grew up, its stands of pine and its tobacco barns, its flora and, perhaps most important, its people. At his best, he names the textures of hard-worn rural lives in a language that is rich and original.</p> <p>"Some Words for Fall" is one example. "The tobacco's long put in. Whiffs of it curing/Are a memory that rustles the sweet gums." What follows is a poem that rides its elegiac notes into the scenery of a post-harvest landscape where "Barbecue's smell shines in the blue wind[,]" and soft drink signs, "Titles of Nehi Grape, Dr Pepper, are nailed/Onto barns, into wood sides silvered and alive,/</p> <p>Like the color pork turns in heat over ashes." "Some Words for Fall," in its quiet, unpretentious tone, manages--as all successful lyric poems do--to speak the unspeakable; it embodies the evanescent longings that haunt those who inhabit this county in Somewhere, Carolina. But autumn, as the poem acknowledges, is also a state of mind, and Applewhite crystallizes this thought for us all. "No words they have are enough./Sky in rags between riverbank trees/</p> <p>Pieces the torn banner of heroic name."</p> <p>When reading "Leaf Mirrors," "Tobacco Men," "Water," "Firewood," "Jonquils," and "World's Shoulder, Turning," it isn't difficult to feel as if we are in the hands of a skilled and trusted guide. Applewhite's creative judgment in these poems is pretty much beyond reproach. In "Clear Winter, " the poet finds himself where poets often will--out in the woods, isolated, pondering. "Light that on trunks seemed warm/Looked bleak and bare/On chill limbs high in chill air." It is not only the afternoon's feeling of barrenness that he recreates with a cosmic and melancholy precision, but also the sweet sensation of coming in from both the literal and the figurative cold. He turns "toward home,/Alone as a pane of ice/the keen sun shines through." But all that loneliness is redeemed in the end: "I kissed my warm wife/And under the first star/Gathered cedar for a fire." These lovely, unassuming and clarifying last lines are the kind poetry could use more of today.</p> <p>As is often the case with Southern writers, there are times when Applewhite leans too heavily on his regional identity, and, ultimately, he can't quite resist the temptation of certain clichÈs. This is inconsequential enough in "How to Fix a Pig (as told by Dee Grimes)," about the ritual of making barbecue. "Take a piece of tin that's/Blowed off a barn in a storm[,]" Dee Grimes begins. She tells us to "Take a little hit from the bottle in your pocket." If we get hungry while we wait, we should "Eat that cold chunk of corn bread/[We] brought from the house in a greasy paper bag." Even if it has minimal ambitions, "How to Fix a Pig" seems a bit too pleased with its vernacular and country shtick.</p> <p>The stakes grow increasingly higher, however, in "Visit with Artina," written largely in the dialect of an elderly black woman. "[S]ome days I jes can't go," Artina tells the narrator. "That ten dollars a week I used to get--I was study'en on it/Yesterday. I raised Joseph, Bernice, Wilma Doris and theirs,/And they didn't never grow hungry, we always had more/Than cornbread and greens a' sett'en on the stove[.]" Though "Visit with Artina" may be written out of love, as many of these poems clearly are, its language is stiff and uncomfortably condescending. The poem's heroine, as a result, seems little more than a caricature, a vehicle for airing the poet's ambiguously heavy (and unmistakably Southern) social conscience.</p> <p>Robert Penn Warren, a writer with whom James Applewhite has much in common, remarked once that "everybody knows a thousand stories, but only one cocklebur catches in your fur and that subject is your question. You live with that question.... It hangs around a long time." I think readers will find this is particularly the case with Selected Poems, a book that represents some thirty years of one poet's writing. Applewhite's questions are persistent ones, but, when these poems hit their mark, they can be both sorrowful and true.</p> <p><em>— Daniel Anderson</em><br /> <em>Anderson is the Nancy and Rayburn Watkins Endowed Professor of creative writing at Murray State University. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Yale Review, Harper's, and The Southern Review. His second collection of poems, Drunk in Sunlight, is due out this year.</em></p> <hr /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>&nbsp;</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <!-- #EndEditable --></div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, January 31, 2006</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/writers/h-keith-h-brodie" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">H. Keith H. Brodie</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/magazine/writers/james-applewhite" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">James Applewhite</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/jan-feb-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2006</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18502053 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/books-january-february-2006#comments It's Only Rock 'n' Roll https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/its-only-rock-n-roll <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"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><p class="articletitle">It was a complete sensory experience and a smooth meshing of past and present: classic rock 'n' roll, edgy new music, striking video images, dazzling pyrotechnics, an audience fired up with fervor about the band even before the first brash notes sounded. And plenty of opportunities to buy stuff.</p><p>When, in early October, the Rolling Stones came to Duke's Wallace Wade Stadium, it was all about the music--almost. It was also about gawking: A colleague told me that she and her friends were fixated as much on Mick Jagger's well-toned abs as on the so-familiar tunes--evidently, one of the dividends from several decades of strutting, jabbing, pointing, and gyrating on stage. And traveling with your own fitness team.</p><p>This was a happening that straddled the generations. There were fans attending their eighteenth Stones concert and parents determined to turn their accompanying kids into Stones aficionados. Concert-goers came decked out with tie-dyed T-shirts, T-shirts with the band's lips-and-tongue logo, and T-shirts with more obscure, but evidently meaningful, identifiers like "Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge." The Stones are, of course, a property as well as a musical act, and fans clustered around a makeshift souvenir stand just outside the stadium, vying for $65 Stones sweatshirts, $35 Stones baseball caps, and $10 Stones magnets.</p><p>With 40,000 fans in attendance, this was the biggest thing to hit Wallace Wade since the Grateful Dead played there in the spring of 1971. At the time, a reviewer in The Chronicle declared that "The rite of rock 'n' roll was enacted in Wallace Wade Stadium ... with a vitality new to Duke University." This time, the campus buzz was more subdued. Matt Dearborn, a junior and general manager of the student radio station WXDU, spoke for many of his peers in suggesting that the Stones--average age sixty-two--form "one of the great bands of our time, although it's not really our time, per se. It would be better to say that they were one of the great bands." He told me that WXDU doesn't even own a Rolling Stones album, because it's committed to "sub-mainstream" music.</p><p>A man seated next to me identified himself as the brother-in-law of Mick Jagger's local limousine driver, who had met the star at the steps of his private plane. Around 8:30, I asked him when he thought the 8:00 (as advertised) concert would start. "Whenever Mick wants to come out," he replied.</p><p>Fifteen minutes later, various astronomical objects exploded on the screen, flames erupted from the stage, and the band launched "Start Me Up." And then Mick Jagger, a small animated shape from my distant perspective but looming large on the screen in black low-rise jeans, a tight T-shirt, and a Kelly-green satin jacket, expressed pleasure at performing in "Durrrrham" and acknowledged the heroic efforts of the stage crew in putting up with five days of pouring rain. Zippo lighters spouted their ritually significant flames, cameras flashed, and a cell phone snapped open to communicate the music to a distant listener.</p><p>To the accompaniment of strident drums and guitars, Jagger sang a raunchy new song, "Oh No, Not You Again," from A Bigger Bang, the band's first new album since 1997. He was joined by a backup singer for a moody, bluesy rendition of Ray Charles' "(Night Time Is) The Right Time." He led the crowd in shouting out insistently, joyously, "You can't always get what you want." And in a predictable but eminently satisfying highlight, he pranced along a ramp that projected from the stage onto the field, for a rousing "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." He sang, " 'cause I try and I try and I try and I try." And you knew he did.</p><p>The tour selected Duke after canceling a planned concert in Atlantic City. Representatives from the promoter contacted Duke last June and then surveyed the site; according to Duke officials, they liked what they saw--the stadium layout, the size--immediately. Beginning in mid-July, meetings were held every few weeks with up to two-dozen representatives from the campus police, parking services, building and grounds, student affairs, news and communications, and others. "If you're going to host the Rolling Stones," said Mitch Moser, associate director of athletics, "you know that's pretty much as big as it's going to get." Duke representatives made a road trip to Charlottesville, scouting out a Stones show at the University of Virginia two days before the Duke concert on Saturday.</p><p>By that Tuesday, crews were moving into Wallace Wade: 265 workers, eleven buses, seventy trucks, and a giant tent that served as a dining area for that rather sizable crew. The show would include a nine-story stage with a retractable roof (in case of rain), the video screen for showing off a super-sized Mick Jagger, a sound system that rewarded the crowd with crystal-clear clarity, and the apparatus for delivering fireworks and flames. The complexity of all that infrastructure, and the promise of all that music, produced ticket prices that ranged from $60 to $350.</p><p>Aaron Levine, a senior employed for the show at $15 an hour, worked the pricey-seats section that rose from the stage. Those seats were arrayed along two spiraling metal-and-glass towers, framing the giant video screen, that might have been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's spiraling Guggenheim Museum. Looking down from the heights was, Levine said, a notably over-thirty-five-year-old crowd, fans who elevated, in every sense, the meaning of "Gimme Shelter." One of his responsibilities was to discourage them from lighting cigarettes close to the propane tanks that powered the pyrotechnics.</p><table border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="1" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_stones007.jpg" alt="Concert-crazy: Jagger, meister, with Keith Richards" width="300" height="352" border="0" /><p class="caption-text">Concert-crazy: Jagger, meister, with Keith Richards. <span class="photocredit">Photo: Jon Gardiner</span></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>There's plenty of power behind a Stones tour. A standard Stones contract was leaked onto the Internet following an earlier tour, "Bridges to Babylon," in the late Nineties. The contract called for "one quality town car with drivers, i.e., Lincoln, Mercedes, BMW," with dark-tinted windows. Also required: a workout room with "extremely clean bathroom and shower facilities"; a "full-size Snooker table--not a pool table--with a full set of cues, bridges, chalk, and racks"; and "two smartly dressed, well-groomed hostesses to assist in serving food in the band lounge from 3:00 p.m. on the day of show. Table waiting experience preferred."</p><p>If they weren't all well groomed, the fans were well behaved. The concert "passed without any major incidents and with only a few arrests and citations," reported Bob Dean, interim Duke Police director. Durham police charged seven people with trademark infringement after they were discovered selling bootlegged Stones T-shirts, at the tempting price of $20.</p><p>While securing the campus was no easy assignment, the greater logistical challenge was organizing parking. The event produced a massive gathering of vehicles. Walking to the stadium, I passed an area devoted to "Limousine Parking"; lines of vehicles from local rescue squads, along with a van ominously labeled "Special Operations"; and technology-packed TV-news vans. Overseeing all of that for Duke Parking Services was Renee Adkins, special-events coordinator.</p><p>This was certainly a special event. I talked to Adkins a couple of days after the concert. From her office on the curiously named Coal Pile Drive, she informed me, with evident understatement, "This was huge for us. The thought of accommodating 40,000 people looking for parking--we have problems parking the number we have on campus normally." Her group went about securing everything from golf carts for shuttling the physically handicapped to "Event Parking" signs to direct the many who would be hunting for parking spaces, to portable toilets--some fifty in all--to be dispersed among twenty-one parking lots on campus. Duke also took over 1,300 off-campus parking spaces, in the American Tobacco Complex, and provided a shuttle service to and from campus. By 4:00 on the day of the concert, one of the bigger campus lots, with 375 spaces, was full; cars had been lining up ten or fifteen minutes before the official 2:00 opening of the lot.</p><p>Adkins' operation learned lessons that it could employ for any mega-event on campus. "But," she added cheerily, "we don't have to have it anytime soon."</p><p>Where to park all those people was only one concern on campus. The impact of all those people on the grass in Wallace Wade Stadium was another. Mitch Moser, in the athletics department, was the official worrier about the football field. The Blue Devils were scheduled to play Georgia Tech the following Saturday. Would the concert stage and the 7,000 fans seated in folding chairs on the field--covered with something called Terraplas, a perforated plastic system designed to allow grass to breathe--leave a significant footprint? The day after the concert, Moser did a walk-through and was pleased: "The field actually looks pretty good," he said.</p><p>There were some who reveled in the weekend but didn't quite make it to the stadium. One was Dana Dolinoy '98, a third-year Duke graduate student in toxicology and genetics. A year earlier, Dolinoy had reserved Duke Chapel and the Washington Duke Inn for her wedding to Michael Cipolla on October 8. Only in July, just before the rest of the world, did she learn that the campus--and the hotel--would be playing host to an even larger event. She said she's long been a fan of the Stones.</p><p>Dolinoy and Cipolla had 200 guests at their wedding and had set aside seventy-five rooms at the Washington Duke Inn. That was where the Stones were staying. Good luck trying to walk in there on concert day, as I did, only to be blocked by a guard protecting the perimeter of "a high-security environment," as he called it. The hotel was also housing the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team, on campus for an exhibition game, and participants in an NCAA golf tournament. To avoid Stones-related congestion on their way to Duke Chapel, the wedding party was directed onto chartered buses. For her own departure, Dolinoy had the use of a staff elevator, a side exit, and two uniformed police motorcyclists as escorts to ease her through the traffic.