Duke - Fall 2019 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/issues/fall-2019 fall 2019 karsh primates hillings konhaus cassilly Cassilhaus en DR/TL* https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/drtl-1 <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><strong>ANIMALS AND MICROBES</strong></p> <p>Tiny fossilized wrist bones indicate that early apes, living 20 million years ago, <a href="https://research.duke.edu/aerial-acrobatics-early-apes">swung and climbed in trees millions of years earlier than was previously thought</a>. / Look! <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/21/us/giant-squid-on-camera-in-us-trnd/index.html">A giant squid!</a> / Also it turns out there once was <a href="https://research.duke.edu/giant-meat-eater">a giant sort of tiger-y thing that weighed 3,000 pounds</a> and had a head as big as a rhino’s and banana-sized canine teeth. Nice kitty. / High-status male baboons, who have to fight their way to that status, <a href="https://today.duke.edu/2018/12/baboon-sexes-differ-how-social-status-gets-under-skin">seem to have higher genetic activity in immune cells</a>, perhaps because the strong immune function helped them achieve status; female baboons “inherit” status from their mothers, and their immune-cell genetic activity does not seem to vary with status. / The legless <a href="https://jeb.biologists.org/content/222/15/jeb201129">larvae of gall midges can jump high</a>—right out of their petri dishes. They do it by bending to connect sort of Velcro-like hair on their heads and butts, and then increasing the tension until they suddenly unsnap. Boing.</p> <p><strong>PEOPLE</strong></p> <p>You can only go so fast—about 2.5 times your resting metabolic rate, as it happens. Seems to have to do with <a href="https://today.duke.edu/2019/06/there-limit-human-endurance-science-says-yes">how fast your digestive system can process food</a>. Researchers figured this out by studying people who ran six marathons a week for five months, which is a thing that actually happened. / Reviewers selecting medical-school graduates for residencies in radiology <a href="https://corporate.dukehealth.org/news-listing/obese-unattractive-students-are-less-likely-land-med-school-residencies">discriminated against applicants who were obese or facially unattractive</a>. / Prostate cancer cells <a href="https://corporate.dukehealth.org/news-listing/study-finds-how-prostate-cancer-cells-mimic-bone-when-they-metastasize">become lethal and spread to bones by imitating bone-forming cells</a>. Understanding this may lead to improved ability to target them in therapy. / Cell surface receptors may work <a href="https://today.duke.edu/2019/01/seeing-shapeshifting-receptors-work-could-yield-new-drugs">much more like dials, with multiple states, than like binary switches with only two</a>. This understanding may vastly improve drug design. / MMP inhibitors, a class of cancer drug that prevented cancer cells from dissolving cell membranes, failed to help prevent cancer spread in human tests. It now seems they failed because <a href="https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/a-two-fisted-punch-against-cancer-metastasis">in the absence of the capacity to dissolve membranes, cancer cells just build battering rams and bash their way around</a>. / It turns out&nbsp;<a href="https://corporate.dukehealth.org/news-listing/mri-cardiac-stress-test-shows-promise-identifying-fatal-heart-disease">MRI can not only diagnose heart disease but can also predict which cases are potentially fatal</a>, making MRI, underutilized in cardiac applications, a possible alternative to more-invasive, sometimes toxic tests like catheterization and stress echocardiograms or nuclear tests. / <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1047279714001471#!">Media accounts of mass shootings by disturbed people reinforce the belief that disturbed people are dangerous</a>, despite the fact that most disturbed people are not violent. Mental illness does, though, correlate with increased risk of suicide, which accounts for most U.S. firearms-related deaths. /Antihistamines block only one of the pathways that bring the itch of poison ivy to you. <a href="https://corporate.dukehealth.org/news-listing/blocking-proteins-could-ease-unrelenting-poison-ivy-itch-mouse-study-shows">Proteins and a neurotransmitter seem to carry the signal of itchiness to mice who’ve contacted poison ivy,</a> and blocking them seems to have helped the mice feel better. With climate change seemingly designing an environment specifically to improve things for poison ivy, here’s hoping.</p> <p><strong>MISCELLANY</strong></p> <p>Scientists looking at the sky from Chile for six years, and combining multiple measurement techniques, have determined that the mysterious dark energy, which evidently makes up 70 percent of everything even though we can’t see it, <a href="https://research.duke.edu/shining-light-dark-energy">still seems really complex.</a> / Conservation efforts <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000632071731594X?via%3Dihub">do not seem to be slowing deforestation in Cameroon</a>. / Scientists have figured out the structure of the protein that senses cold in people and animals, and now<a href="https://today.duke.edu/2019/02/defining-shape-cool"> they’ve figured out what that protein looks like when it binds to menthol and another cooling agent</a>. They hope this understanding might lead to improvements in soothing remedies like topical painkillers and migraine medications.*</p> <p><strong>DUKE</strong></p> <p>Duke scored twice among 2019 MacArthur Fellows: <a href="https://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/laws-danielle-citron-named-a-2019-macarthur-fellow/">Danielle (Morris) Citron ’90,</a> now a law professor at Boston University, received a “genius grant” for her work studying online privacy issues. <a href="https://www.today.duke.edu/2019/09/dukes-jenny-tung-wins-625k-macarthur-foundation-genius-grant">Jenny Tung ’03, PhD ’10, and now associate professor</a> of evolutionary anthropology and biology, received one of the ten-year, $625,000 stipends for her work on the social determinants of health. / Duke received <a href="https://today.duke.edu/2019/03/duke-receives-50-million-increase-faculty-and-advance-scientific-research">a $50 million grant from The Duke Endowment</a> to accelerate and expand the recruitment of research scientists in the basic and applied sciences. / Health policy scholar Don Taylor, a longtime professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy, has been named the <a href="https://today.duke.edu/2019/02/don-taylor-appointed-director-social-sciences-research-institute">new director of Duke’s Social Science Research Institute</a>. / For the eleventh straight year, the Arbor Day Foundation <a href="https://today.duke.edu/2019/01/duke-named-tree-campus-usa-11th-year">named Duke a 2018 Tree Campus USA</a>. / Ana Baros and Vahid Tarokh of the Pratt School of Engineering <a href="https://pratt.duke.edu/about/news/barros-tarokh-elected-members-national-academy-engineering">have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering</a>. / <a href="https://nicholas.duke.edu/about/news/marine-lab%E2%80%99s-joe-ramus-receives-order-longleaf-pine">Joseph S. Ramus, professor emeritus at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment</a>, was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, one of the highest civilian honors bestowed by the State of North Carolina.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>*<em>Didn't Read?/Too Long? Well, we did, and now we're all smarter. </em></p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2019-11-19T16:00:30-05:00">Tuesday, November 19, 2019</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/drtl1_0.jpg" width="568" height="274" alt="Didn&#039;t read/Too long" title="Didn&#039;t read/Too long" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/alumni" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Alumni</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/biological-sciences" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Biological Sciences</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/campus-news" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Campus News</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/faculty" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Faculty</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/natural-sciences" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Natural Sciences</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/physical-sciences" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Physical Sciences</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/psychology-and-neuroscience" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Psychology and Neuroscience</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/research" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Research</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/618277" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Science and Technology</a></li></ul></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/scott-huler" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Scott Huler</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/issues/fall-2019" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2019</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, 19 Nov 2019 21:08:50 +0000 Adrienne Martin 18507926 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/drtl-1#comments Once upon a time, Central Campus living was a dream https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/once-upon-time-central-campus-living-was-dream <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>In May, students moved out of their Central Campus apartments for the last time. The buildings are now being razed, and the future of Central Campus is uncertain. Over its nearly forty-five-year lifespan as part of our university, the Central Campus apartments remained the same, but the vision for what they <em>could</em> be changed as the years passed.</p> <p>Following the sale of married student housing on Morreene Road, there was a need for more residential units for graduate and married students, as well as undergraduates. Duke bought land that had previously housed workers for Burlington Industries, displacing a number of longtime residents. Small homes were removed, and the new apartments erected. When the cornerstone of Central Campus was laid in 1972, the program distributed at the event boasted that “The apartment units are of two-story, wood-frame construction with exteriors of brick veneer and wood siding. Every effort has been made to include high quality, low maintenance materials, with particular attention being paid to the problem of sound transmission between apartments.” It also detailed the hopes that administrators had for the campus “at a later time.” These included a day care center, community building, playground, swimming pool, and tennis courts. Both graduate and undergraduate students shared the campus, although over time, undergraduates came to occupy the majority of the units.</p> <p>When it opened, Central was a less-expensive housing option than East or West Campus, and it offered apartment-like living, rather than a dormitory environment. It was fairly convenient to Ninth Street and the amenities there. While there were financial advantages to living on Central, it was also removed from the social life of East and West campuses. In 1983, the Central Campus Study Committee (made up of students, faculty, administrators, and Central Campus residents) submitted a report urging the university to invest in building a community feel on Central Campus. The report noted: “Extensive programming within the residence halls, opportunities for social interaction, and the development of a sense of community have all become integral facets of Duke’s evolving commitment to fostering a meaningful residential experience. While significant attention has been given to the dormitories on East and West Campus, another vital part of the community has not moved ahead with [the] changing philosophy of residential life.”