</p><p>After the concert, the campus was rife with rumors that Mick Jagger had offered Dolinoy's father huge amounts of money to give up the presidential suite--and perhaps the entire block of rooms at the hotel. It never happened, Dolinoy told me. "He probably wouldn't have accepted money, but he would have said, 'Well, would you come to the reception and sing a song?' We heard the offer was for $50,000, and we heard the offer was to pay for the entire wedding." But the rumors did pay dividends: Dolinoy's sister managed to snag an autograph from the 76ers' Allen Iverson; when she tracked down the team's coach at the hotel, he told her, "Any dad who will stick to his guns and not sell off his daughter's hotel suite is worth an autograph."</p><div><table border="0" cellspacing="11" cellpadding="1" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 578px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_stones002.jpg" alt="Concert-crazy: overwhelmed fans " width="578" height="248" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;">Concert-crazy: overwhelmed fans. </span><span class="photocredit" style="text-align: -webkit-center;">Photo: Jon Gardiner</span></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The night before Saturday's wedding, the couple held a large cocktail party in the presidential suite and the adjoining balcony. "We thought that the party would end around 11:00 or 11:30, but it went to around 1:00 a.m. And then someone from the Rolling Stones called the front desk to complain about the noise. That was a real hoot."</p><p>Lemurs make plenty of noise, but they don't generally complain. Still, by and large, they are not nocturnal, so I could imagine "Start Me Up" startling the lemurs out of their sleep in the Primate Center about a mile off campus, just down Lemur Lane in Duke Forest. The center's director-designate, Ann Yoder Ph.D. '92, had written a letter--complete with a doctored photo of a leering lemur displaying the Stones' trademark extended tongue--to be delivered to Stones guitarist, songwriter, and artist Ron Wood. Wood had, she reported, "painted a lovely painting of one of the more obscure lemurs some years ago, and thus we had reason to believe that he might have some special interest in the lemurs."</p><p>In what she characterized as a "shameless" appeal, she wrote that "the gentlemen from Aerosmith have been to visit us on numerous occasions, but we can't let them remain as the coolest band yet to visit us. That distinction should rightfully belong to the Stones." Sadly, while the physical conditioning of the ever-leaping lemurs might have inspired the Stones, they resisted the appeal.</p><p>Duke's president, Richard H. Brodhead, was happy to see Duke leap on the prospect of a Stones concert; he inhabited one of the best concert seats, on the roof of the Finch-Yeager Building, overlooking the football stadium. Brodhead had had an unusual, if not necessarily enviable, perspective on the event. "The really special thing is that the new president's house adjoins the football stadium," he said. "And what this meant was that I not only could see the back of the set from my bedroom window, but that we got to participate in the assembly of the set. Construction would begin at about 4:00 in the morning, starting a week before the concert." Listening to set construction at 4:00 in the morning? Perhaps that would deepen presidential empathy for students disturbed out of their sleeping patterns by, say, the jack-hammering into oblivion of the Bryan Center walkway. "It was a small price to pay," he said.</p><p>Brodhead, who chided me for not owning a Stones album, said he had never previously seen them perform. But, he added, "The Stones and my life have a lot of overlap. The Stones first jumped to the musical scene when I was a freshman in college. I drove across the country in the summer of 1965, and probably every sixth song played on the radio was 'Satisfaction.' "</p><p>"I'm not keen on going to events that are just kind of nostalgic rehashes of things that were great many years ago," Brodhead said. "And of course what was so wonderful about this concert was it wasn't like a museum piece. It was in itself a wonderful, vital performance."</p><p>I asked Brodhead, a scholar of American literature, whether he saw something uniquely American about the Stones' story, about a musical act that keeps going and going and manages to reinvent itself eternally. He observed that this is, after all, a British act--though one, like all British acts, influenced by American musical traditions. He did, however, muse on the theme of musical endurance. "Bob Dylan still performs. But that's a different story. Because there's the golden age of Dylan, and then there's a lot of later performance with occasionally great songs that come out of it. But the great Bob Dylan remains the Bob Dylan of 1962 to 1968. And that's what is so interesting about Mick Jagger. Mick Jagger did not alter his songs to make them different from the original version. Nor was he slavishly copying the original version. He was just singing a great version of that song."</p><p>After talking with Brodhead, I thought about how a literary scholar (and music fan) might see the Stones as a perfect metaphor for Duke, and might imagine that the Stones found in Duke a perfect venue. Especially this fall, when the campus has dedicated a new building about every weekend, Duke is a study of constant motion. But with all the obvious evolution, the master plan has preserved an unmistakably Duke look. Established and, at the same time, rebellious. The Rolling Stones and Gothic stones. Rock on.</p></div><span class="text"></span></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, January 31, 2006</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/lg_stones011.jpg" width="620" height="339" alt="Mick mania: fans amass amid pyrotechnics. Photo: Jon Gardiner" /></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/jan-feb-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2006</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 a predictable but eminently satisfying highlight, Jagger pranced along a ramp that projected from the stage onto the field, for a rousing &quot;(I Can&#039;t Get No) Satisfaction.&quot; </div></div></section> Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18502082 at https://alumni.duke.edu Compassionate Conservation https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/compassionate-conservation <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"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><p class="articletitle">For Stuart Pimm and his group of graduate students, the trip always begins the same way--with furious last-minute packing, a visit to CVS for anti-malarials, and a final powwow in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.</p><p>Where it takes them, though, may be to a Madagascan jungle or an Everglades prairie or the savannahs of southern Africa. Such are the far-flung field sites that Pimm, Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology, visits regularly to oversee his team's work. A mix of doctoral and professional students--Pimm calls them his "family"--they study the various threats (all human) to the planet's variety of life and what, if anything, can be done to curb current trends.</p><p>"We are killing off species at between 100 and 1,000 times the natural rate," says Pimm. "I think we're likely to lose 25 to 50 percent of them over the next century." He says that prompts the question, "What is our moral responsibility?"</p><p>In Pimm's view, the crisis is both an ethical and an ecological one, and only by immediately protecting what he calls the "special places"--the areas richest in biodiversity and most directly in the path of human advance--can we hope to avert it. That's a message he's sought to spread to his scientific peers, policy-makers, and the public alike. Pimm is an academic scientist, indeed one of the world's foremost experts on theoretical ecology. But he is a problem-solver in practice, a prime example of what, last Founders' Day, President Richard H. Brodhead described as Duke's "real-world orientation."</p><p>Last July, Pimm was in the real world's biggest rain forest, the Brazilian Amazon, where he and his team began a two-week journey to the frontline of conservation and the frontiers of the natural world. Along the way, they would make a stop in Brasilia, the nation's capital, for the nineteenth annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB), where Pimm would confer with colleagues, and his students would present their work. That organization has special significance for him. "Back in the Seventies, there was no such thing as 'conservation biology,' " he says. "Conservationists were advocates, not scientists." It was after the SCB's inaugural meeting in the mid-Eighties that, as he puts it, "I knew what I was."</p><p>Over breakfast at his hotel in Manaus, the chief commercial hub of the upper Amazon basin, Pimm appeared exhausted. He had flown in that morning from the Roraima region to the north, where he'd accompanied one of his students, a Brazilian named Mariana Vale (pronounced VAH-lee), into the field. For months, Vale had been tracking the Rio Branco Antbird, one of the world's rarest and most threatened species of birds, on her computer at Duke. Using satellite images, she had mapped its habitat--vegetation and elevation--in a patch of forest just south of the Venezuelan border. She'd searched museum records for information on previous sightings--the few that there were--and plotted what she believed to be the bird's geographical distribution.</p><p>But Vale could only make guesses from her desk in Durham. To confirm anything, she'd have to see it with her own eyes, to "ground-truth" it, as Pimm put it. "At some point," he said, "you have to make sure that what you're seeing on the image is really what is there. You have to go."</p><p>So they went--first to Caracas, Venezuela, and then by taxi across the country--down through the Orinoco basin, up the highlands of the Guyana Shield, past the giant sheer-faced tepuis that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Lost World, and, finally, over the border into Brazil, to a town called Boa Vista. From there, they traveled ten hours up the Uracoeira River, a tributary of the Amazon, in an open boat under the blazing equatorial sun. They slept in hammocks draped with mosquito netting to ward off malaria and caught catfish for dinner.</p><p>For Pimm, the conditions were nothing new; he has been to the field with each of his students on at least one occasion. Usually the goal is the same: to find a bird. If that seems like a small reward for the investment made and the risks assumed--death by snakebite and lethal infection being among the more likely life-ending scenarios--consider the bird's scientific significance. "They're our window into what is happening to the rest of the environment," Pimm explained. "Few groups of plants and animals have catalogues as complete. We know them--how many there [are] and where they are--very well." That's a product of the public's passion, he said--birdwatchers the world over have given science a useful tool.</p><p>Still, he added, tools and know-how alone won't prevent extinctions. "We need to train more conservation professionals," he said. "You can't set up a protected area without people to look after it. Just like politics is local, conservation is local. So wherever my group goes, we're working with the community. We don't go as uninvited gringos. We go to provide expertise to the people who will ultimately be making the big decisions, who will shape policy."</p><p>For the past decade, Pimm's team has collaborated with the Brazilian government's National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA) in Manaus. Paired with INPA scientists, they've contributed findings to one of the institute's core programs, a joint research venture with the Smithsonian Institution called the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP). The BDFFP is the brainchild of a scientist named Thomas Lovejoy, formerly the senior biodiversity adviser to the president of the United Nations Foundation and the man generally credited with bringing deforestation of the tropics to the public's attention.</p><p>Almost thirty years ago, Lovejoy embarked on an ambitious ecological experiment in the rain forest north of Manaus. He wanted to find out what happened to a rain forest when it was broken up into fragments--the leftovers of clearing--and how small a fragment could be and still function. He speculated that a key theory of island bio-geography--namely, that a small oceanic island can support fewer species than a larger one--might apply to these "islands" of forest, surrounded as they were by farms and cattle pastures.</p><p>After two decades of monitoring a sample of fragments ranging in size from 2.5 to 250 acres, a group of ecologists assessed the results. Lovejoy was right: In every one, the diversity of palm trees, euglossine bees, butterflies, dung beetles, termites, birds, and primates had declined. Pimm chaired that assessment and, afterwards, wrote the report. By the time the results came out, it was no longer controversial, he wrote, to say that small, isolated fragments lose species. "Deforestation has provided many examples worldwide." But what was new, and what would give added urgency to future conservation efforts, was how quickly the losses were happening.</p><p>Following that assessment, Lovejoy asked Pimm to help him with the project. He needed people who could analyze the loads of data, publish papers, and generate more science. And Pimm, he knew, had the students for the job: smart, tough, young researchers with experience in the field.</p><p>Kyle Van Houtan, a current member of Pimm's "family" of graduate students, already had his field scars when he came to pursue his Ph.D. under Pimm in 2002. As a master's candidate at Stanford University, he'd studied parrots and macaws--curious for their clay-eating habits--on a river in southeastern Peru. After three months in a place locals called El Infierno (Hell), he noticed a sore on his leg that wouldn't go away. A trip to the doctor revealed Leishmaniasis, a potentially fatal disease spread by the bite of the sand fly. The treatment was a month of chemotherapy.</p><table width="324" border="0" cellspacing="11" cellpadding="1" align="center"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 580px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_urntpatch.jpg" alt="Pimm: examing deforestation in Canaima National Park near Venezula-Brazil border " width="580" height="318" /><p class="caption-text"> Pimm: examing deforestation in Canaima National Park near Venezula-Brazil border</p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Van Houtan's research for the BDFFP focuses on the characteristics that predispose certain birds to disappear from the fragments more quickly than others. But that is only his scientific side. He is also pursuing a master's in Duke's Divinity School, and while Pimm and Vale headed for the remote upper reaches of the forest, he embarked on a taxi tour of Manaus. His aim, he said, was to reach out to local Christian leaders, mainly pastors and missionaries, and to urge them to address environmental issues in their church.</p><p>"I've really come to believe that the fundamental obstacle to stopping this crisis, to preventing the loss of biodiversity, isn't a lack of science. It's a lack of will. It's an ethical issue," he said, as the taxi sped across town, passing stacks of timber and signs offering the services of borracheros (rubber repairmen), evidence of the rubber boom that built this urban island in the jungle. "But a lot of people don't see the environment as something that involves them," he continued. "They don't see themselves as a creature."