</p> <p>In response, new features were provided on Central Campus, including paved basketball courts, a pool, a multipurpose building, a convenience store (Uncle Harry’s), and “an old-style English Pub with a limited menu reflecting genuine English dishes. Associated with the Pub will be a lounge area for darts, cards, billiards, and a place to come relax and talk.” These enhancements were completed in 1985, and Central Campus was again promoted to students as an appealing option. Advertisements from 1975 declare “avoid dormitory overcrowding, long lines for the shower…learn to love the kitchen, bathroom, and air-conditioning of a spacious, fully furnished, convenient apartment without moving off-campus!!!” and “Why live anywhere else?”</p> <p>As the more affordable housing option, Central appealed to many students on tight budgets. It also provided a different kind of social atmosphere, and it had a particular appeal to students of color. An October 2000 <em>Chronicle</em> article noted: “In the past, minorities have been disproportionately housed on Central Campus—last year, 35.2 percent of black students and 19.9 percent of Asian students lived on Central, while only 12.1 percent of white students did.” One student provided an insight as to why this was the case: “He said that while living next to mostly white fraternities on West may be appealing to some, there are fewer social benefits to living on West for minority students.”</p> <p>In the 1990s and early 2000s, major changes to Central Campus were considered as the apartments aged. These included new student housing, faculty housing, a commercial district, and even a monorail to better connect Central to East and West Campuses. There was concern for how the proposed commercial and residential options would affect nearby non-Duke communities, and whether it would negatively affect the Ninth Street corridor. Other building priorities on campus delayed any action, however, and the recession in 2008 scuttled a major overhaul of the campus.</p> <p>Toward the end of the first decade of the 2000s, Central became home to a number of selective living groups and Greek organizations, rather than being clustered on West as they had been since the early 1990s. A 2010 <em>Chronicle</em> article explained that “The transition hinges on selective living groups’ willingness to give Central a chance. Administrators insist they don’t want Central to be framed as a punishment.”</p> <p>While the university invested in modest upgrades to Central Campus in the 2010s, the article said that “If all had gone according to plan, they would have traded the paint brushes and hoes for a bulldozer.”</p> <p>The bulldozer has arrived, and while the apartments have disappeared, they are still remembered—fondly by some, not so fondly by others—as a home and community for thousands of Duke students over these last five decades.</p> <p><em><a href="https://library.duke.edu/about/directory/staff/valerie.gillispie">Gillispie is the university archivist</a>.</em></p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2019-11-19T15:45:45-05:00">Tuesday, November 19, 2019</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/CC.jpg" width="2717" height="1395" alt="Image of Central Campus construction, 1973" title="Central Campus construction, 1973" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/alumni" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Alumni</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/628503" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Buildings and Grounds</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/campus-news" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Campus News</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/students-and-campus-life" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Students and Campus life</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/university-affairs-campus-buildings-and-grounds" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">University affairs (Campus buildings and grounds)</a></li></ul></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/valerie-gillispie" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Valerie Gillispie</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/issues/fall-2019" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2019</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/courtesy-duke-university-archives" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Courtesy Duke University Archives</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">A look back now that the bulldozers have arrived</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Tue, 19 Nov 2019 20:56:28 +0000 Adrienne Martin 18507925 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/once-upon-time-central-campus-living-was-dream#comments Recently published books by alumni https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/recently-published-books-alumni-12 <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>We asked <em>Jason DeParle ’82</em>, a <em>New York Times</em> reporter and author of <em>A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century</em>, about what he learned about global migration from following a family for thirty years.</p> <p><strong>On why he wanted to write this book, and how the rapid news cycle affected it: </strong>I wasn’t even thinking of migration when I moved in with them. I was thinking about slum life and poverty. And I was just taken by the dignity and grace with which they responded to their difficult situation in life. In fact, when I started the project, I had the mental framework that migration had been less politically divisive in the U.S. than it had been in Europe, and that somehow the U.S. had been spared some of the rancor that had spread across the rest of the globe. And for some of the questions I was asking, “Why was that? What was it about the United States that might explain why migration hadn’t become quite as divisive here as it was elsewhere?” Then, in 2015, when Donald Trump declared his candidacy, the U.S. narrative changed, and the book had to change to accommodate that. I wrote it because I was drawn to the courage and grace of this family. And whatever thoughts, whatever position a reader might bring on immigration to this book, I think they could appreciate the story of the grace and sacrifice of this family.</p> <p><strong>On the aspects of migration that often have gotten lost in news coverage:</strong> The light-bulb moment for me in understanding how economically important migration is to poor people around the world was when I discovered that remittances, the money that migrants send back to their families, is three times the world’s foreign-aid budgets combined. So, migration is the world’s largest self-help program, the world’s largest anti-poverty program. It’s hugely important to the people who are relying on the money they get for education, for health care, for food, for shelter. One of the interesting things about Rosalie’s experience was that she came and she got a very good middle-class American job, but she didn’t take it from an American. She went to an underserved hospital that hadn’t been able to attract enough nurses back on to Galveston Island because it’d been hit by a natural disaster. Galveston, a kind of struggling, blue-collar town, just couldn’t compete with the market in Houston. They offered $5,000 bonuses to try to get nurses from Nebraska and Florida to come to Galveston Island, and they couldn’t get them to stay, so they hired people from the Philippines. And rather than take an American job, Rosalie’s moving to the U.S. brought services to Americans who otherwise might not have them. I don’t want to pretend that there’s never any cost to migration or that it never takes away jobs. There are winners and losers. There are costs to migration. But the political conversation so heavily dwells on the negative conversation on whether migrants are taking jobs away from Americans that I thought it was important in this context to point out that this hospital had tried for years.</p> <p><strong>On the differing views of America’s identity: </strong>The question of whether the U.S. should think of itself as a nation of immigrants is very much up in the air. I think one of the goals of the Trump administration is to challenge that idea. So, what they’re doing is they’re looking not only to change policy, but also to confront the idea of whether that’s a meaningful part of American identity. Stephen Miller [’07], President Trump’s immigration adviser, has made the point in the White House Briefing Room that he thinks the Statue of Liberty shouldn’t be thought of as a symbol of welcome to immigrants. The Trump citizenship agency has removed the phrase “nation of immigrants” from its mission statement. And I think they have a philosophically different view that the U.S. shouldn’t think of itself that way. Critics of immigration fear sometimes that new immigrants aren’t assimilating in a patriotic fashion. You hear that a lot. They’re not learning American history, American civic history. They’re not studying our heroes. That is not at all what I found, certainly not in the public schools in Texas. I mean, the second-graders that I was following came home from school and taught me about Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman, and Helen Keller, and Jane Addams, and Abraham Lincoln. The notion that somehow America’s civic values aren’t being conveyed is belied by what I saw.</p> <p><em>This interview has been edited and condensed.</em></p> <p><strong>RECOMMENDATIONS from Karla Holloway A.M. ’05&nbsp; </strong></p> <p>In <strong><em>A Death in Harlem</em></strong> (Triquarterly), Holloway tells of a murder on the side streets of Jazz Age New York that will test the mettle, resourcefulness, and intuition of Harlem’s first “colored” policeman, Weldon Haynie Thomas. Below, the James. B. Duke Professor Emerita of English and law shares the books that influenced her first novel:</p> <p><strong><em>Passing</em></strong> by Nella Larsen is my novel’s origin story. It’s the novel that most often made its way onto my Duke syllabi, and the one my classes could never finish discussing. Larsen’s simple and elegant story ends with a death that a local policeman pronounces a “death by misadventure”; but was it? Rather than continuing Larsen’s narrative, my novel insisted on its own characters. Olivia Frelon, the woman who dies, is wrapped into Harlem’s mysteries of color, class, and kinship. Instead of Passing’s enigma, Harlem’s first colored policeman, Weldon Thomas, actually solves <em>A Death in Harlem</em>’s mystery.</p> <p><em><strong>The Souls of Black Folk</strong></em> by W.E.B. DuBois. Harlem’s first colored policeman is a deep reader. When tragedy strikes, he’s actually reading DuBois’ Souls. This twentiethcentury philosopher and sociologist developed a critical notion of “twoness”—being able to see within and without race—that helped me compose the inside/outside frame of my novel. In fact, DuBois’ principle helps solve the mystery.</p> <p><em><strong>The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes</strong></em> by Arthur Conan Doyle. Weldon Thomas prided himself on using Holmes’ method of deductive reasoning. He read Holmes voraciously, so I did as well. Although no particular book by Doyle was critical, Holmes’ method is mighty helpful in Thomas’s investigation into Olivia Frelon’s death.</p> <p>Finally, Toni Morrison’s <em><strong>Jazz</strong></em> gave me narrative license; her insistence in allowing her narrative to lay claim to the whole of its imagined terrain inspired me. So, in those moments when voices in my book seem to come from something inanimate, consider the instruction from Jazz to “Look where your hands are. Now.” They grasp the book. Following African-American literary traditions, <em>A Death in Harlem</em> is a “talking book.”</p> <p><strong>BY DUKE ALUMNI &amp; FACULTY</strong></p> <p><em>A Marriage of Equals: How to Achieve Balance in a Committed Relationship</em> (She Writes Press) Catherine E. Aponte A.M. ’77</p> <p><em>The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women</em> (Princeton University Press) Kate Bowler Ph.D. ’10, associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America, Duke Divinity School</p> <p><em>The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific With an Ancient Tribe and a Vanishing Way of Life </em>(Little, Brown, and Company) Doug Bock Clark ’09</p> <p><em>Life and the Fields</em> (Turning Point Books) George Keithley ’57</p> <p><em>The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles</em> (Duke University Press) Charles Piot, professor of cultural anthropology, with Kodjo Nicolas Batema</p> <p><em>All the Water in the World</em> (Scribner) Karen Raney B.S.N. ’78</p> <p><em>Idolatry and the Construction of the Spanish Empire</em> (University Press of Colorado) Mina García Soormally A.M. ’03, Ph.D. ’07</p> <p><em>Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps</em> (UNC Press) Amy Murrell Taylor ’93</p> <p><em>Circa 1903: North Carolina’s Outer Banks at the Dawn of Flight</em> (UNC Press) Larry E. Tise ’65, M.Div. ’68</p> <p><em>Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story</em> (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Jacob Tobia ’14</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2019-11-19T15:15:30-05:00">Tuesday, November 19, 2019</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/bookclub.jpg" width="2717" height="1395" alt="images of various book covers" title="Books written by Duke alumni and faculty" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/alumni" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Alumni</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/arts-and-culture" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Arts and Culture</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/book-club" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Book Club</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/cultural-anthropology" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Cultural Anthropology</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/duke-black-alumni" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Duke Black Alumni</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/faculty" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Faculty</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/forever-learning" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Forever Learning</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/duke-lgbtq-alumni" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Duke LGBTQ+ Alumni</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/pop-culture" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Pop Culture</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/religion" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Religion</a></li></ul></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/adrienne-johnson-martin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Adrienne Johnson Martin</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/issues/fall-2019" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2019</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-portrait field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Portrait:&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-portraits/DEPARLE.jpg" width="2400" height="3000" alt="A portrait of Jason DeParle" title="Author and New York Times reporter Jason DeParle &#039;82" /></figure></div></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">And faculty, plus recommendations</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Tue, 19 Nov 2019 20:27:38 +0000 Adrienne Martin 18507924 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/recently-published-books-alumni-12#comments Q&A: MacArthur "genius grant" winner Jenny Tung https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/qa-macarthur-genius-grant-winner-jenny-tung <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><strong>Jenny Tung ’03, Ph.D. ’10</strong>, associate professor of evolutionary anthropology, is among the recipients of a 2019 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (popularly known as the “genius grant”). Her research involves understanding how social and environmental adversity affects health and survival over the lifespan of an individual.</p> <p><strong><em>You were hooked on this field from your time in a freshman seminar, right? And that projected you into graduate school.</em></strong></p> <p>One of the things I got from the seminar was the idea that you could combine evolutionary perspectives and the mechanisms of genetics to understand why the world looks the way it does. By the time I started graduate school, I wanted to study these very complex, long-term, socially differentiated relationships among animals that live a long time and form close social bonds, like we do.</p> <p><em><strong>And that brought you to reaching baboons in the wild, in Amboseli, Kenya. </strong></em></p> <p>People I’m lucky enough to collaborate today with started doing very intensive, detailed, day-to-day fieldwork there back in 1971. They put together tracking systems and methods for collecting data that could be used for a lot of things they never anticipated. If you want to study a species from the standpoint of genetics, you want a decent sample size and a lot of pre-existing information.</p> <p><em><strong>Social scientists have wrestled with the social determinants of health, but isn’t this an unusual angle for primate researchers?</strong></em></p> <p>Low socioeconomic status, social isolation, lack of social support—these seem to be big predictors of how humans live their lives. The question is, for humans and other social animals, whether social factors have any direct effects on our cells themselves. Can the impact of social stress be studied from a biological lens and not just by social scientists? We’ve shown that early-life insults are lifespan-shortening for non-human primates. They can be lifespan-threatening in their offspring, as well, independently of what the offspring have experienced directly.</p> <p><em><strong>What’s one striking finding from your more recent fieldwork? </strong></em></p> <p>One of my graduate students led a study a few years ago that showed the impact of being born into a drought environment: Female baboons would grow up with lower fertility levels. But there’s a twist: If you came from a high-status family, you were buffered from that kind of effect. On the other hand, if you lose your mom before you turn one—which is approximately the age baby baboons get weaned, so they can feed on their own—that’s basically a death sentence for almost all the animals, regardless of status.</p> <p><em><strong>Given climate change, are the stress factors in that setting getting worse? </strong></em></p> <p>About ten years ago, we had the worst drought that’s ever been recorded in Amboseli. Human population growth is also causing new pressure on the baboons. On the other hand, partly because of these changes, the number of predators, like leopards and lions, is decreasing. These are complex factors, since, as the population of baboons increases, competition among baboons also increases.</p> <p><em><strong>Another strand of your research has you studying macaque monkeys in captivity at Emory’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center. </strong></em></p> <p>Here we’re looking at gene activity through controlled experiments, as opposed to the observations we do in the wild. When we introduce a female macaque into a new social group, earlier introductions predict higher status. Females who go in later are lower-status. We can’t do that kind of experiment in humans. So our work with the macaques is very powerful for demonstrating the causal effects of social-status variation by itself, in the absence of factors like diet or health-care access. What’s something surprising that you’ve learned about macaques, status, and wellbeing? Females who rise in rank don’t completely escape—in molecular and physiological terms—a previous lower status. Females who drop in rank, on the other hand, quickly lose the genomic signature of that lost high status. So our data suggest a complex interplay of social history and current social circumstances, which we’re attempting to tease apart now.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2019-11-19T15:00:15-05:00">Tuesday, November 19, 2019</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/GENIUSimage.jpg" width="2717" height="1395" alt="Image of the 2019 MacArthur Fellowship winners" title="The 2019 MacArthur Fellowship winners" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/alumni" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Alumni</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/evolutionary-anthropology" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Evolutionary Anthropology</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/faculty" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Faculty</a></li></ul></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/robert-j-bliwise" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Robert J. Bliwise</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/issues/fall-2019" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2019</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-portrait field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Portrait:&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-portraits/JENNYGENIOUS.jpg" width="2400" height="3000" alt="A portrait of Jenny Tung" title="Associate professor of evolutionary anthropology Jenny Tung is a 2019 MacArthur Fellow" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/les-todd" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Les Todd</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, 19 Nov 2019 20:11:56 +0000 Adrienne Martin 18507923 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/qa-macarthur-genius-grant-winner-jenny-tung#comments Cat lovers on campus unite to care for stray calicos https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/cat-lovers-campus-unite-care-stray-calicos <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>She usually sits on top of her house, or she runs around in the grass,” says Jonas Meksem. On an early fall day, the junior stopped by to visit Peaches the Calico Cat on his way to Pitchfork’s, a campus eatery. Meksem peeked inside her cat home.</p> <p>No Peaches.</p> <p>“I try to make visiting Peaches a part of my daily walk,” says Meksem. “It’s great because she’s everyone’s pet, and everyone gets to take care of her.”</p> <p>The cat started her Duke life in 2016 as an untamed and unnamed stray. Some students and faculty created their own names for the homeless cat, and helped her when they could.</p> <p>“I have always had stray or feral cats and feel responsible for them,” says Choro Carla Antonaccio, professor emerita of classical studies. She was one of the first on campus to help the stray cat. “They are domesticated animals that have shown up on my doorstep because someone didn’t want them or keep them safe.”</p> <p>Most folks who spotted the stray referred to her simply as “the calico cat.” Anna Li ’18 did the same. In the fall of 2016, Li was walking on West Campus when she spotted the calico relaxing regally on the quad, indifferent to the semester’s deadlines.</p> <p>“She used to follow me around campus, waiting outside while I got food from Pitchfork’s and staring at me from the window until I brought it back out to share with her,” says Li. “We went on strolls in Duke Gardens together, and she’d just follow me.”</p> <p>That winter, the temperature dropped below freezing and Li worried about her new friend. She started a Facebook group, as an organized effort to assist the small cat and a larger calico, believed to be her sister or mother. A poll on Facebook provided the name “Peaches.” One caretaker, Anna Matthews ’19, named the larger calico “Mamabean.” The Facebook group, Caretakers of Peaches (The Calico Cat), also attends to more crucial matters.