</p><p>For Christians, Van Houtan said, "that's a huge irony. The Creation Story ends with humans being made--in a garden. The Bible actually talks about this. It's not blatant. But it's there." Take Colossians, he said:</p><p>"'For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in Earth.' That's all of this. God made it, and it's good, and he gave us the tools to preserve it."</p><p>That afternoon, Van Houtan spoke to the local director of New Tribes Missions, a nondenominational missionary group. The director had moved to Manaus from Oklahoma more than a decade ago to bring the Gospel to indigenous tribes living in the forest. Since then, he said, things had changed. "The fish are getting smaller. So now the way the Indians sometimes catch them is by using dynamite. Or poison. They'll pour it in the water, and it ruins that part of the river. But they know they'll get enough to eat that day."</p><p>Van Houtan came away from the meeting with a new idea. He wants to produce manuals on natural history and ecology for missionaries to use as they teach native populations. "This would help them understand what they see around them every day--why a sloth is green, for example, or why a parrot will eat clay," he said. "It's offering them something they value. They see themselves as part of nature--which we all are, of course. They just 'get it' better than we do."</p><p>After two hours on the highway, north from Manaus, the truck turned onto a narrow dirt road. It was Pimm's last night in the area--the next day he'd head for Brasilia, for the conservation biology meeting--and he'd arranged an excursion to the canopy, the forest's topmost stratum, "the biologically least known part of the planet."</p><p>Two Brazilian scientists from INPA agreed to take Pimm into the forest, and one of them, an ornithologist who identified himself only as Marcos, drove the truck, dodging ruts and powering up hills. "You have to stay in the middle," he said at one point. "Sometimes the caiman is sleeping in the bog on the side."</p><p>The road went east for almost thirty miles to an INPA research camp, an open-air structure just off the road. After a meal of fish and rice, Pimm discussed the plan for the morning: arise at 5:00 and then hike to the tower, a 150-foot steel observatory, about a mile away. INPA scientists use the tower to conduct species censuses and to measure carbon levels in the atmosphere. Pimm wanted to show off the view.</p><p>In the morning, Pimm led the way. It was still dark, and the forest was almost silent. Turning a headlamp to either side of the trail revealed the dizzying complexity of the surroundings--mammoth tree trunks with roots like buttresses, tangles of lianas, and enormous oblong leaves that hid the moonlit sky from view. Along the path, patches of phosphorescent bacteria glowed like stardust, and a ground cover of decomposing leaves filled the air with a rich odor of humus.</p><p>In The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin's 1837 account of his first encounter with the tropics, the experience that would set him on the road to Origin of Species, he reveled in the "bright green foliage" and the "elegant curvature of the fronds," and he marveled at the ants--"the lion-hearted little warriors"--that he observed as they blanketed the forest floor in search of prey. "It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration," he wrote. "But it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind."</p><p>Darwin was overcome. And yet he'd only seen the beginnings of the system, a network so intricate that, long after the age of discovery, just a tiny fraction of its many parts are known. Above him, in the treetops, was another world altogether, the forest's canopy. Darwin hadn't the means to get there--but Pimm had.</p><p>"Look out there and pick a tree," said Pimm. He was winded from the climb, and his shirt was soaked in sweat. "Pick any one. And then try to find ... (deep breath) ... another one ... like it." He was offering a lesson in biodiversity. Out there lay a living patchwork, a green expanse wreathed in mist and extending to the horizon. Many a trained professional botanist had failed, he said. "You simply cannot do it."</p><p>Indeed, here, high above the sandy soil, was what has been called the last great unexplored frontier of the natural world. In only the two hectares below, said Pimm, were more species of trees than in all of eastern North America. On any one of them, there might be a thousand species of insects, a hundred species of fungi, spiders no one had ever seen, unidentifiable frogs living in the cistern-like crowns of equally unidentifiable epiphytes. No one really knew.</p><p>Stuart Pimm was born in Derbyshire in the north of England. His father was a factory worker in the local Rolls Royce plant and his mother kept the house. Growing up, he was small and slight, precocious and bookish. "I was not a sportsman," he says. "I liked to read, and I liked birds."</p><p>Pimm was twelve years old when he went on his first field trip with the Derbyshire Ornithological Society and glimpsed, to his amazement, a gold finch. "That," he recalls, "was the first. I was hooked." He became an avid birdwatcher. He kept a "life list" of the species he'd seen and was always seeking more.</p><p>As an undergraduate at Oxford, he studied ecology and spent two summers doing field work in Afghanistan. After graduating, he went to New Mexico State University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1974, and where he encountered the peculiarities of a different culture. "Someone kindly explained to me shortly after my arrival that the smallest coin was worth twice the amount of the medium-sized coin."</p><p>As a young scientist, Pimm was eager to do his research in a pristine setting "in order," he says, "to understand how nature really works." It didn't matter to him whether it was desert or rain forest, only that it was utterly untouched, an ecosystem in its purest state. Hawaii was not such a setting--far from it; decades of tourism had altered the islands in major ways, killing off many of the native species. But that's where Pimm ended up, on a project that had originated in New Mexico. He'd been studying the dynamics of southwestern hummingbird communities when he heard that Hawaii's honeycreepers behaved in a similar way.</p><p>The honeycreepers, Pimm learned, were also on the verge of extinction, and it was then, he recalls, that "something changed." Well on his way to a successful career--by the time he was twenty-nine, he had published five papers in Nature and Science--he suddenly realized, he says, "that science wasn't enough." He wondered whether, in twenty years, "people would not look back and ask, 'What were you doing while all these species were going extinct?'" Instead, he embraced "science with a sense of responsibility."</p><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="1" align="center"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 580px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_onboat.jpg" alt="River trip: Vale and Pimm, with guide Claudiomiro Parente, on Uraricoera River" width="580" height="291" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"> River trip: Vale and Pimm, with guide Claudiomiro Parente, on Uraricoera River</p></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td class="tenpxtextblk" align="center"> </td></tr></tbody></table><p>Pimm is an animated lecturer. In a speech last spring at the Nicholas School's Student Conference on Con-servation Science, he was electric, stomping and jumping and pounding the podium. "Washington, D.C., is an appropriate place to do conservation biology," he told the audience. "The animals that live there are worthy of our attention!"</p><p>It was one zinger after another, and there was plenty of substance to the show. Pimm appealed to his audience, students from all over the world, to go beyond the laboratory, beyond the insular world of research, and to advocate on behalf of their work. "We have to do our conservation everywhere," he told them. "You are sexier and more intelligent than the lobbyists who reside in the corridors of power. Be nice to your politician."</p><p>He recalled his own efforts--the time he testified before a Senate subcommittee on the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act--and offered advice on dealing with the media, "who have an uncontrollable urge to present both sides." And finally, his fists raised in the air, Pimm left the crowd with a raucous reminder: "It might not be what you work on that matters," he boomed, "but how angry you get at what is happening to the places about which you care!"</p><p>Months later, at the conference in Brasilia, people were angry about all kinds of things: the effects of boat noise on whale communication in the Pacific, the consumption of bushmeat in Cameroon, the status of Myanmar's elephants and Mexico's jaguars and the hairy wood ant Formica lugubris of northeast England.</p><p>Mariana Vale, Pimm's student, however, was beaming. On her trip to the field with Pimm, she'd found her Rio Branco Antbird--by playing a tape-recording of the male's call and then listening for another very territorial male's answer--and extended its known range. "One thing I found is that the bird lives in indigenous reserves. So I'm trying to get those communities involved in protecting it." That poses a very different challenge, she said. "Working with birds, I can go once a year for a month. They don't have to remember me. But people do. This takes trust and time. We do little things together. They want a workshop on identifying birds and a field guide with Portuguese names. So I'm working on that."</p><p>After the meeting, Pimm flew to Rio de Janeiro, Vale's hometown and the last stop on his trip. Two years ago, Pimm had come here on a research expedition supported by the National Geographic Society. He and Brazilian ecologist Maria Alice Alves had boarded a helicopter in Rio and flown a few miles inland. They were searching for the gray-winged cotinga, a bird believed to exist on only two mountaintops along a treacherous ridge. Rare and on the brink of extinction, it shared the plight of its neighboring endemic species in Brazil's Atlantic Forest.</p><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="1" align="center"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 580px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_dscn0683.jpg" alt=" " width="580" height="294" border="0" /><p class="caption-text">Bird in the hand: the elusive Rio Branco Antbird</p></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td class="tenpxtextblk" align="center"> </td></tr></tbody></table><p>Pimm considers protection of the Atlantic Forest to be among the world's most pressing conservation priorities. The forest was once an unbroken swath nearly twice the size of Texas; only 6 percent of it still stands. Pimm chronicled the expedition for National Geographic. "Someone has to go," he wrote, "not 'because it's there,' but precisely because in short order it may not be." The helicopter landed, and the scientists began their search. But Pimm never saw the bird. Alves later told him that she'd heard its call. But to the birder in Pimm, that was hardly consolation. The fact remained; he had not seen it.</p><p>This time he went by jeep. It took three hours to get to the mountain and another to get to the top. It was cold and drizzling, and, after an hour of scouring the trees, he hadn't seen a thing. Soon the drizzle turned to rain, and the ground to mud. And then came a call, a short, high-pitched whistle. "That was it!" said Pimm. Something darted across the trail, then flew back into the brush. No one could make it out. Silence. Then another call, from behind. And there, perched on a waist-high shrub, was an unexceptional looking bird, greenish-gray and small. Had it flown into a grocery store in Rio, no one would have noticed. But Pimm couldn't take his eyes off it. He stood there smiling as the bird hopped from branch to branch.</p><p>Suddenly, somewhere beyond the mist, chainsaws buzzed. The bird lifted its wings--perhaps it recognized the sound--and then, once again, it was gone.</p><p class="byline"><em>— Adams '01, a former Clay Felker Fellow at Duke Magazine, is a freelance writer living and teaching in Colombia. Fattal '01 is director of special initiatives at the AjA Project and a freelance photographer.</em></p><div> </div><span class="text"></span></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, January 31, 2006</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/lg_lenses.jpg" width="620" height="276" alt="Profiling Pimm&#039;s team: Videographer Peter Jordan &#039;01 films graduate student Mariana Vale on flooded road in Brazil" /></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/patrick-adams" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Patrick Adams</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/jan-feb-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2006</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">Ecologist Stuart Pimm feels a moral responsibility to protect the world&#039;s &quot;special places&quot;--those richest in biodiversity and most threatened by human advances. Photos by Alex Fattal.</div></div></section> Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18502081 at https://alumni.duke.edu Top of the Crop https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/top-crop <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>A bearded man in a smart blue suit is perched on a stool at the front of the main auditorium in The Nightingale-Bamford School on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Behind him is a flowing, black curtain framed by a vine of red and gold leaves. For over an hour, he and his colleagues have held the rapt attention of a crowd of more than 100. Offering an interactive presentation, they have garnered both laughter and applause. And now, as they finish, and as the theater lights shine brightly down on him, audience members leave their seats and make a beeline for the stage.</p><p>He is a star of sorts, but he's not an actor--the set pieces around him belong to an upcoming school play. Rather, he is Duke's dean of undergraduate admissions. Christoph Guttentag has spent the day visiting city schools; it is the second day of four that he will log on this trip canvassing the city for would-be Duke students. Tonight, as happens after most Discover Duke admissions presentations around the country, many of the students have stuck around for some face time. They approach Guttentag, one or two at a time, engaging him with a firm handshake and a clear introduction. Some have questions: How does he distinguish between someone who is truly dedicated to his or her activities and someone who is just resume-building? How much will the Pratt School of Engineering be expanded? Others just want to introduce themselves.</p><table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><table width="53%" border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="1" align="right"><tbody><tr><td><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 350px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_admisss2300dpi.jpg" alt="Illustration by Adam Niklewicz" width="350" height="462" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;">Illustration by Adam Niklewicz</span></p></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td class="tenpxtextblk" align="center"> </td></tr></tbody></table><p class="articletitle">What they are all seeking, and what Guttentag ostensibly holds, is the secret to getting into what has become one of the nation's most selective universities--and continues to become more and more selective with each passing year.