</p> <p>“I thought it was going to be a group of maybe ten nerdy cat lovers or something, but the group really exploded. It has about 1,600 members now,” says Li.</p> <p>Volunteers and donors—a collection of students, alumni, staff, faculty, retirees, and even some Duke parents—have provided two heated cat homes, food, water bowls, and funds for veterinary care. Although she now lives in Seattle with her cat “Kitty,” Li continues to organize and advise the Facebook group, while group administrators in Durham, like senior Emmy Mariner, are hands on. Mariner transports Peaches and Mamabean to a veterinary clinic for vaccinations and responds to emergencies. Cat colony care groups across campus work together by sharing information. They collaborate with Independent Animal Rescue, which operates a spay and neuter program. Matthews and other caretakers also organize off-campus homes for Peaches and Mamabean when hurricanes blow through, like Dorian in early September. It’s a lot of work, but Mariner says as much as students help the cats, the cats give much more in return.</p> <p>“As students we spend a lot of time neglecting our own mental and physical health and constantly putting ourselves in very stressful situations and competitive patterns,” says Mariner. “When you stop and slow that down and try to take care of something other than yourself, it makes it all simpler and a lot less stressful.”</p> <p>Peaches has become a feline cause célèbre. <a href="https://people.com/pets/duke-students-raise-money-for-stray-campus-cats-vet-care/"><em>People</em> magazine wrote about her</a>. A Duke <em>Chronicle</em> 2018 student poll named her one of the 18 Most Influential People at Duke. The <em>People</em> article led to an increase in donations when Mamabean needed emergency surgery. But funds are low again, and caretakers started a new <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/k3rmrc-fundraising-to-care-for-duke-campus-cats">GoFundMe campaign</a> in September.</p> <p>Meksem eventually found Peaches as she napped beneath the shade of a fraternity bench, sheltered by a small tree, her heated cat house in view, just outside the doors of Keohane. He bent down and gently stroked her cheek. Peaches stretched, opened her eyes briefly in acknowledgement, and then repositioned her chin on her left paw, showing small, pink pads. She returned to napping. Unbothered. Content.</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2019-11-19T14:30:15-05:00">Tuesday, November 19, 2019</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/PEACHESCAT.jpg" width="2850" height="1941" alt="Picture of Peaches the cat, relaxing on Duke University campus" title="Peaches the cat, relaxes on campus" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/alumni" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Alumni</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/campus-news" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Campus News</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/campus" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">On Campus</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/students-and-campus-life" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Students and Campus life</a></li></ul></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/melody-hunter-pillion-am-12" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Melody Hunter-Pillion A.M. ’12</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/issues/fall-2019" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2019</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-portrait field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Portrait:&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-portraits/CATSTORY.jpg" width="2400" height="3000" alt="Portrait of Peaches the cat" title="Peaches the cat, relaxing on Duke&#039;s campus" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/charlaine-chen" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charlaine Chen</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/magazine/photographers/megan-mendenhall" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Megan Mendenhall</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">Students, alumni, staff, faculty, retirees, and Duke parents form a FaceBook group for Peaches and MamaBean.</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Tue, 19 Nov 2019 20:00:26 +0000 Adrienne Martin 18507922 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/cat-lovers-campus-unite-care-stray-calicos#comments A Nasher show helps revise the nation's origin story https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/nasher-show-helps-revise-nations-origin-story <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>“Did you see the pink boots?”</p> <p>It’s opening night of the Nasher Museum’s latest exhibition, <em>Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now</em>, and two Duke students are debating the meaning of colorful, thigh-high boots in the middle of a nineteenth-century landscape. In the painting, mountains rise majestically in the background, suggesting limitless land. It feels quite traditional. But something is different in this scene; there are nude men scattered about—soldiers who have tossed their weapons and uniforms— and a painter standing at his easel capturing their reverie is also nude except for those boots.</p> <p>The piece is <a href="https://denverartmuseum.org/object/2016.288">Kent Monkman’s <em>History is Painted by the Victors</em></a>, a tongue-in-cheek take on Albert Bierstadt’s classic American West artwork, <a href="https://www.corcoran.org/collection/mount-corcoran"><em>Mount Corcoran</em></a>.</p> <p>“Bierstadt painted the scene unpeopled, which would support the theme of Manifest Destiny: ‘You can move out West; it’s available for the taking,’ ” says visiting curator Mindy Besaw from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, where the exhibit was originally developed. Here, Monkman puts his drag queen alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, in the foreground. “It’s that new understanding when you realize things are not as they appear. It asks you to look twice at the work, think twice about the artists, and think twice about the context and our assumptions.”</p> <p>And that’s the goal of the show. While Western art often puts history in a tidy package, excluding Native Americans from the narrative, the exhibition doesn’t mind showing that history is messy. It aims to disrupt the tranquil, monolithic image of a forgotten indigenous people while blasting the nation’s origin narrative.</p> <p>Forty-one Indigenous contemporary artists are featured; they’re addressing varied themes and using varied formats, including canvas paintings, videos, performance art, and textiles. <a href="http://portlandartmuseum.us/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=79584;type=101#">Marie Watt’s <em>Companion Species (Ferocious Mother and Canis Familiaris)</em></a> uses a patchwork of embroidered words on reclaimed wool blankets created by sewing circles of more than two hundred participants to explore the interconnectedness of humans and animals. Artist Brian Jungen’s sculptures morph Nike Air Jordans and human hair into semblances of Pacific Northwest tribal masks, as a commentary on cultural appropriation and commodification. In <a href="https://nasher.duke.edu/artwork/22102/"><em>Fifty Shades of White</em>, Juane Quick-to-See Smith</a> created a map that renames each U.S. state with various shades of white paint—“White Peach” for Georgia, “Antique White” for Pennsylvania, North Carolina is “Breakwater White”—while neighboring countries are brightly colored to ask viewers to reflect upon Euro-American cultural and racial authority.</p> <p>“It upends the idea of representation,” says Besaw of the exhibition’s breadth. “Native American is not one pan-Indian identity. There’s not one way of making art that is Native American.”</p> <p>Besides the art and the calendar of events accompanying the show, which runs through January 12, the exhibition has special resonance for the Class of 2023, whose summer reading was the acclaimed novel <em>There There</em> by Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange. That book, too, challenges notions of indigenous identity by featuring the voices of twelve urban Native American narrators as they make their way to a California powwow.</p> <p>Marshall Price, the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger curator of modern and contemporary art, served as an adviser of the design of the exhibition, determining how the works would be displayed and described. He consulted with members of North Carolina’s indigenous tribes and brought in a member of a local Native tribe to help the Nasher staff in their use of language with visitors, when referencing Native peoples. He says the art represents the continued presence of Native peoples whose history has long been silenced. “One of the overarching statements of the exhibit is that Native American cultures are still very much alive, thriving and here.”</p> <p>“We <em>are</em> still here,” says Louise Maynor, Ph.D. ’83, a member and advocate of the Lumbee Tribe, who attended the exhibition’s opening reception. “Through this art exhibit, so many other people will know that we are here, and that we are proudly producing and generating these art forms as another way of telling our stories. It is a new understanding. It’s not the printed word. It’s so visual and engaging. That in itself should add to our understanding of indigenous people.”</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2019-11-19T14:30:30-05:00">Tuesday, November 19, 2019</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/NASHERimage.jpg" width="2717" height="1395" alt="Image of the Mirror Shield Project, conceived by Cannupa Hanska Luger" title="Mirror Shield Project, conceived by Cannupa Hanska Luger" /></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/melody-hunter-pillion-am-12" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Melody Hunter-Pillion A.M. ’12</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/issues/fall-2019" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2019</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-portrait field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Portrait:&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-portraits/NASHER1.jpg" width="2400" height="3000" alt="Image of Jeffrey Gibson&#039;s Radiant Tushka, 2018" title="Jeffrey Gibson&#039;s work Radiant Tushka, 2018 is part of the Nasher exhibition" /></figure></div></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">By featuring contemporary works created by indigenous artists, the museum&#039;s latest exhibition suggests a broader narrative. </div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Tue, 19 Nov 2019 19:33:19 +0000 Adrienne Martin 18507921 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/nasher-show-helps-revise-nations-origin-story#comments A summer stint with a college-league team is a hit with Duke baseball players https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/summer-stint-college-league-team-hit-duke-baseball-players <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>The <a href="https://www.salamandersbaseball.com/landing/index">Holly Springs Salamanders</a>, losing 8-0 in the bottom of the ninth on a humid Piedmont evening, are down to their last at-bat. With desperation baserunners the ’Manders’ only sliver of hope, rising junior Chris Crabtree faced a three-and-one pitch well out of the strike zone. There are times when you take that pitch, work the base on balls, get a runner on, and hope against hope.</p> <p>This is not one of those times. Crabtree reaches low, trying to golf that lousy pitch out of Ting Stadium in Holly Springs for home run number twelve on the season.</p> <p>Nope. Crabtree, one of two Duke players on the Salamanders roster, swings through it, though to give him credit, he does walk on the next pitch. It doesn’t help: final score, Fayetteville Swampdogs 8, Salamanders 0.