</p><p>Duke has long been considered an elite university. In 1984, The New York Times Magazine ran a story about "hot colleges" that featured Duke on the cover, and the following year, in the second edition of its Best Colleges guide, U.S. News & World Report ranked Duke sixth among national universities. (This year, Duke was ranked fifth.) Every year, admissions staff members tell the incoming class that it is the smartest and most accomplished yet; and alumni are often heard to say, if partly in jest, that they doubt they would be admitted to Duke today. But those familiar with Duke's admissions process say that, beyond gradual improvement, the past few years have seen a dramatic jump in the university's selectivity. Part of that can be attributed to increased visibility and naturally evolving public perceptions, and part to intensified recruiting efforts and a conscious shift in admissions standards.</p><p>Kathy Phillips, associate director of admissions, recalls a point about three years ago when she realized that the university was rejecting, or, at best, wait-listing, students who would have been accepted the year before. "I actually felt a physical change from year to year" that coincided with a large jump in board scores, she says. After nine years of reading applications and taking part in admissions judgments, "it was the first time where I felt like I could actually define that difference."</p><p>The shift has also been evident to those on "the other side of the desk." Steven Singer, who has worked at Manhattan's hyper-competitive Horace Mann School for twenty-one years and is currently director of college counseling there, says that, while Duke's standards have been on the rise for years, he has noticed more pronounced changes over the last four, in particular. "When I first came, a kid who was in the middle of the class or just below it, with SAT scores that these days would translate into the 600s per exam, and [with] a reasonable amount of school involvement, could get in to Duke from Horace Mann. Now, you can have 750s, all A's, push all the right extracurricular buttons, and if you do not have an interesting mind, or do not enjoy intellectual discourse, you could still be in trouble.</p><p>"Duke is in an orbit now that it was not a decade ago. And it's probably two orbits above where it was two decades ago."</p><p>Duke's latest admissions figures are impressive. In the fall of 2004, the university received 18,089 applications, setting a university record for the fourth straight year. That total included the highest number of applicants to both Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and the Pratt School of Engineering. (Pratt, in particular, saw large jumps in both the number of applications and matriculation rate, a shift administrators attribute to the draw of new state-of-the-art facilities such as the Fitzpatrick Center.) Duke's acceptance rate fell for the eighth straight year, to 22.1 percent, the second lowest rate ever.</p><p>What's especially notable, Guttentag and his colleagues point out, is that the recent applicant pools have not only been larger but also stronger than ever by many measures. Though they are careful to note that SAT scores are but one of several criteria considered, those scores do provide an idea of the strength of the new applicant pool. Admissions data show that Duke has received a relatively consistent number of applications over the past ten years from students who scored 1400 or below on the SAT. Meanwhile, applications boasting scores above 1400 have taken off, increasing markedly from 1996 to 2002 to 2004, and again this year.</p><p>"In this year's applicant pool, we had 1,300 students apply who had a 1550 or above on the SAT," Guttentag says. "Four years ago, in 2001, that number was 640. And there's been no re-centering." As a result, mean SAT scores for applicants have risen by forty over the last decade (compared with forty-eight for admitted students and fifty-five for matriculants). This year alone, applicant SAT scores rose by nine points, matriculants' by twenty.</p><p>The improvement in the pool is evident in other areas, as well. Over the past several decades, high-school students nationwide have become savvier in the ways they prepare for the college-admissions process. Students are counseled to seek out and showcase community service and leadership experiences. It's not uncommon for parents of students bound for selective colleges to hire private educational consultants to aid in the application process. More recently, many colleges have begun to request that applicants submit a resume with application materials.</p>More college-level courses are being offered to high-school students through Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs, and more Duke applicants are taking advantage of them, Phillips says. "Being in the top 10 percent [of an applicant's high-school class] is now virtually a given." Though fewer schools officially rank their students these days, "most admits [who are ranked] are in the top 5 percent of their class, if not in the top five graduates. We see few grades in the applicant pool below a B." This year, Duke admitted just 41 percent of the nearly 1,500 valedictorians who applied.<p>"The numbers are coming at the top as opposed to the bottom," Phillips says. "The bottom is dropping out, is how I'd put it."</p><p>"That's why we can find ourselves not admitting students this year that we would have admitted ten years ago, five years ago, two years ago, or even last year, for that matter," adds Guttentag. "Not because of anything that the students have done wrong."</p><p>More students are applying in part because more students know about Duke than they did, say, ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Sandra Foyil, the mother of Duke senior Larissa Goodwin and a member of the Parents Advisory Council for Duke's division of student affairs, says she does not recall having any knowledge of Duke when she was growing up in New Jersey in the Seventies. "If I did," she says, "I probably thought it was just a small Southern school." (She applied primarily to colleges in the Northeast, ultimately choosing Rutgers University.)</p><p>By the time she was helping her daughter explore colleges, Duke was no longer an unknown. Like many parents of high-achieving high-school students across the nation, she planned college trips not just to Boston and other traditional Northeastern college hotspots, but also to North Carolina to see Duke, as well as Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She says her daughter was drawn to Duke by the competitive academics and the warm climate.</p><p>She recalls sitting at the table in her New Jersey home one day last year with her younger son, Tyler, then in eighth grade, and a friend of his. Somehow, the discussion had swung to where the boys wanted to attend college. The friend said he would likely stay in the Philadelphia area, but, "Tyler said, 'I'm going to Duke.' His friend--without skipping a beat--said, 'you better start studying, then.' "</p><p>"I don't think you have to explain to people anymore who Duke is, where Duke is, who it competes against for students," says Kathy Cleaver, who worked as a Duke admissions officer from 1984 to 1988, and is now in her fourteenth year as a college counselor at Durham Academy, a prep school just down the road from Duke's West Campus. "Where I spent a great deal of time talking about that, it's not necessary anymore."</p><p>In fact, Foyil recalls that her daughter's guidance counselor did not "super encourage" applying to Duke, in part because of how competitive it was. "Duke is considered right up there with the Ivies in South Jersey," says Foyil.</p><p>According to Guttentag, Duke both suffers and benefits from not being part of the Ivy League. "On the one hand," he says, "it's an easy shorthand for quality and prestige." Especially among students at the most prestigious Northeastern prep schools, he says that "Ivy League" still has a special ring to it. And Phyllis Supple, Duke's associate director of admissions for Asia, Africa, Australia, and Canada, notes that even among foreign students the long-established dominance of the Ivies in public perception is hard to break. "Even outside the Northeast," says Guttentag, "I think the notion of going 'back East' for college is still a more typical thing to think about than to head South."</p><table border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="1" align="center"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 580px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_gutt1184051.jpg" alt="Admissions dean Guttentag: the ultimate decision maker " width="580" height="279" border="0" /><p class="caption-text">Admissions dean Guttentag: the ultimate decision maker. <span class="photocredit">Photo: Les Todd</span></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>On the other hand, having worked for nine years at the University of Pennsylvania, where he faced constant comparisons with the rest of the Ivies, Guttentag says he finds that being outside the Ivy League can work in Duke's favor. "It makes it easier for us to say, 'We are who we are.' Obviously, we always judge ourselves by comparing Duke to other schools--including the Ivies--but there is still a strong feeling of, 'We are Duke, not someone else.' "</p><p>In some circles, Duke is now mentioned in the same breath as those schools that it has long targeted. John Burness, Duke's senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, cites a recent New York Times article that leads with a comment about local students' "admission to elite universities like Harvard, Yale, and Duke." Still, administrators do not dispute that one of Duke's biggest challenges in recruiting both prospective applicants and admitted students is facing up to the Ivies, especially the top-tier Ivies--Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. College counselors confirm Duke's standing at what Provost Peter Lange calls "the bottom of the very, very top schools in this country." And, while many are quick with specific examples of recent students turning down Harvard or Princeton for a spot at Duke--choices that were much rarer ten years ago, they say--that is still far from the norm.</p><p>Based on acceptance rates, Duke continues to fall behind a few choice schools in terms of selectivity. Against five of those schools in particular, Duke faces substantial recruiting obstacles. According to matriculation data, Duke is successful in wooing to campus only about 15 percent of those admitted students who are also accepted to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, or Stanford. Against the next group--Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Penn--Duke does better, enrolling about 50 percent. In recruiting battles against the third five--Georgetown, Chicago, Washington University, Northwestern, and Cornell--Duke is successful about 80 percent of the time.</p><p>Those percentages, Lange and Guttentag say, have not changed much over the years. Guttentag explains that although some of the numbers against individual competitors vary year to year, it is tough to make significant progress because the rest of the schools are all getting better, too. "There are few schools," he says, "that recruit more aggressively than Harvard."</p><p>Christoph Guttentag thinks, and speaks, in broad strokes. He's courteous and frank. And what people quickly come to realize about him is that he'll answer just about any question--and appear to love doing it. On his trip to New York, Guttentag visits the Trinity School, a private school on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He sets up shop in the college counselor's office, a briefcase packed with Duke literature at his feet. Across the coffee table, three young men have arranged themselves on one overstuffed brown leather sofa; four young women have squeezed onto another. Most of the students present already have Duke brochures; most have visited the campus. After breaking the ice with a story about his own college search and an explanation of how he was assigned to this region--"As the boss, I get to decide, and lo and behold, I choose Manhattan"--he offers to conduct the presentation as an informal question-and-answer session.</p><p>Early questions address a range of issues that, to Guttentag, clearly seem interrelated: Duke and Durham, the attitude of students on campus, what one of the Trinity students, Rachel Berkowitz, refers to as "the Southern thing." These questions--veiled references to concerns that include Duke's location in a small city in the South and the amount of diversity on campus--are posed in almost every Duke information session, by visitors to campus, as well as prospective students at schools like this across the country. They are questions Guttentag and his staff know they must be prepared for.</p><p>There is a positive side to "the Southern thing," including good weather and a laid-back atmosphere, that represent areas where admissions officers believe they can gain traction in the race to distinguish Duke from the host of competing elite universities. Duke students "are ambitious and have high expectations," Guttentag says, "but it's also okay to camp out for basketball games, to paint yourself blue, to really care whether the team wins or loses." He stresses the sense of community that he sees at Duke, the value put on collaboration that is evident not only in that team spirit, but also ingrained in the curriculum itself through Duke's many interdisciplinary centers and programs.</p><p>He treats the students to his own impressions of the South, having moved to Durham from Philadelphia thirteen years ago. "To some extent, interactions are simpler, nicer, calmer." He acknowledges that cultural opportunities available in a small city like Durham are less rich than those in New York City, but points out a variety of activities that do exist.</p><p>But the crux of the answer to questions about "the Southern thing" is this: "There are so many people from so many places that that just doesn't dominate the culture," he says. "It doesn't feel like a Southern school. It feels like a national or international university that happens to be in North Carolina."</p><p>About 13 percent of Duke students come from North Carolina and about 35 percent from the South. In addition to North Carolina, the top two suppliers of Duke students have long been New York and Florida, with substantial numbers coming from states throughout the Northeast and Midwest, as well as California.</p><p>The applicant pool--and as a result the student body--has benefited of late from an influx of international students, a shift that Guttentag attributes largely to more aggressive recruiting. In the late Eighties, the number of international students in each entering class hovered in the teens and twenties. This year, Duke welcomed to campus 134 freshmen representing forty-five foreign countries of origin.</p><p>Racial diversity has also grown at an impressive pace, say admissions officials. Since it became an integrated campus just forty-two years ago, Duke has seen minority recruitment as an educational imperative, a recognition of America's shifting demographic makeup, and a responsibility in light of the South's troubled racial history. Minorities made up just 15.2 percent of the class that entered in 1987. By 1998, that number had cracked 30 percent. This year's entering class was 37.1 percent minority.</p><p>In administrative terms, one key to further expanding Duke's reach has been a substantial increase in the recruiting budget. During their deliberations over Duke's last five-year strategic plan, called "Building on Excellence," university administrators consulted a study that found Duke's admissions office did not have the funding to recruit competitively alongside its peer institutions, Guttentag says. To remedy the situation, they approved an annual recruiting-budget increase of $450,000, which went into effect in July 2001. Beyond expanding the staff and allowing for more recruiting trips, that money was used to maintain and improve the department's publications and its website, both of which have undergone a major revamping since that time. One noticeable difference between the new viewbook and the old--which Guttentag confirms is neither accident nor sheer coincidence--is expanded emphasis on the arts, research, and Duke's Program II, which allows students to create their own curricula, integrating courses from a variety of departments.</p><p>In some ways, the secret to being admitted to Duke is a fairly simple one. It's an answer that Guttentag volunteers freely. The applicants that stand out, Guttentag says, "are the students that are fortunate enough to have a passion. Not all students do, and not all good students do; nor do we expect all students to have a real passion. But students who have been fortunate enough to discover what they really enjoy--and who are willing to put the time and effort into pursuing that with enthusiasm--stand out."</p><p>This represents a relatively new way of doing things, one that reflects, in part, Duke's participation in a national trend and, in part, discussions that have taken place among administrators involving Duke's educational mission.</p><p>For the admissions community nationwide, the Nineties brought a redefinition of the ideal candidate. Increasing numbers of well- but similarly qualified applicants forced admissions officers to look for new ways to identify standout applicants. As a result, competitive colleges shifted from looking primarily for "bright, well-rounded" individuals to seeking "angular" students, those with special, highly developed interests and talents--musical composition, say, or lacrosse or string theory--who, en masse, would create a bright, well-rounded class.</p><p>Guttentag stresses that, at Duke, the move to identify and actively recruit such individuals does not mean that the university no longer seeks students who are bright and well-rounded: "It was not so much a paradigm shift as it was an attempt to create a broader appeal, to cast a wider net." Lange explains that in discussions about admissions and recruiting, one question administrators always ask themselves is, "Are there communities of talented kids who still aren't coming to Duke?" Over the years, those discussions have played a key role in efforts to expand the recruitment of minorities and international students. But in the early Nineties, they focused in on a particular type of angular student--the intellectual.</p><p>Some university officials point to English professor Reynolds Price's fiery 1992 Founders' Day speech as one of the impetuses for change. In his address, Price '55 bemoaned the lack of intellectualism at Duke. He described a body of students enthusiastic about partying but seemingly disinterested in class, and lamented "the prevailing cloud of indifference, of frequent hostility, to a thoughtful life."</p><div><p>Soon afterwards, on assignment from top administrators, William Willimon, then Dean of the Chapel, spent four months immersing himself in the lives of the students, putting together what ultimately became a fifty-one-page report, "We Work Hard, We Play Hard." It painted a picture of Duke that, while likely reflective of a larger college culture nationwide, was not pretty in the view of administrators who were trying to cement Duke's reputation as one of the top universities in the nation.</p><p>Among those Willimon spoke to was a student who posed the question, "We work hard, and we play hard, but do we think hard?" Students who had been offered scholarships in anticipation of what they could bring to campus intellectually--A.B. Duke and B.N. Duke Scholars--expressed frustration at the lack of intellectual outlets. Their peers, they told Willimon, saw work and play as two entirely separate spheres, not to be intermixed. Brains, it seemed to them, were approved for use in the classroom only.</p><p>In fact, Cleaver, who worked in Duke's admissions office in the 1980s, recalls having conversations with fellow admissions officers about specific applicants who seemed "too intellectual." Would they fit in? Would they be able to find a peer group on campus and truly be satisfied with the Duke experience? Those students, she says, were probably less likely to apply in the first place. On a personal level, "they needed to find other lopsided students. So they would head off to Harvard or MIT, a school that created a place for those students."</p><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_gutt1184023.jpg" alt="Admissions stamps: 'admit', 'deny', 'defer'" width="300" height="266" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10" /><p>Soon after the Willimon report was released, Lange convened the Den of Ten, a board of advisers consisting of various university administrators that he consults on admissions issues. The group agreed upon the importance of fostering a climate where all students--intellectuals, especially--could be happy and fulfilled. Part of that commitment involved seeking out more such students and encouraging them to apply and attend.</p><p>"What we were talking about was making room for students who were perhaps less well-rounded and more angular, but no less talented, whose talents were evident in a more focused way," says Guttentag. "What it came down to was making it clear that Duke was a great place for more than one kind of student. It will always be a great place for the well-rounded student, but it is also a great place for someone whose focus is on research, on the arts, on creativity." (Most recently, with the opening of the Nasher Museum of Art and a campuswide focus on improving the arts, admissions officials have begun speaking more in terms of "making room for the artist.")</p><p>This new focus was part of Duke's natural growth, according to Lange. "Looking for bright, well-rounded kids is a safe strategy, but it's not necessarily the best strategy," he says. "As you mature, you are able to take more risks. You are able to take the unusual kid who maybe doesn't have a perfect record," but has demonstrated a real drive, and proved he can succeed.</p><p>For her part, Phillips, the associate admissions director, remembers early in her career being inspired by the potential of one student, even though his grades and SATs weren't quite good enough. Knowing the high standards of the admissions committee, "I couldn't even pitch him. It was sort of like, 'Here is what we are looking for in terms of academics, here is what we are looking for in terms of extracurriculars. If they have it, let them in.' Whereas now there is more room for us to say, 'Let's look more deeply at what it says in the recommendations.' "</p><p>So would he get in today? "No," she says with a laugh, "not considering the quality of today's applicants. But if we had used the criteria from today, in terms of a more qualitative assessment, I think we would have probably found space for him."</p><p>With this new focus, Duke has been able to continue to attract "the student who is also excellent in ten areas, but the atmosphere now is more open for the lopsided student, and probably the more intellectually lopsided student," Cleaver says. "Duke has been able to compete for those students, and build a critical mass of those students on campus, but somehow not lose the ability to have that playfulness."</p><p>The irony is that, despite a culture of playfulness and exuberance valued by admissions officers, college counselors, and prospective students alike, the descriptor "work hard, play hard"--popular among Duke alumni describing their alma mater to prospective students--actually fell out of favor with the admissions office more than ten years ago. Guttentag says he's fairly certain that the term was never explicitly used in the admissions office's printed materials, and if so, not prominently. But he also says the university did not discourage its use until the mid-Nineties.</p><p>Around the time of the Price speech and the Willimon report, Guttentag began to examine the term, he says, and was struck by two things. First was the number of other schools that were using the very same phrase to describe their undergraduate atmosphere. "Our goal is always defining what makes Duke unique," he says. "Work hard, play hard just wasn't a defining characteristic."</p><p>Perhaps more striking, he says, was the way that the term had become a prism for applicants, students, and other members of the university community to view the undergraduate experience. "It gave the impression that everything had to be either one or the other, when what I had learned from my time here was that there is so much more to the Duke experience than working hard or playing hard, so much stuff that doesn't fit neatly into either one. I felt like it was completely ignoring all those things.</p><p>"It's like tasting a fine wine, and saying, 'It's a little tart.' That doesn't allow you to distinguish it from Fresca. It's not false, but it's far from the whole truth."</p><p>On the second day of his admissions foray in New York, Guttentag is sitting in a taxi on the way to his hotel to prepare for the night's event and reflecting on his own college search--an experience that, in a roundabout way, has brought him to where he is today.</p><p>Guttentag grew up in Oakland, and, he says, only really considered schools in the University of California system, ultimately settling on Santa Barbara. It was later, while attending graduate school in music theory at the University of Pennsylvania, that he realized the vast differences that can exist, campus to campus. "I definitely had more choices than I realized," he says. "I should have looked at private colleges, at small schools." It was that realization, as well as the realization that music theory wasn't his career of choice, that led him to find what he describes as his "niche in admissions." It has given him insight into the importance of the college search from the applicant's point of view.</p><p>He also discusses how shepherding his daughter's application to daycare a few years ago affected the way he views the college admissions process. "The process of getting her into daycare was very stressful," he says. "I thought my decades of work with college admissions would help me out with kindergarten, but I was stressed. I came out of it with a much greater appreciation for parents and what they go through. All they want is what's best for their child."</p><p>For admissions staff, the tough part is that they can't possibly make everyone happy. "There are thousands and thousands of students that we don't admit who would be great Duke students," Guttentag says. "But we don't have room for 3,000 or 4,000 or 5,000 first-year students. We have room for 1,660 or 1,700."</p></div><span class="text"></span></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, January 31, 2006</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/lg_tour117005014.jpg" width="620" height="290" alt="Student-guided tours: gathering outside Perkins-Bostock library nexus Photo: Les Todd" /></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/jacob-dagger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jacob Dagger</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/jan-feb-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2006</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 the applicant pool expands in size and quality, Duke is on the lookout for a new kind of student.</div></div></section> Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18502080 at https://alumni.duke.edu The 86ers https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/86ers <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"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><br /><p>On December 5, 1981, the Duke men's basketball team lost at home to Appalachian State University, 75-70. The next morning the telephone rang at the Rolling Hills, California, home of Jay Bilas, a high-school senior, an excellent student, and one of the nation's top prep basketball players. His mother answered the phone. The voice on the other end asked whether she had ever heard of Appalachian State. She replied that she had not.</p><p>"Well," the voice said, "they're the school that beat Duke last night."</p><p>Duke was one of the universities Bilas was considering attending. The voice on the phone belonged to an assistant coach at another school recruiting Bilas. The message was clear: Bilas would be wasting his time at Duke.</p><p>Bilas would have the last laugh. He would go to Duke, and he would excel there, both on and off the court. By the time he was a college senior, he and an exceptional group of classmates would return the Blue Devils to the top of the college-basketball universe. More important, they would set the stage for Duke to become a perennial national powerhouse and for Mike Krzyzewski to emerge as one of the best-known and most accomplished coaches in the history of men's college basketball.</p><p>In those days, Duke wasn't the kind of university that ordinarily lost to midlevel Southern Conference teams. In fact, under head coach Bill Foster, they had played for the NCAA title in 1978 and made it to the Final Four in 1980. But in 1981-82, Duke was struggling. The new coach, Krzyzewski, was an unknown and unproven entity. Krzyzewski had come to Duke in the spring of 1980 to replace Foster, who resigned to go to the University of South Carolina. Duke's athletics director, Tom Butters, stunned the basketball world when he hired the thirty-three-year-old Krzyzewski, who had just completed his fifth season as head coach at the U.S. Military Academy. He was considered an up-and-comer in the coaching profession but he had little national recognition and no experience as a head coach in a high-profile league like the Atlantic Coast Conference. The day after he was hired, a headline in The Chronicle read, "Krzyzewski: This is Not a Typo." The Duke players were as much in the dark as everyone else. "I had never heard of him, never heard him mentioned," recalls Vince Taylor, then a rising junior. "I was stunned."</p><p>Krzyzewski inherited three future NBA players--Taylor, Gene Banks, and Kenny Dennard--who helped his first Duke team reach the National Invitation Tournament. But all three were upperclassmen, and he knew he had to replenish the cupboard from the high-school Class of 1981 if Duke was to stay competitive. Over the course of that recruiting season, a half-dozen of the nation's top prep players narrowed their choices to Duke and another university. None chose Duke. The depleted 1981-82 Blue Devils won only ten of twenty-seven games.</p><p>Krzyzewski couldn't afford another bad recruiting class. With his back to the wall, he hit the recruiting equivalent of a slam dunk in 1982. The first two players he signed were forwards Bill Jackman and Weldon Williams, from Nebraska and the Chicago suburbs, respectively. Next was Bilas, the six-foot-eight forward, who narrowed his choices to Duke, the University of Arizona, and Syracuse University. "I honestly didn't know where Duke was," recalls Bilas, now a basketball analyst for ESPN.</p><p>He came to Duke because of Krzyzewski. "He explained how he would build the program, how we would win. I trusted him. It's as simple as that. He was honest, straightforward, and never wavered. I wanted to play for him." Bilas committed to Duke in January. A few months later, Krzyzewski signed another highly-touted six-foot-eight forward, Mark Alarie, from Arizona.</p><p>The key recruit was much closer to home. Johnny Dawkins was a thin, mercurial guard from Washington, D.C. Blessed with speed, leaping ability, and shooting skills, Dawkins was coveted by every top college program in the country. "I grew up an ACC fan and always saw myself playing in the league," says Dawkins, now an associate head coach under Krzyzewski. "I remembered Duke's great teams from the late 1970s, so I knew the school could compete. The academic reputation was terrific, but, ultimately, it was the people who sold me, especially Coach K. He did such a great job of recruiting me as an individual, painting a vision for my future. He was fiery, competitive, and knew where he wanted to go and how to take us there."</p><p>Krzyzewski recalls that "Johnny was our first legitimate big-time recruit. He could take the tough shots, win the tough games that we had not been winning."