</p> <p>No matter. After the game, all along the left-field stands, a crush of adoring fans, mostly age nine or younger, press against the fence, offering hats, balls, programs for autographs. Crabtree grins wide and signs as long as anybody asks. So does his teammate, rising junior Wil Hoyle, a slick-fielding shortstop who turned down a draft by the Oakland Athletics to instead play for Duke. Crabtree plays first and hasn’t yet had to turn down a draft, but he represented the Salamanders in the Coastal Plain League all-star game in Savannah, where he took his shots in the home-run derby. “It was fun,” he says. “I hit four out.”</p> <p>His eleven home runs led the Salamanders, who ended up 19-32 and out of the Coastal Plain League playoffs.</p> <p>That didn’t bother Hoyle and Crabtree much. Playing for the Salamanders—playing for any team in any of the dozens of college leagues nationwide—is less about winning than about keeping your skills up. Last year he played for Wilmington, “and Crab was here,” Hoyle says. They both enjoyed their summers, but being together gave them the opportunity not only to spend a full summer as teammates but also to keep each other on task regarding workouts.</p> <p>“We wake up, eat breakfast, go lift, go hit, then come here” to crisp, new Ting Stadium, when there’s a home game. An away game is pretty much the same, just with two long bus rides. Most of the teams in the Coastal Plain League are in small North and South Carolina towns like Edenton and Florence, in Single A-level ballparks old or new. “We’re so central, we’re right in the middle of everything,” Crabtree says. “We haven’t stayed overnight once.”</p> <p>The two share a rental house in Durham, but most players in the league stay with host families. Getting paid to play baseball would invalidate scholarships, so the league provides housing, though host families like to provide food, too, for those late-night returns home.</p> <p>“Wilmington was an awesome place to play last year,” Hoyle says. “Beautiful ballpark, great fans. When we went back there this year people in the stands were yelling, ‘We miss you!’ ” That give and take with the fans is part of the casual nature of Coastal Plain ball. Without the pressure of a Duke season, the players relax into taking their swings and fielding their positions. The trim new stadium has a standard minor-league feel—a dog fetches the bats after players hit, seats and food are cheap, and there are the between-innings races, contests, and mascots one would expect at the DBAP.</p> <p>Even the notification Hoyle got last year from his Wilmington host mother was casual. “Basically one day last spring I just got a text from a woman, and she said, like, ‘You’re gonna be living with me this summer.’ That was my first interaction. She was amazing. Asked me questions about what I liked to eat, anything I need, things like that. She was a model host mother.” They’re still friends. Many host families have young children and see the ballplayers as role models; others have kids who have moved out and miss the hubbub.</p> <p>The players love the league. Holly Springs has players from dozens of colleges, as close as Duke and N.C. Central and as far away as South Dakota State. And though the autographs, mascots, and casual atmosphere make for a pleasant summer, the players are looking to get better, and they know where they come from. “You see Duke shirts in the stands,” Hoyle says. “And every time you come up to hit, they say, ‘from Duke University.’ ”</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2019-11-19T14:00:00-05:00">Tuesday, November 19, 2019</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/BASEBALLMANDERS.jpg" width="2717" height="1395" alt="Image of Chris Crabtree with some fans" title="Chris Crabtree takes pictures with fans before a Holly Springs Salamander game" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/athletics" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Athletics</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/628511" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Durham and the Region</a></li></ul></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/scott-huler" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Scott Huler</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/issues/fall-2019" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2019</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-portrait field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Portrait:&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-portraits/BASEBALL.jpg" width="2400" height="3000" alt="Image of Duke baseball players, Chris Crabtree and Wil Hoyle" title="Chris Crabtree, left, and Wil Hoyle before one of their Holly Springs Salamanders&#039; games" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/scott-huler" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Scott Huler</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, 19 Nov 2019 19:23:44 +0000 Adrienne Martin 18507920 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/summer-stint-college-league-team-hit-duke-baseball-players#comments Duke researchers find a tiny fossil and aid a big knowledge gap https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/duke-researchers-find-tiny-fossil-and-aid-big-knowledge-gap <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 group of Duke and other scientists have found a tiny fossilized tooth that identifies the smallest monkey in the world’s fossil record. They have named the monkey and added it to the fossil record, which is cool. But what’s really remarkable is the effort behind the finding of that tooth and the vast hole in our understanding that the little fossil begins to fill.</p> <p>The fossil is a tooth, and if you had a hundred of them, they would fit in a teaspoon. The monkey that used to come attached to that tooth was just a wee bit larger than today’s smallest monkey, the pygmy marmoset, which weighs in at three ounces, about the weight of a cupcake. The name of the new fossil monkey is <em>Parvimico materdei</em>, which means “tiny monkey from the Mother of God River,” which describes the monkey and the area of Peru in which it was found. Parvimico was probably a bit larger than the pygmy marmoset—so think maybe one of those giant cupcakes with all the frosting.</p> <p>They’ve figured all that out from one tooth?</p> <p>Yep. “What can you say about this animal?” asks lead author Richard Kay, professor of evolutionary anthropology. “Well, actually a little bit about its size, because teeth are a good indicator of that.” Hence its comparison to the pygmy marmoset, though the two are not closely related. “And a little bit about its diet, because [teeth are] the business end of what you’re eating.” In this case, given the shape of the bumps and ridges on that tooth, probably fruits, insects, and saps.</p> <p>Little <em>Parvimico materdei</em> is a big deal because it adds a little drop of information into an enormous void in the fossil record. “Although we’ve been documenting the biodiversity of vertebrates in the tropics today,” Kay says, “we just don’t have very much in the way of fossils to look at the biodiversity in deeper time.” South American monkeys appear to have arrived from Africa by raft around 30 to 40 million years ago. (Yes, raft; probably on big floating piles of organic detritus, possibly large enough to have supported trees.)</p> <p>There are primate fossils—again, usually nothing more than a tooth or two—from around 30 million years ago, and then some more from around 13 or 14 million years ago. That’s a gap of close to 20 million years, which is a lot of empty space. “Our fossil falls into that gap at about 17, 18 million years ago,” Kay says. Which gives a glimpse of how New World monkeys were evolving, filling ecological niches over time.</p> <p>One reason for that hole in the fossil record is the difficulty of getting to where the fossils are. The problem is the Amazon basin is flat and has been for some time, so the strata from tens of millions of years ago, where fossils would be, are deep in the ground. That has meant a lot of looking for fossils in dryer, more mountainous areas where it’s easy to look for them, rather than where they might more likely be: “It’s like the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost,” Kay says. “You go where there are fossils, and you hope for the best.”</p> <p>Fortunately, geological maps, often made during the search for fossil fuels, show where, as plates have collided, that Amazonian plain has bunched up like a rug, creating folds of mountains, bringing some of those old strata closer to the surface. “Then look for a place where there’s one of those folds, flattened down by erosion, with a river cutting right through the middle of it,” Kay says. That’s what they found along the Rio Alto Madre de Dios in southeastern Peru, and they started looking for fossils.</p> <p>Don’t think people with whisk brooms and little hammers; not when you’re looking for tiny fragments and teeth among the clay strata of the jungly Amazon. “You grab a bunch of rock from your outcrop and you bring it back to a sandbar, and you put it in detergent with water, and the clay breaks down,” Kay says. “You scoop that stuff into screens and you wash it in the river. Then you’ve got your screen-washed concentrate.” That reduces what you’ve got by about 90 percent.</p> <p>“Then you handpick it, looking for fossils.” Not a quick job. “To find that tooth,” Kay says, “we had to go through a ton of sediment. It’s frustrating, because you could spend a whole season, and you wouldn’t find anything.” And even if you do, “you might not know you’ve recovered it until a couple years later when you finally get through picking the screen wash.”</p> <p>So <em>Parvimico materdei</em> was a win, and Kay is hopeful for more. After another summer of digging, “we just shipped more than 300 kilograms of washed sediment” to the paleontology lab of his collaborator at Universidad Nacional de Piura, Jean-Noel Martinez. Kay says Martinez has good students.</p> <p>Good thing. <em>Parvimico</em> is a tiny monkey, Kay says, “but boy, that’s a big job.”</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2019-11-19T13:45:45-05:00">Tuesday, November 19, 2019</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/fossiltooth.jpg" width="2717" height="1395" alt="Image of upper molar of the micromammal" title="The upper molar of the micrommal" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/evolutionary-anthropology" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Evolutionary Anthropology</a></li></ul></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/scott-huler" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Scott Huler</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/issues/fall-2019" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2019</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, 19 Nov 2019 19:02:28 +0000 Adrienne Martin 18507919 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/duke-researchers-find-tiny-fossil-and-aid-big-knowledge-gap#comments From the president: Toward Duke's Second Century https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/president-toward-dukes-second-century <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 century ago, in the fall of 1919, America’s colleges and universities were on the cusp of their first great expansion. Prior to the First World War, fewer than 50,000 bachelor’s degrees and 1,000 doctorates were awarded annually in the U.S.; by 1930, those numbers would more than double. In 1919, the first postdoctoral fellowships in the sciences were established by the National Research Council with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation; these new programs would revolutionize research. The 1920s would also see the consolidation of the modern research university model, laying the groundwork for the even more explosive expansion of advanced research and education following the Second World War.</p> <p>Few people would have imagined then, as American universities began their rise to global prominence over the following hundred years, that Duke would emerge among its leaders. Indeed, in that fall of 1919, Duke as we know it today did not even exist. What is now Duke’s West Campus was rolling, open farmland surrounded by forest, and East Campus was Trinity College. With just 664 students and sixty-seven full-time faculty members, Trinity had been for several years teetering on the edge of financial ruin, and President William Preston Few was still working to stabilize the college’s budget. The pace of inflation, nearly 60 percent over just three years, had placed enormous pressures on faculty salaries.</p> <p>President Few knew that without new resources, he risked losing what had become, thanks to generations of hard work, “a great college of arts and sciences.” It was for that reason he turned for help to James B. Duke, the youngest and wealthiest member of the Duke family, whose brother, Benjamin, had diligently nursed Trinity College through its developmental years and whose father, Washington, had helped move it from nearby Randolph County to Durham.</p> <p>Over the next five years, through countless discussions, with imagination and planning, the attempt to rescue Trinity College evolved into a bold plan to transform it—and with it, the region. James B. Duke’s 1924 Indenture of Trust simultaneously launched both The Duke Endowment, which would help develop the Carolinas by investing in higher education, health care, the rural church, and child welfare; and Duke University, which would assemble around Trinity College an enviable collection of graduate and professional schools.</p> <p>In the nine ensuing decades, our ambitious university undertook bold initiatives to establish a world-renowned academic medical center and be among the first interdisciplinary schools dedicated to public policy and the environment. Although regrettably slow to admit African-American students, after doing so in the 1960s, Duke redoubled its efforts to make the university an ever more inclusive academic community.</p> <p>In the 1970s and 1980s, the strategic recruitment of leading scholars in the humanities and social sciences—sparked by Terry Sanford and advanced by his successor, Keith Brodie—elevated Duke into a nationally recognized center of excellence in areas including literature, cultural studies, and political science. Investments in local partnerships, beginning in the 1990s under the leadership of President Nan Keohane and extended by President Richard Brodhead, contributed to a resurgent and increasingly vibrant Durham. The upshot is that Duke students, faculty, and staff today do their pathbreaking work at a university that has ranked among the top ten in America for the past several decades and is widely regarded as among the world’s finest.</p> <p>The decisions made by James B. Duke, William Preston Few, and their colleagues in the five years between 1919 and 1924 enabled everything that has come since.</p> <p>Notwithstanding our remarkable century of success in higher education, both as a nation and as a university, we face today a confluence of powerful currents—technological, cultural, and economic—that will again require creative and thoughtful decisions and actions, many of which are likely to have far-reaching consequences. Digital technologies have thoroughly reshaped contemporary life, spawning entirely new social practices, consumer markets, and companies, even as they have induced destabilizing tremors in many industries. Markets for labor, consumption, and capital are now thoroughly global in character, enabled by unprecedented mobility and interconnectivity, producing rapid social change and transforming the workplace.</p> <p>We face generational changes as well, with students arriving on campuses in some ways better prepared than ever for research and higher learning but also demonstrating unprecedented levels of anxiety and demanding more extensive support services year over year. There are also, of course, deepening economic pressures. The delicate financial fabric of cross-subsidies that so successfully supported research universities since World War II is fraying. Global competition for the finest talent is ever more costly, even as the public’s tolerance of increases in tuition and the government’s willingness to subsidize research have ebbed. Perhaps ironically, at the very moment when long-coming academic breakthroughs in so many fields stand to improve our lives in dramatic ways, public support of higher education, the arts, and basic research has been trending downward.</p> <p>Taken together, these trends suggest that the models that brought American higher education and Duke so much success over the past hundred years are unlikely to carry us through the next. We again find ourselves on the cusp of transformation potentially as profound as that which awaited our Trinity College forebears in 1919. In five short years, we will enter the university’s second century, and the decisions we make now will determine the course of the coming decades.</p> <p>I invite all of us—faculty, students, staff, alumni, and friends of the university—to think together about our turn to the future, about how we can remain true to the Duke we have always been while charting our course toward the Duke we are destined to become. Let’s consider the ways Duke can not only ensure its future, but help define the new twenty-first-century model of the research university. As we do so, I suggest five areas of focus.</p> <p><strong>A FOCUS ON </strong></p> <p><em>Empowering our people </em></p> <p>Duke has only ever been as great as the people who study, research, work, and visit our campus. Our campus is extraordinary, but while our physical infrastructure may garner the attention, it’s our human infrastructure that demonstrates our true worth: two Nobel laureates on the faculty, forty-nine Rhodes Scholars, tens of thousands of inspiring and committed staff members, and the world’s most talented teachers and researchers. Duke’s success in its second century—as in its first—will rely on recruiting and supporting an increasingly diverse and truly exceptional community of scholars who will grapple successfully with the world’s most pressing challenges.</p> <p>If we want to be the university that discovers a cure for cancer, defines the ethics of machine learning, or develops materials that underpin new technologies, we’ll need to attract the very best minds and give them the resources to execute. This will require redoubling our efforts to build endowments to support faculty chairs and provide improved financial aid for our students.</p> <p>A critical first step is our new initiative in science and technology, a collaborative effort uniting Duke Health, Trinity College, the Pratt School, and the Nicholas School in building faculty excellence in select areas where Duke can be distinctively impactful: artificial intelligence and health, the creation of new materials, and cultivating resilience to advance human health and the environment. The great university of the next century will put people first, and Duke can show the way.</p> <p><strong>A FOCUS ON </strong></p> <p><em>Transformative teaching </em></p> <p>Solutions to the complex problems of the next century are unlikely to be uncovered through narrow disciplinary logics. Universities are only now beginning to realize the promise of new instructional technologies, the power of interdisciplinary, team-based and problem-focused teaching, and ways to leverage faculty research in the curriculum. We have much more exciting work to do on these fronts, but Duke is already leading the pack.</p> <p>Bass Connections, our first-in-class interdisciplinary research initiative, pairs undergraduate and graduate students with distinguished faculty to collaborate on solving pressing problems: from curbing predatory lending to tracking ocean health. Our Data Plus initiative assembles teams of faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students to tackle data-analytic problems posed by partner organizations. The Pratt School has launched dynamic new first-year student design laboratories and is working actively with Trinity College to reformulate our offerings in computing. With the opening of the Rubenstein Arts Center, we are infusing the arts and creativity across the curriculum.</p> <p>As always, we remain committed to a liberal-arts education—classically defined as a grounding in those skills necessary for a free individual active in civic life—and we are perhaps better poised than any of our peer institutions to successfully redefine the liberal arts for the twenty-first century.</p> <p><strong>A FOCUS ON </strong></p> <p><em>Building community </em></p> <p>At a time when social divisions seem to be widening around the globe, when the social fabric is wearing thin and tearing across our nation, our future success will hinge on our ability to summon a whole greater than the sum of our parts—our ability to cultivate a strong, healthy, inclusive, and respectful community of learners and doers. To that end, we are engaged in rethinking our residential living and learning model, focusing on giving our students the opportunity to explore a wide range of ideas and develop healthy lifestyles throughout their time on campus. We’re incorporating vibrant arts performances into university life and helping to put Durham on the international cultural map. We’re offering students the resources and support they need to truly thrive here, including a comprehensive wellness and student-health program and the finest athletics and recreation program in the country.</p> <p>And most important, we’re seeking more opportunities for deeper and more meaningful engagement between students and faculty. Duke Conversations, for instance, is a student-led program that invites professors to host small groups of undergraduates for dinner in their homes.</p> <p>We also have to seek ways of making a Duke education more relevant to the challenges of the world outside our gates. DukeEngage, our immersive service program, this past summer celebrated its twelth anniversary by reaching 1.6 million hours spent by students in service to communities in eighty-one countries on six continents. The great university of the next century will recognize that without robust community, our individual talents will never be fully realized.</p> <p><strong>A FOCUS ON </strong></p> <p><em>Strong partnerships </em></p> <p>Public support of higher education is unlikely to rebound unless institutions like Duke demonstrate our commitment to our surrounding communities and our role in improving the quality of life for our regions.</p> <p>It’s the right thing to do: Duke wouldn’t be Duke without Durham, and Durham wouldn’t be Durham without Duke.</p> <p>If you were to look at a map of our city, you would see that has never been more true. From the American Tobacco Campus to the Innovation District to the East Durham Children’s Initiative, we have partnered in developing new community resources and amenities, working closely alongside local elected officials and commercial partners to breathe new life into Durham. Among the best examples is the Chesterfield Building, which until last year was a long-abandoned and dilapidated cigarette factory downtown. In partnership with Wexford, a nationally recognized developer, we’ve turned it into a top-of-the-line facility for biomedical and clinical research, which is already occupied by NC BioLabs, Durham Tech, Duke Engineering, and numerous startups. Think of it: A factory that once produced cigarettes could now produce a cure for cancer.</p> <p>Opportunities for these sorts of partnerships will abound in our second century. We should continue to seek them out, while at the same time recognizing we must prioritize the needs of our neighbors, particularly those from marginalized and low-income communities. Duke has a responsibility to use our voice in Durham not merely for development, but also to support the well-being and health of fellow residents of the city we are proud to call home. We are actively investing in public education, nutrition and maternal health, economic empowerment and affordable housing, efforts that are designed to ensure that the benefits of Durham’s growth reach all of its residents. The great university of the next century will be viewed as a critical partner in improving public well-being through creative and cooperative problem-solving.