</p><p>Krzyzewski completed his class with the largely unheralded David Henderson, a tough-as-nails perimeter player who had just led Warren County High School to the North Carolina 3-A state championship. The six freshmen joined eight upperclassmen, three of whom were left over from the Foster days.</p><p>The ACC was a rough neighborhood in 1982-83. Top players in those days did not routinely go early to the NBA. Ralph Sampson, a seven-foot-four senior from the University of Virginia, was making a run for his third consecutive national player-of-the-year award. Sophomore Michael Jordan and junior Sam Perkins anchored a powerful North Carolina team. Both Virginia and North Carolina would be ranked number one in the weekly national polls at different points during the season. A trio of seniors--Thurl Bailey, Sidney Lowe, and Dereck Whittenburg--would lead North Carolina State to the 1983 NCAA title.</p><p>The prudent course would have been for Krzyzewski to start his most experienced players, gradually working in the freshmen. Yet he gambled on youth over experience. The freshmen moved into the rotation from the beginning of practice, taking playing time from more experienced players, not all of whom took it well.</p><p>Krzyzewski's most controversial decision was his refusal to play zone defense; throughout his career, Krzyzewski has been a strong proponent of an aggressive man-to-man defense. Alarie characterizes it as being "thrown into the deep end of the pool." It was a necessary risk, Krzyzewski says. "We finally had a group of kids who were going to be good, but it was going to take some time. We had a plan and were going to stick with it. Defense was going to be our foundation. It would have been foolish to wait."</p><p>The learning curve was steep, and the freshmen struggled. The nadir may have been Duke's 109-66 loss to Virginia in the ACC Tournament, still the largest margin of defeat in Duke history. After the Virginia game, the Duke staff went out to get a bite to eat. Johnny Moore, a member of the sports-information staff, raised a glass and proposed a toast. "Here's to forgetting tonight." A defiant Krzyzewski interrupted, "No! Here's to never forgetting tonight." (Duke won its next sixteen games against Virginia.)</p><table width="18%" border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="1" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 250px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_dawkinscoachk.jpg" alt=" " width="250" height="535" border="0" /><p class="caption-text">With his back to the wall, Krzyzewski hit the recruiting equivalent of a slam dunk in 1982.</p></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td class="tenpxtextblk" align="center"> </td></tr></tbody></table><p>The Blue Devils finished the 1982-83 season with seventeen losses. The freshmen had obvious potential, but not everyone could see it and not everyone was willing to wait. Butters was inundated with demands to fire Krzyzewski. "We found out who our friends were," Bilas says. "Even the students didn't come around until our sophomore year. One Iron Duke actually showed me a petition demanding that Krzyzewski be fired. I don't know if he expected me to sign it or not."</p><p>The six gained valuable experience over the summer when the team toured France. By NCAA rules, Duke couldn't take its departing seniors or its incoming freshmen. The rising sophomores circled the wagons and had what Dawkins calls "an amazing bonding experience. We really came together." The group did the requisite tourist stuff, but the trip was about basketball. "We were all winners in high school, and we all expected to be winners in college," Henderson says. "Our first year was tough. The trip to France gave us a chance to get the bad taste out of our mouths, to play some winning basketball. We got in the foxhole together."</p><p>When they got out of the foxhole, they were better basketball players individually, and, perhaps more important, they were stronger as a team. But there was some attrition. Jackman lost playing time at the end of his freshman year and transferred back home to the University of Nebraska. Williams overextended himself academically with a difficult biomedical-engineering program and played sparingly while catching up.</p><p>The other four sophomores continued to refine their games. Alarie was smooth and efficient, a silent assassin. Henderson was his polar opposite, a ferocious competitor whose take-no-prisoners approach was ideal for winning games. Dawkins benefited from the addition of freshman Tommy Amaker, a defensive stopper and skilled playmaker, who shouldered the ball-handling burden. "Tommy gave me the freedom to make plays," Dawkins says. "I wanted to attack, to beat the other team down the court, and he gave me that opportunity." Dawkins became the best-conditioned player in Duke history, running exhausted opponents into the court.</p><p>Bilas faced the biggest adjustment. He was a natural forward, but Krzyzewski put him at center full time. He anchored himself to the post, frequently guarding players a half-foot taller. "I kept expecting a center to come along who was good enough to move me to forward," Bilas recalls. "But it never happened." Alarie was grateful. "Jay made so many sacrifices for the team, living in the weight room, setting screens for me to get open, guarding the giants so I didn't have to."</p><p>Duke put the turbulent 1983 season in the rearview mirror. They finished third in the ACC in 1984, knocked off Jordan and top-ranked North Carolina in the ACC Tournament, and earned a spot in the NCAA Tournament. After the season, the school renewed Krzyzewski's contract, and there was no more talk about finding another coach. The following year, 1984-85, Duke won its first twelve games and jumped to number two in the polls. They won in Chapel Hill for the first time since 1966 and went on to finish just one win out of first place in the ACC. But injuries to Alarie and Henderson torpedoed the Blue Devils' postseason efforts, and the season ended with a bitter 74-73 loss to Boston College in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.</p><p>Dawkins and his fellow seniors approached the 1985-86 season, their last, with a mixture of anticipation and determination. Bilas says, "We looked at the schedule and asked, 'What games can we not win?' We didn't see any, so that was our goal: Win every game." As it turned out, Bilas had to have knee surgery in the off season and was held out of the season's first six games as a precaution. He was replaced in the starting lineup by highly-regarded six-foot-ten freshman Danny Ferry. Williams' father pushed him to transfer rather than continue to ride the bench in games, but his son refused. "I was not a quitter," Williams says. "Besides, I was an optimist. I figured I would earn some playing time." That never happened; instead, Williams made his most important contributions in practice. Dawkins remembers that Williams "cut no slack, made the starters work every day, made us better." Dawkins, Alarie, and Henderson played the best ball of their careers.</p><p>They had to. The ACC was loaded in 1986. Georgia Tech started the season ranked number one in the AP poll, just ahead of North Carolina. Duke was ranked sixth. One of these three teams would be ranked number one every week of the season.</p><p>Then there was the nonconference schedule. Duke started the season by playing eight games in sixteen days in five states. The highlight of this stretch was defeating St. John's University and the University of Kansas at Madison Square Garden to win the preseason NIT.</p><p>Duke won its first sixteen games, jumping to third in the polls. The Blue Devils didn't taste defeat until mid-January, when they lost back-to-back road games to North Carolina (in the first game played at the Dean Smith Center) and Georgia Tech. Alarie says he remembers "Coach K tearing into us after the Tech loss." But instead of panicking, they redoubled their efforts. "This was the point where we decided if we were going to be a great team or not," Alarie says. "We decided to be great. We got back to work and vowed not to lose again."</p><p>Win followed win. Everyone knew his role. Bilas and Ferry supplied rebounding and interior defense. Amaker handled the ball and disrupted opponents' offense. Alarie and Henderson were versatile scorers. Dawkins was the nation's best guard, perhaps even the best player. Four years of playing together had given the team a distinct personality: poised, cohesive, and calm under pressure. They were at their best in close games, and would go on to win nineteen games by ten or fewer points. "We had almost total confidence in our ability to win a close game," Henderson says. "Somebody was going to come through and make the big plays. We just played so well together."</p><p>One particularly tough weekend in February exemplified those qualities. Duke edged North Carolina State 72-70 in Raleigh on Saturday night as Dawkins made two free throws with one second left. The next day, back in Durham the Devils defeated a powerful Notre Dame squad 71-70 as Dawkins blocked a last-second shot. By the end of February, Duke was on a roll and had climbed to number one in the polls. "Coach surprised us when he made a big deal after our win [on February 26] against Clemson," Bilas recalls. "It was our twenty-eighth win of the season and broke the school record. He told us to savor it."</p><p>Duke finished its regular season at home against UNC. A lot was at stake. It was the final home game for the five seniors. A win would give Duke the regular-season title. And it was UNC. The usually stolid Alarie was so pumped that he had trouble sleeping the night before the game. The Blue Devils played through their jitters and pulled away down the stretch for an 82-74 win. "We didn't play that well against UNC," Alarie says. "But our defense won it for us. Good defense is a constant. We knew we could shoot poorly and win, rebound poorly, and win, as long as the defense was there."</p><p>The ACC Tournament was next. Wake Forest fell; then Virginia, bringing on a title match against Georgia Tech, whose star seniors, Mark Price and John Salley, had battled the Duke seniors for four years. Duke led by as many as nine points before falling behind late in the game. With only seconds left, Alarie made a short jumper over the outstretched arms of Salley to give Duke the lead. Dawkins rebounded a miss on Georgia Tech's next possession and finished off the Yellow Jackets with two free throws. The Blue Devils escaped with a 68-67 win. This marked the first season since 1966 that Duke had finished first in the ACC's regular season and won the conference tournament.</p><p>Duke entered the NCAA Tournament as the top seed and was rewarded for its success with opening rounds in nearby Greensboro. But in the first game, against lightly regarded Mississippi Valley State, Duke almost laid an egg. Playing at noon on Thursday in a half-empty Greensboro Coliseum, Duke trailed for thirty minutes. The players were tired, overconfident, maybe even a little smug. Mississippi Valley State had a small but exceptionally quick team that, Bilas says, "pulled us away from the basket, took us out of our comfort zone, made us do things we weren't accustomed to doing."</p><div><table border="0" cellspacing="11" cellpadding="1" align="center"><tbody><tr><td align="center" width="533"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 580px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_dawkinsgraduation.jpg" alt="Graduation day: from left, Bilas, Henderson, Dawkins, Alarie, and Williams " width="580" height="290" /><p class="caption-text"> Graduation day: from left, Bilas, Henderson, Dawkins, Alarie, and Williams. <span class="photocredit">Photo: Jim Wallace</span></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Dawkins refused to let Duke lose, at one point banking in a basket while being pounded to the floor and converting the free throw for the three-point play. He scored twenty-eight points, and Duke won, 85-78. After the game, Dawkins quipped that some day he would come asking Mike Krzyzewski for a job. If the coach gave him a hard time, he said, he would mention this game.</p><p>Henderson notes that after this shaky opener, "Coach had our undivided attention." The refocused Devils exploded. "We decided to attack the other team instead of having the other team attack us," Krzyzewski said at the time. Old Dominion fell, 89-61, followed by DePaul, 74-67. Playing in New Jersey, Duke met Navy for the Eastern Regional title. Navy had All-America center and future NBA star David Robinson, but its backcourt was badly overmatched. Duke broke open the close contest with an 18-2 surge to end the first half, a run Dawkins punctuated with a spinning, gravity-defying dunk over the earthbound Navy big men. In the second half, the All-America guard again led the way, ending the game with twenty-eight points, while Bilas battled Robinson to a standstill on the boards. Duke won, 71-50.</p><p>The 1986 Final Four was held in Dallas. Top-ranked Duke opened against second-ranked Kansas, a big, physical team. The game was a tough, exhausting struggle in which each possession was precious. Duke led most of the way but never by very much. Kansas rallied for a 65-61 lead with just over four minutes left. Duke's defense went into high gear, holding Kansas to a single basket over the last four minutes and twenty-one seconds. Alarie tied the game at 65 with a dunk, drawing a fifth foul from Kansas star Danny Manning. Ferry scored on a rebound to give Duke a 69-67 lead. "It was a blood-on-the-floor kind of game," says Alarie. "We were exhausted, but somehow we had to suppress the fatigue and fight through it."</p><p>Duke wasn't too tired to make two last defensive stops. Ferry drew a charge on Kansas' Ron Kellogg, and then Kellogg missed a jumper. Duke rebounded, and Amaker ended the scoring at 71-67 with two free throws. As usual, Dawkins was the leading scorer, with twenty-four points, but Alarie's defense on Manning was equally important. Alarie held Manning to four points, thirteen below his season average.</p><p>The win was Duke's thirty-seventh of the season, setting an NCAA record that has been equaled but never surpassed. It put Duke into the title game against Louisville.</p><p>Louisville jumped to a 6-2 lead. Duke soon caught up and led for the next thirty-three minutes. For much of the game, it looked as if Duke had the Cardinals on the ropes. But several fast-break opportunities were squandered, as passes were fumbled or easy shots missed. Louisville dominated rebounding, but Duke's defense forced twenty-four turnovers.</p><p>Dawkins was unstoppable early, scoring thirteen of Duke's first twenty-five points. He had twenty-two points with fifteen minutes left when Louisville adjusted its defense to make it more difficult for Duke's star to get the ball. He made no field goals for the remainder of the game. This left good shots for Duke's other players, shots they had made all season. But fatigue was taking its toll. Duke was playing in its fortieth game of the season, and the Kansas game had left its share of bruises. "I was a shooter," Alarie says, "and shooters know: I kept taking shots that I knew were good, and they kept coming up short. It began to play on my mind."</p><p>It wasn't just the shooting, Henderson says. "I didn't have any explosion. I was a half-step late for loose balls I usually chased down, rebounds I usually grabbed." Henderson, Alarie, and Amaker made only twelve of thirty-six field attempts for the game.</p><p>Louisville caught up and took the lead at 64-63. The teams traded baskets until Louisville called timeout with forty-eight seconds left and a 68-67 lead. The Cardinals had only eleven seconds left on the shot clock. "We knew if we played good defense, we were going to have a chance to win it all on the last possession," says Dawkins. Duke played great defense. Louisville tried to get the ball inside but failed. With the shot clock about to expire, Louisville's Jeff Hall forced up a long shot. Dawkins barely missed blocking it, forcing Hall to shoot an airball. But Louisville center, Pervis Ellison, reacted quicker than Duke's big men and laid in the rebound for a three-point lead.