</p> <p><strong>A FOCUS ON</strong></p> <p><em>Lifelong engagement</em></p> <p>Duke’s greatest strength and the living, breathing embodiment of our educational success is our alumni community—a university family now hundreds of thousands strong, making innumerable differences in lives around the globe. The great university of the twenty-first century will recognize that the rapid pace of technological, cultural, and economic change not only demands a broad educational foundation in the liberal arts and sciences; it also requires a capacity for continual educational and professional development—the capacity for creative adaptation and redefinition over the life span. For Duke, this means creating new and powerful pathways for continuing engagement within and across our global network long after students complete their degree programs. It means emphasizing that our students don’t graduate <em>from</em> Duke, they graduate <em>into</em> a supportive network of faculty, staff, students, and fellow alumni to whom they can turn to for help, mentorship, and fellowship no matter where they are in life.</p> <p>Moving to a new city? We want the Duke network to be the first place you turn. Need to learn a new skill or seek professional assistance? We’d like to make available our faculty expertise—and, in turn, ask you to lend your expertise to our students and researchers. Looking for a new job or planning to hire someone? Explore the options offered by fellow Dukies here on campus and around the world. Should you realize a newfound interest in art history and think you missed that boat while in Durham, we’d like to be there to support your desire to learn, at any age, and especially when nobody is requiring you to take courses.</p> <p>The great university of the next century will grasp that alumni, once activated and engaged in these ways, can extend by orders of magnitude the intellectual and professional capacities—not to say the collective wisdom—of the enterprise. Imagine if our global network functioned as something like our eleventh school: a Duke without walls, extended over space and time, investing continuously in developing ourselves and each other to reach our full potential, to advance humankind.</p> <p>So, as we think together of where we want to take Duke in the next century, I propose that our focus should begin and end with our people, and center on our community.</p> <p>One hundred years ago, William Preston Few and his colleagues began a journey of discovery that traversed from insecurity and anxiety over the future to embracing that future, as President Terry Sanford put it, with “outrageous ambitions.” They, and we, have since made incredible strides in realizing those ambitions. Today, as we reflect on the travails and wonders of the past century, we turn to ponder the travails and wonders of the next.</p> <p>I am excited by the opportunities that Duke’s second century will bring us and look forward to working with all of you to deliver on our institution’s tremendous promise. Thank you for supporting the Duke we have always been and the Duke we are destined to become.</p> <p><em>Vincent Price was formally installed as the tenth president of Duke University, and the fifteenth president of the institution, in October 2017. You may find more information about his strategic framework for advancing the university at <a href="https://president.duke.edu/duke-will/">https://president.duke.edu/duke-will/</a></em></p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2019-11-19T11:30:15-05:00">Tuesday, November 19, 2019</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/BRODHEADCENTER.jpg" width="2850" height="1941" alt="Image of the Brodhead Center " title="The West Union became the Brodhead Center" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/alumni" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Alumni</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/forever-learning" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Forever Learning</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/university-affairs-leadership" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">University affairs (Leadership)</a></li></ul></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/vincent-e-price" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vincent E. Price</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/issues/fall-2019" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2019</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-portrait field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Portrait:&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-portraits/PRICE.jpg" width="2400" height="3000" alt="Image of Vincent E. Price, Duke president" title="President Vincent E. Price" /></figure></div></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, 19 Nov 2019 16:42:44 +0000 Adrienne Martin 18507918 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/president-toward-dukes-second-century#comments Letters and Comments to the Editor https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/letters-and-comments-editor <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>I was moved by the profile piece on Sandy Darity [“<a href="https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/sandy-darity-has-some-thoughts-about-inequality">Sandy Darity Has Some Thoughts About Inequality,</a>” Spring 2019]. First, congratulations to the magazine’s editors for the courage to take on the topic of racism as a cover story, not shying from its reality, and in fact, educating readers about the evidence for arguments about what some would call “radical” solutions to address our horrific national scourge. The article rightfully points out that Darity’s ideas and solutions aren’t so much radical as they are sensible, and they have antecedents in other national policies that have addressed injustice against specific populations in the past.</p> <p>Second, it just needs to be said that Darity is a most worthy holder of the Samuel DuBois Cook professorship. Professor Cook, my most influential teacher at Duke and a model of wisdom, grace, and character for the entire university community and beyond, was Martin Luther King Jr.’s deep personal friend and intellectual soulmate. He was also a fierce advocate for the “beloved community” about which King regularly preached—a society based on justice, equal opportunity, and love of one’s fellow human beings. Professor Cook could not have envisioned a more bold, scholarly, and visionary person to honor his name and life’s work than Sandy Darity.</p> <p><em>Andy Burness ’74/Chevy Chase, Maryland </em></p> <p><strong>Who will pay? </strong></p> <p>The “Inequality” article amply covered Sandy Darity’s plans for reparations and a guaranteed job/income, but there was little discussion of how to fund his wish list. With the federal government currently running a deficit nearing a trillion dollars annually, due largely to ever-increasing “entitlement” payments, the reparations to blacks and guaranteed jobs that Darity seeks are probably going to have to come from another source. How about, instead, if the top twenty-five or so national universities agreed to admit only African-American students for the next ten years or so, with all expenses paid? That would amount to reparations of a sort, likely job offers upon graduation, and would help to level the playing field academically for the foreseeable future.</p> <p>There would be an added benefit: This program would help reduce the large endowments, largely donated by privileged old white men, which burden the consciences of so many college faculty, administrators, and students. In fact, any remaining endowments at the end of the period could be contributed to a fund that would be disbursed equally to all descendants of slaves who did not participate in the college program.</p> <p>Perhaps Duke could lead the charge to go all in on Darity’s mission!</p> <p><em>Joe Wise ’66/Timnath, Colorado</em></p> <p><strong>Handouts don’t help </strong></p> <p>Nathan Glazer assisted L.B.J. in constructing the Great Society, a social program (1965) intended to eradicate poverty in America. Glazer, Charles Murray, and Daniel Moynihan soon saw the adverse effects of prolonged charity on black Americans, here described by Jason Riley: “Disadvantaged groups have been hit hardest by the disintegration of middle-class mores... and the expansion of the welfare state... the number of single parents grew astronomically, producing children more prone to academic failure, addiction, idleness, and crime.”</p> <p>Now comes Professor Darity proposing an Even Greater Society to close the much-advertised income gap. Baby bonds, guaranteed basic income, and a job for everyone are promised. Reparations for slavery, bound to further divide America’s races, seem to be the whipped cream on the cake. The enormous cost of such largesse is ignored, as are the adverse effects of more charity on family and work ethic. Please, professor, rethink your program, and try to see that more handouts will benefit mainly vote-buying politicians, and will further weaken black Americans, who can achieve parity with whites only by their own efforts. Riley’s book, Please Stop Helping Us, says it best.</p> <p><em>Richard Merlo M.D. ’61/Elkin, North Carolina </em></p> <p><strong>Not critical enough</strong></p> <p>A comparison of the Wikipedia articles for Sandy Darity and Thomas Sowell is sufficient to show just how blinkered was your worshipful article on Darity. Absent from your article was critical thinking about human nature, the historical influence on Europe and America of various world views such as that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the universality (not rightness) of slavery in history, and Darity’s lack of concern about current slavery in the world (which is widespread, as Sowell observes), Darity’s questionable Marxist and current black American victimhood assumptions, his arbitrary rejection of Adam Smith (and any other economic writings older than a few decades—except Marx’s), and his ignoring of supply-side economics and the destructive impact of our welfare system and abortion-on-demand on the inner-city black family.</p> <p><em>Howard Killion Ph.D. ’72/Oceanside, California </em></p> <p><strong>Worthy praise </strong></p> <p>Just a quick note to tell you how much I enjoyed and admired Lucas Hubbard’s superbly written article about Sandy Darity. Sandy’s a Duke (and American) treasure, and Hubbard did a great job of telling us why in an engaging and insightful piece. Sentences like the following are a joy to read: “It’s occupied his thoughts and research for at least a decade. And so, when pushed to justify its merits, Darity speaks with the terse, deliberate nature of a man on the phone with tech support, who knows how badly his computer is broken and is tired of hearing that he try unplugging it.”</p> <p><em>Osha Gray Davidson/Durham </em></p> <p><strong>More winning, please</strong></p> <p>I have been a Duke basketball fan since graduating in 1969 and have been disappointed that the recent freshman-led teams, other than in 2015, have failed to live up to expectations [“<a href="https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/blue-devil-success-makes-winning-seem-inevitable">Just Can’t Win for Losing,” Spring 2019</a>]. It is impressive to have the top-rated recruiting class for the past few years, but what has that accomplished? The last four national championship teams have been dominated not by freshmen, but by players who are sophomores and above, many of whom were not highly rated recruits. They were well-coached and developed into strong teams, which is what wins championships.