</p><p>Duke was down by only three points. Time was running out. Henderson missed a drive, and Louisville made two free throws to go up by five. Duke still couldn't make a jump shot but fought back desperately on the glass, scoring on rebounds by Bilas and Ferry, sandwiched around a missed Louisville free throw. Ferry's basket cut the lead to one. There were only three seconds left. Duke was forced to foul, and Louisville's Milt Wagner made two free throws. The final score: 72-69.</p><p>"It never occurred to us that we would lose," Alarie says. "Never."</p><p>It was a heart-rending coda. All five of the seniors graduated just a few weeks later. Still, while a win over Louisville would have been the perfect ending to the story, the legacy of the Class of '86 goes deeper than one game. These men committed to Duke at a time when the program was at its lowest ebb, guaranteed nothing but an opportunity to turn it around. They bought into Mike Krzyzewski's vision of excellence and helped make it come true, going through what Bilas calls an "extraordinary journey" from the basement to the top of the mountain.</p><p>Duke won its first NCAA title five years later. Krzyzewski says he feels that "we would never have won in '91 without building on what the '86 team did. They defined the program. They became the example we've held up to every team since then, not just in how they played the game but in how they interacted with fans, how they handled class work. They laid the foundation."</p><p class="byline"><em>Sumner '72 is a freelance writer and the curator of sport at the North Carolina Museum of History.</em> <em>He writes a Duke sports history column for the Blue Devil Weekly and recently published his third book, Tales from the Duke Blue Devils Hardwood.</em></p></div><span class="text"></span></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, January 31, 2006</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/lg_86starters.jpg" width="620" height="314" alt="Courting success: Three of the five exemplary 86ers, Mark Alarie (32), Jay Bilas (21), and Johnny Dawkins (24), during cliffhanger victory against Notre Dame in their senior year (also pictured, freshman Danny Ferry and sophomore Billy King) Photo: Les Todd" /></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/jim-sumner" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jim Sumner</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/jan-feb-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2006</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 1981-82, men&#039;s basketball was struggling. Within four years, a legendary team, and coach, had emerged to set a new standard.</div></div></section> Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18502079 at https://alumni.duke.edu Euripides Goes to the Circus https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/euripides-goes-circus <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"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="631"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 580px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_troj108105129.jpg" alt="Tragedy in Troy: Cassandra (Molly Fulweiler) confronts Talthybius (Martin Zimmerman)" width="580" height="216" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;">Tragedy in Troy: Cassandra (Molly Fulweiler) confronts Talthybius (Martin Zimmerman)</span><span class="photocredit" style="text-align: -webkit-center;">Photos: Les Todd</span></p></div></div></div><p class="articletitle">Director Ellen Hemphill, faculty member in the department of theater studies, didn't trot out the Trojan horse to tell the ancient, yet eerily modern, story of the Trojan War in the recent student production of The Trojan Women. Instead, she set the play in a burned-out circus.</p><p>"I chose to take 'noble' women and put them in demeaning situations--in circus acts, in circus costumes--to show more clearly how their treatment as the spoils of war 'feels' rather than just telling the audience what happened to the characters," says Hemphill. "Unfortunately, the world has not really changed since Euripides wrote this play well over 2,000 years ago. War is still used as an answer, and one that rarely works."</p><p>Known for her innovative use of voice, movement, and music to bring her audience close to the emotional core of a production, Hemphill succeeded in the eyes of the critics. One local newspaper wrote, "The students are brave and captivating in their emotionally demanding roles. This is not typical college theater. And it is not to be missed."</p><p>Hemphill adapted the play from a new translation by Alan Shapiro, William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of English and creative writing at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, in collaboration with Duke's own Peter Burian, chair of classical studies and professor of comparative literatures and theater studies.</p><p>"The overwhelming sorrows of the women of Troy, the brutalization of the world that follows Troy's fall, will still, if given a chance, tell us something we need to know about ourselves and the world we inhabit," says Burian. "The Trojan Women is not a piece written about our current situation, but to discover that it speaks so directly to what many of us feel now, speaks of its power."</p><img style="display: block; border-bottom: 1px solid #FFF;" src="/issues/010206/images/lg_troj108105018.jpg" alt="Poseiden as ringmaster (Edward Wardle)" width="300" height="200" border="0" /><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_troj108105046.jpg" alt="the chorus (Erica Bossen, left, Juliet Summers, and Jacqueline Langheim) listens as Hecuba (Maggie Chambers) sings a lament" width="300" height="200" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;">Tragedy in Troy: Poseiden as ringmaster (Edward Wardle), top ; the chorus (Erica Bossen, left, Juliet Summers, and Jacqueline Langheim) listens as Hecuba (Maggie Chambers) sings a lament, bottom</span></p></div></div></div><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="80%" /></td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, January 31, 2006</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/jan-feb-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2006</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18502074 at https://alumni.duke.edu Wallter, Wall-crawling Robot https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/wallter-wall-crawling-robot <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"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="631"><p class="articletitle">For the second year in a row, a two-and-a-half-pound robot named Wallter, designed by Pratt School of Engineering students, won an international wall-crawling robotics competition held in London.</p><p>Wallter competed against robots created by university teams from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy this year to win a $900 prize at the eighth International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots. Each team's robot was required to move from the floor to a magnetic wall, move around obstacles on the wall, cross a raised bar, and then stop at the ceiling.</p><p>The conference and competition are intended to stimulate design innovation in wall-crawling robotics that can be used for security and safety-related jobs such as looking for cracks in a support beam or finding improvised explosives.</p><p>Smaller than a phone book, Wallter hugs the wall using a suctioning "tornado in a cup" produced by a spinning blade. The suction system was designed by Vortex HC, LLC, the team's sponsor, based in Morrisville, North Carolina. Magnets enable Wallter to stay on the wall while crossing the raised bar. The robot uses three ultrasonic sensors to detect and avoid obstacles, and is programmed to distinguish between an obstacle and the ceiling.</p><p>The Duke team that traveled to London for the competition included Brian Hilgeford, a senior in mechanical engineering; Gareth Guvanasen, a sophomore in computer science and electrical and computer engineering; Jamaal Brown B.S.E. '04; and Brian Burney, a former Pratt staff member who is now an N.C. State University graduate student and an employee at Vortex HC.</p><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="80%" /></td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, January 31, 2006</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/jan-feb-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2006</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18502073 at https://alumni.duke.edu Lies, Damned Lies, Poverty Statistics https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/lies-damned-lies-poverty-statistics <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"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr valign="top"><td colspan="2" height="15"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="49%"><table width="18%" border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="1" align="right"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 200px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_bradydavid.jpg" alt="David Brady" width="200" height="300" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"> David Brady. <em class="photocredit">Photo: Jon Gardiner</em></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="articletitle">Each August, we Americans tell ourselves a lie. That's when the U.S. Census Bureau releases the official poverty rates for the year. The rates for 2004, made public on August 30, prompted pundits, politicians, the press, and the president to engage in their annual rehearsal of empty remarks on why poverty was higher than last year. As usual, they attributed this failure to things that really have nothing to do with poverty's true causes. In my research and in a freshman seminar on poverty, I explore the nature of poverty in affluent democracies. Central to this inquiry is a deep skepticism for the flawed official poverty statistics. My students and I have scrutinized the official statistics and concluded that the entire annual ritual of announcing and discussing them is profoundly dishonest.</p><p>This dishonesty is not because U.S. poverty is insignificant. While 12.7 percent of the U.S., or nearly 37 million people, are "officially" poor," better estimates put those numbers closer to 18 percent, or 50 million people. As part of my seminar, I explain that U.S. poverty is nearly twice that of Canada and the U.K and about three times that of many European countries. My students are surprised to learn that the richest country in the world has the most poverty of any industrialized democracy.</p><p>The dishonesty is not the fault of government statisticians like Molly Orshansky, who unwittingly constructed the formula for the official measure in 1963. With data from 1955, Orshansky multiplied the Department of Agriculture's "low-cost food budget" by three, assuming food amounted to one-third of a family's expenses. She developed this poverty line purely for research purposes, never intended it to form a basis for formulating policy, and quickly repudiated it.</p><p>President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration substituted the "economy food plan," which was about 25 percent lower, and made it the official measure. The line was purposely set low, so that the administration could "win" the War on Poverty. The measure neglects taxes and government assistance, has been adjusted only for inflation, and, as a result, ignores the enormous changes in families since 1955. For one thing, food only amounts to about one-sixth of a family's budget today. For another, the official poverty line underestimates the cost of necessities like health care and health insurance, child care, housing, and transportation--some of which have risen in real cost (after inflation) much faster than food.</p><p>The Census Bureau, aware of these problems, presents alternatives and pushes Congress to revise the official measure. Unfortunately, it has never been revised--though one such attempt occurred in an episode of The West Wing.</p><p>In my seminar, students learn that most international poverty researchers use a relative measure--a person is poor relative to the living standards and customs of a time and place. A student in my class may raise the argument that has been brought up again and again in debates about poverty: "The U.S. poor are rich compared with people in developing countries."</p><p>But the American poor don't live in developing countries. Heck, if one plays with comparisons to previous centuries or Africa, it is easy to say that there are no poor people in the U.S. The poor are poor relative to what it takes to make ends meet and participate as citizens in contemporary U.S. communities. I try to help my students understand this point by referencing Michael Harrington, who wrote, "To have one bowl of rice in a society where all other people have half a bowl may well be a sign of achievement and intelligence.... To have five bowls of rice in a society where the majority have a decent, balanced diet is a tragedy."</p><p>As part of my seminar, I teach students how to construct state-of-the-art poverty measures, which embrace relative poverty. First, we estimate the median income after considering all taxes and assistance. Then, we define poverty as living in a household with less than 50 percent of that median. With this measure, the Luxembourg Income Study, the most sophisticated international poverty research outfit, estimates that 17 percent of the U.S. would have been poor in 2000--not the official 11.3 percent.</p><p>To see how this affects policy, the students examine the debate surrounding President George W. Bush's push to privatize Social Security. They analyze data from the Luxembourg Income Study and reconsider the rhetoric that "the U.S. has conquered elderly poverty." Sure, the elderly live more securely than in the 1960s, and Social Security certainly has reduced elderly poverty. But, according to the Luxembourg Income Study, 24.7 percent of the elderly were poor in 2000, not the official 9.9 percent.</p><p>The dishonesty of official poverty is not entirely the responsibility of politicians. Although many are guilty of an unwillingness to revise the official measure, I've never heard any politician intentionally misrepresent poverty statistics. In contrast to budget debates, for example, political commentary on poverty statistics seems quaintly sincere.</p><p>The dishonesty is really the fault of us, the American people. Only on rare occasions, as in the weeks following the devastation from Hurricane Katrina, do we even bother to acknowledge the poor. Most of the time, we contentedly believe that only a few people are poor, and those undeserving poor have themselves to blame.</p><p>This, of course, is a lie. But when we are told a lie many, many times, and obvious evidence, if we bothered to look at it, shows it is false, we are equally responsible for perpetuating the dishonesty.</p><p class="byline"><em>— Brady is an assistant professor of sociology.</em></p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, January 31, 2006</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/david-brady" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">David Brady</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/jan-feb-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2006</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18502072 at https://alumni.duke.edu Matthew Alexander Henson, the African-American explorer (1866-1955) https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/matthew-alexander-henson-african-american-explorer-1866-1955 <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"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><table width="248" border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="1" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 226px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/010206/images/lg_nort117205009.jpg" alt="First edition of Matthew A. Henson's autobiography" width="226" height="334" border="0" /><p class="caption-text">First edition of Matthew A. Henson's autobiography, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, Frederick A. Stokes, publishers, 1912. Purchased for the John Hope Franklin Collection of African and African American Documentation.</p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="articletitle">Matthew Alexander Henson, the African-American explorer (1866-1955), is best remembered for his participation in Admiral Robert E. Peary's 1909 expedition, said to be the first to reach the North Pole. Henson's autobiography, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, published in 1912, actually contains accounts of eight expeditions--one to Nicaragua and seven to the Arctic--that Henson took with Peary. The book is illustrated with reproductions of black-and-white photographs, some of which were taken by Henson himself.</p><p>Henson's account of the various expeditions is significant in itself. But supplementary material, including a foreword from Peary and an introduction by Booker T. Washington, offer a noteworthy critical framework for understanding race relations at the time of the book's publication.</p><p>The prefatory statements, in discussing Henson's accomplishments, describe how his particular skills contributed to the success of the mission but contextualize individual achievements in a larger discussion of race. Peary emphasizes that reaching the North Pole was the result not of "alone individuals, but races," thereby suggesting that the success of the mission was the result of racial cooperation.</p><p>Washington addresses these same issues from a different perspective. He sees Henson's participation in the expedition as part of the larger history of African Americans and their role in western exploration. While Washington notes that Henson deserves recognition irrespective of his race, he also celebrates the memoir as a contribution to the documented record and history of the African-American experience.</p><hr align="center" noshade="noshade" size="1" width="85%" /></td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, January 31, 2006</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/jan-feb-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2006</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18502071 at https://alumni.duke.edu Forum: January-February 2006 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/forum-january-february-2006 <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"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr valign="top"><td class="text" colspan="2"><p>Faculty members from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences explode in protest against the publicizing of dangerous problems in the environment through the common media [<strong><a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/science-reality-show-by-william-h-schlesinger">Under the Gargoyle, "Science Reality Show," November-December 2005</a></strong>]. Certainly, it was just a small number of the fifty or so faculty members of the Nicholas School, but they managed to crop the tail feathers of their fellows to act as a whole in such public releases. The concession they won was to have future releases under the imprimatur of the new Nicholas Policy Institute, not the school.</p><p>Trivial, you say? I think not. Fearfulness and timidity have won the day again. How many of our nonscientist fellow citizens do the same: "Don't make a fuss; don't speak up in public; hush, child, somebody might get mad at you, to the extreme--they might burn you out." I have heard this from Florida to New Brunswick, Canada, in public meetings, in social situations, in families.</p><p>The people of the Nicholas School and those like them around the world know what hideous insults the Life Support System of the Earth is trying to heal, and it is losing ground. They know on the microscopic level, they know on the macroscopic level. They are working their hearts and minds out to come to the aid of the Life Support System. The sense of urgency is palpable in their books, papers, and occasional public utterances.</p><p>They should be silent? They should be careful and measured in what they say and in what forums they speak? We're talking about all life here, not just human life.</p><p>I submit that our duty as citizens in a participatory democracy trumps all other roles we play in our lives. This duty compels all of us to inform ourselves and to educate others about what's going on, to develop critical thinking, to speak our truths in public, to take part. The scientist having special knowledge about the Life Support System of the Earth--the foundation on which our multiple, rickety, human culture rests--must assert himself in all forums, or we are cooked (or, if you prefer, dead meat).</p><p class="articletitle">Betsy Buck Duncan '49, Monroe, Maine</p><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="75%" /><p class="articletitle">There are two articles in the November-December issue with which I strongly disagree: <strong><a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/nicholas-institute-holds-summit-for-the-environment">"Nicholas Institute Holds Summit for the Environment"</a></strong> in Gazette and <a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/science-reality-show-by-william-h-schlesinger"><strong>"Science Reality Show" by William Schlesinger</strong></a> in Under the Gargoyle. In the first one, a statement is made that "President George W. Bush does not see the environment as an important political issue." In the second article, a statement is made, stating, "The contrarians of evolution and global warming do not muster science to support their views."</p><p>I agonized over whether there was globing warming. Several years ago, I tuned in to a television show put on by the Weather Channel wherein global warming was discussed by three meteorologists. Their conclusions were that there is global warming but that almost all of it is brought about by natural causes, and probably less than 5 percent is caused by man. These natural causes are: sunspots, which happen about every eleven years; volcano eruptions, during which the ash is spread throughout the world; and melting of the polar ice caps. Although the environmentalists like to say that CO2 from burning of fossil fuels, etc., has caused holes in the ozone layer causing the melting, there is much disagreement.</p><p>So, the reason that George Bush does not consider this subject "earthshaking," if you will, is because we can do very little to stop it. The scientific proof as far as it goes, I have stated. However, we should do what we can such as drive hybrid cars and clean up toxic waste dumps. I rest my case!</p><p class="articletitle">Charles Shlimbaum M.D. '41, Stuart, Florida</p><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><p class="articletitle id="><strong>Roomies</strong></p><p class="articletitle">I enjoyed <a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/make-me-a-match"><strong>"Make Me a Match" [Campus Observer] in the September-October 2005</strong></a> issue of Duke Magazine. As a freshman twenty-two years ago, I shared Room 104 of Wannamaker with Cynthia Baker '87, A.M. '94 and Suzanne Gregory B.S.E. '87. It is amazing to consider that answering five basic questions similarly resulted in two lifelong friendships.</p><p>I cannot think of Duke without also remembering all of the laughs and memories I shared with Cynthia and Sue.</p><p>Although many years have passed, I know we will always remain friends. Cynthia and I meet for coffee nearly every Friday morning, and, although we don't see Sue as often (she lives in Philadelphia, we live in D.C.), the three of us were together this summer to celebrate our fortieth birthdays. To whoever was in charge of the roommate pairings the summer of 1983, thank you!</p><p class="articletitle">Holly Saas Rhodes B.S.E. '87, Chevy Chase, Maryland</p><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="75%" /><p class="articletitle">Thank you for featuring my beautiful wife in the top photo on page 25 [<a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/make-me-a-match"><strong>"Make Me a Match"</strong></a>] of the magazine. Seven years after the photo, standing with her father and oldest brother, Virginia "Ginger" Schackford entered Duke--behind both parents, all three brothers, and numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins.</p><p>She enjoyed her Duke education, and I enjoyed meeting her. We both have treasured our Duke careers working with troubled children from the local community. Thanks for reminding us that Ginger was just as cute at age eleven as she is today.</p><p class="articletitle">Dave Friedlein '63, Durham, North Carolina</p><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><p id="chile" class="articletitle"><strong>Chile Reception</strong></p><p class="articletitle">Let me see if I can get this straight <strong><a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/deadly-politics">["Deadly Politics," September-October 2005</a></strong>]. Ariel Dorfman has made a career out of telling Chile's story of Pinochet's deadly 1973 coup. In 1970, Salvador Allende became the first democratically elected Marxist head-of-state in the world. In August of 1973, Chile's economy was in a shambles. Dorfman was making a name for himself as a rising leftwing intellectual and media adviser to Allende's chief of staff, which made him a marked man.</p><p>On September 11, 1973, Pinochet led a coup and installed himself as dictator. Pinochet ruled Chile until 1990.Under his reign, thousands of political activists and supporters of Allende were killed. Thousands more fled the country. Dorfman, now Distinguished Professor of literature and Latin American studies at Duke, was among them.</p><p>Since 1990, Chile has had a democratic government and Ricardo Lagos A.M. '63, Ph.D. '66 is now its president. Present-day Chile is a hypercapitalist state, its economy has grown faster than any other South American country, halving poverty and becoming an island of calm among its neighbors, chronically mired in debt and social unrest.</p><p>In other words, Chile is a success! Now, let's look at another scenario. Suppose Allende had put down Pinochet's coup and established an even more Marxist state, a dictatorship, like Castro's Cuba. Undoubtedly, he would have had to kill Pinochet and thousands of his followers, just as Castro, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao did. Then, because the economy was in shambles, he would have had to imprison, drive out, or kill thousands more of the dissidents, the intelligencia, perhaps even Dorfman!</p><p>The history of communism is one of violence, diminution of freedom, and a lowered standard of living. I submit that Chile, under an Allende dictatorship, would have taken the same road to serfdom as Cuba has done.</p><p>Why did Dorfman migrate to the U.S. rather than Cuba or Russia, where he could have experienced a "worker's paradise" first hand? Was it because the U.S. is the only place where he could enjoy the fruits of our capitalist economy with the freedom to espouse a failed Marxist philosophy?</p><p>Duke University should repudiate professors that teach Socialist nonsense and honor professors that teach capitalist philosophy!</p><p class="articletitle">Charles F. Morton '56, Union City, Michigan</p><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><p id="foible" class="articletitle"><strong>Immigration Foibles</strong></p><p class="articletitle">In September-October's "Q&A" interview with professor Kathy Rudy [<a href="http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/whole-new-world"><strong>"A Whole New World"</strong></a>], it's clear she has promoted an admirable and necessary program of observing the Latino immigrant community, but it's also equally clear that she prefers to obscure the real issues and has little understanding of economics. I have worked on and off for years with immigrant families as a sponsor, a teacher, a court translator, an asylum witness, and a liaison between immigrants and community groups. I've also spent a lot of time in Latin America, and I understand that any of us, if our lives had been blighted and our ambitions blocked by unbearably corrupt kleptocracies, would want to come to the U.S., even if we had to break U.S. law. The difference between legal and illegal immigrants, however, is the heart of the social and economic debate, a fact Rudy and her interviewer entirely ignore.</p><p>She caricatures opponents to illegal immigration as know-nothings who say, "We have enough, you're draining our system, we don't want you here." Those of us who want change are not critics of immigrants but of illegal immigration, of a system that favors law-breaking Latinos over law-abiding, would-be immigrants from other countries. For instance, my stepdaughter and son-in-law and granddaughter from Kazakhstan have no way to legally immigrate to the U.S. except the annual attempt to win one rare slot in the "green card lottery" sponsored each year by the U.S. (Of 15 million Kazakhstanis, 242 won last year.) Why shouldn't they have an equal shot at living and working here?</p><p>The U.S. consul even turns down my stepdaughter for a one-month visitor's visa. Reason? Section 214b of the Immigration and Nationality Act requires the consul to decide that she will become illegal unless she can prove otherwise. While turning down a legal request by a university-educated, quadrilingual relative of a U.S. citizen who guarantees her return, our bureaucracies virtually welcome and offer drivers' licenses, education, and Medicaid to Latinos who break the law to come here.</p><p>Ms. Rudy also drags out the old myth used by both business and pro-illegal immigrant groups that the Latinos are doing jobs no Americans would do. Without them, she says, "Our infrastructure would shut down, from nannies to domestic workers to road workers to construction." No, without illegals forced to work for minimum or below-minimum wages and benefits, affluent Americans would have to pay living wages to blue-collar Americans. Businesses would also have to pay higher wages to legal residents. Outside Rudy's classroom, the laws of supply and demand have not been revoked. Without illegals, the demand for these services would continue, the supply would be less, and the wages would go up.</p><p>By all means, let us create a fair system for rejuvenating our society with immigrants from around the world. That might be a system of guest-worker permits or something else. In doing this, let's not insult would-be immigrants from other countries, condone criminal activity, or nurture cultural ghettoes where people are isolated by language and subject to cultures that condone domestic violence. And let us not sacrifice the livelihoods of America's blue-collar workers on the altar of political correctness that says borders signify little and all cultures are equal.</p><p class="articletitle">Wallace V. Kaufman '61, Jacksonville, Oregon</p><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /><p id="semper" class="articletitle"> </p><p class="articletitle"> </p></td></tr><tr><td class="text" colspan="2"><hr noshade="noshade" size="1" width="100%" /></td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-01-31T00:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, January 31, 2006</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/jan-feb-2006" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jan - Feb 2006</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18502070 at https://alumni.duke.edu