</p> <p>Maybe Coach K should change his approach and recruit good high-school players who will stay around for a few years, coach them well as we know he can, and then maybe that next championship will become a reality. Coach Calipari at Kentucky has the same problem, but I am not going to encourage him to change!</p> <p><em>Mark J. Reasor ’69/Morgantown, West Virginia </em></p> <p><strong>We got it wrong</strong></p> <p>As always, I enjoyed my copy of <em>Duke Magazine</em>. But please be clear—it was the 1977-78 men’s basketball team, led by Spanarkel and Gminski, that went to the NCAA Final Four, defeating Notre Dame in the semis and losing to Kentucky in the final. Not the 1978-79 team.</p> <p>A senior in 1978, I was headed for medical school at UNC. I had decided to cease being the family outcast and simplify things by becoming a Tar Heel fan. But the Mad March victories that spring were so riveting, my blood turned True Blue. That was the beginning of it for me, and for the program.</p> <p><em>Betsy Coward Phillips ’78/Asheville, North Carolina </em></p> <p><strong>Even the losses are exciting </strong></p> <p>Those of us who attended Duke in the early 1960s can relate to the article “Just Can’t Win for Losing.” I entered Duke in the fall of 1961 as a fan of Duke football. The basketball team was a pleasant surprise. I had heard of Art Heyman being Vic Bubas’ first big recruit, but I did not know much about the rest of the team. My first year, Jeff Mullins joined the team after being ineligible to play the previous year as a freshman, but Duke lost in the ACC tournament.</p> <p>The next year expectations were increased and then realized during the regular season with Duke losing only two games. At that time, the ACC tournament champion was directly placed in the regional tournament, which Duke easily won. It was then on to the Final Four, where Duke proceeded to lose its first game, to Loyola of Chicago, in an upset. The following year, Duke again tore through the regular season and the ACC Tournament and the NCAA regional tournament, losing only four games. Everyone thought that the championship would be decided in the firstround game. Duke, however, turned the tables on Michigan and moved on to play UCLA in John Wooden’s first appearance in the tournament. UCLA did not have a player over six foot, five inches and Duke was made the favorite. However, Duke could not contain Walt Hazzard and the rest of the team, Letters&amp;Comments... continued and we were again disappointed.</p> <p>In 1965, Duke lost to N.C. State in the championship game of the ACC Tournament and was denied a trip to the NCAA tournament, despite winning the ACC regular season. All Duke fans looked forward to the 1965-66 season; Bob Verga had the prettiest jump shot I have ever seen. ... Duke again tore through the regular season, the ACC tournament, and the NCAA regional tournament. The only close game was in the ACC tournament, when Dean Smith unveiled his four-corners “offense,” and Duke won 21 to 20. Duke’s opening game in the NCAA tournament was against Adolf Rupp’s Kentucky Wildcats. Unfortunately, Bob Verga got sick after the regional game and played very little. Partly as a result, Kentucky won and again disappointed the Duke fans. The next night Kentucky, an all-white team like Duke, lost to Texas Western, an all-black team, in the championship game.</p> <p>For over ten years, that was the high point for Duke basketball until Bill Foster led the team back to the NCAA championship game and again lost to Kentucky. Over the years it has certainly been exciting to be a Duke fan.</p> <p><em>Marlin M. Volz Jr. ’65, J.D. ’68/Bettendorf, Iowa </em></p> <p><strong>The pain goes even deeper </strong></p> <p>Having just seen in person Duke’s last loss, to Michigan State, in the Elite Eight, this year, I share Shane Ryan’s agony of defeat feelings.</p> <p>However, he did not go back far enough in his discussion of Duke basketball. Duke went to the Final Four under Vic Bubas in 1963, 1964, and 1966. I watched the televised loses as an undergraduate in ’63 and ’64, and attended the ’66 tournament in College Park after graduating. It was glorious when we finally, finally won it all.</p> <p>As disappointing as it is to lose, having Duke to cheer for almost every year for the last oh-so-many years has given me much pleasure. And my family knows to stay out of my way whenever a Duke game is on.</p> <p><em>Elizabeth Morris Schwartz ’64/Laurel, Maryland</em></p> <p><strong>Maybe a little more detail?</strong></p> <p>I appreciate the value of brevity on <a href="https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/drtl-didnt-readtoo-long-1">The Quad’s DR/TL </a>page, but the Spring 2019 issue squib about Duke paying $112.5 million to the federal government “to settle a lawsuit over faked research data” was misleadingly brief. I was horrified to think that my alma mater was involved in a UNC-level scandal, but as I understood it after a little Googling, the fraud was in the failure by those in the know to report that one individual used fraudulent data to obtain grants from the NIH, the EPA, and other agencies. That’s bad, of course, but my impression on reading the DR/TL report was that knowingly bad research data had been submitted with who-knows-what catastrophic consequences.</p> <p>I think it would have been better to omit that entry altogether and “come clean” in some detail elsewhere.</p> <p><em>Charles Philip (Phil) Clutts ’61/Harrisburg, North Carolina </em></p> <p><strong>Classics rock! </strong></p> <p>Thank you for the recent timely article on classical studies [<a href="https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/classical-studies-shows-its-staying-power">“Timely and Timeless,” Spring 2019</a>]. When I was an undergraduate, I was pleased to be with Professor Robert Rodgers for Latin 51-52. We met one day on a sidewalk of East Campus. He smiled as much as he ever did and said, “Mike, I was pleased to report to the dean recently that the Latin department has doubled its number of majors. Last year we had one; this year we have two.”</p> <p><em>Michael Malone ’59, Ph.D. ’70</em></p> <p><strong>The other side of the story</strong></p> <p><em>Duke Magazine</em>’s Spring edition severely mischaracterized Duke’s role in the termination of Durham’s light-rail project [Update, Spring 2019]. The truth is that the Duke administration under President Price broke faith with the people of Durham and with Duke’s history of public service.</p> <p>As a Duke alum, former mayor of Durham, and volunteer advocate for this critically needed project, I can testify that Duke’s last-minute failure to support the project was the key reason for the project’s termination.</p> <p>In spite of the administration’s written support for the project in 2015 and the fact that Duke expressed no concerns about it during federal hearings in 2016, the incoming Price administration subsequently failed to work in good faith with Durham’s leaders to address concerns and move the project forward.</p> <p>North Carolina’s governor backed the light-rail project. So did both U.S. senators and our members of Congress. For the last two years, Durham’s mayor made clear to President Price that this was the community’s number-one civic priority. Light rail was a critical component of the area’s plan to deal with exploding highway congestion and provide affordable, reliable, sustainable transportation to Durham residents. Importantly, two-thirds of Durham Housing Authority residents lived within half a mile of one of the planned rail stations.</p> <p>Light rail would have provided convenient access for workers, customers, patients, and staff to three of the region’s largest employers, including Duke and Duke Hospital. It would have connected to a planned commuter rail line between Durham, the Research Triangle Park, and Raleigh, with a shuttle to the airport. Perhaps most important, it would have been a concrete action to reduce Durham and Duke’s carbon pollution and fight global climate change.</p> <p>Duke’s last voiced objections centered on potential vibration and electro-magnetic interference that the university said might impact Duke Hospital’s operation. In response, the agency managing the project had agreed to mitigate EMI at no expense to Duke for the life of the project and to abide by the same vibration standards that Duke requires of other major construction projects anywhere near the hospital. Still the Price administration refused its support.</p> <p><em>Duke Magazine</em> may obfuscate Duke’s responsibility, but <em>The News &amp; Observer</em> noted that: “Many of the nation’s leading medical centers are located in intense urban areas such as Chicago, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. These hospitals function safely and well despite rumbling trains and subways and major construction projects—sometimes their own—nearby. This isn’t about patient safety. It’s about a rich private university that doesn’t want its harvest of healthcare dollars inconvenienced by a major improvement in the region’s infrastructure.”</p> <p>Past Duke presidents Keohane, Brodie, and Brodhead did much to build a mutually supportive partnership between Duke and the Durham community. Unfortunately, the damage from Price’s decision and the bad faith shown will visibly linger for years, from increased traffic congestion to Duke’s failure to take a significant step against climate warming. As an active participant in civic affairs, I regret to report that this administration has squandered much of Duke’s credibility as a true and trustworthy partner for Durham.</p> <p><em>Wib Gulley ’70/Durham </em></p> <p><strong>It’s very special</strong></p> <p>I am thoroughly enjoying my hard copy version of “The Future” [Special Issue 2019]. I am only partway through it and am looking forward to reading the additional essays in the digital version. The profiles spaced throughout are a wonderful addition as well. Congratulations on assembling such an insightful and thought-provoking collection!</p> <p><em>Kris Klein ’82/San Rafael, California </em></p> <p><strong>Undeserving honor </strong></p> <p>You chose to feature Andrew McCabe [“<a href="https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/prediction-takes-analysis-and-faith">The Discipline of Analysis, The Necessity of Faith</a>”]? A man discredited by the FBI, fired for his lies? His future may well include some jail time. There are so many more honorable alumni you might have selected.</p> <p><em>Jim Liccardo ’67/Pawleys Island, South Carolina</em></p> <p><strong>A win for free speech? </strong></p> <p>It was with a degree of sadness that I read the article in the Special Issue written by Andrew McCabe. Yes, Duke owes its graduates a platform; the tragedy is that time is unlikely to burnish his reputation with the esteemed glow that characterizes Coach Krzyzewski’s reputation. McCabe’s own words—the frequency with which he uses the pronoun I—proves that the person most impacted by his image of reality, the person most deceived by his “faith,” most tarnished by his belief in America will be none other than himself.</p> <p>Given the now-public and increasingly large legal record—including official e-mails sent by McCabe while employed by the FBI—McCabe imagines a nation I do not wish to live in. His words are not benign: “My former colleagues might be disappointed with my forsaking the discipline of analysis for optimism and faith in the American spirit.” His statement is a confession that he knowingly and willfully relinquished objectivity and tilted the scales of justice to satisfy his subjective opinion of a duly-elected politician and his (McCabe’s) subsequent willingness to negate the will of the very public that he claims to champion by removing, without due process, a legally elected president that he doesn’t like.</p> <p>If you recall, in 1860, the same Electoral College system that put presidents Trump and Clinton in office also put President Abraham Lincoln in the White House despite winning only 40 percent of the popular vote. That small portion of the American electorate opposed slavery and willfully triggered the Civil War in defiance of the 1857 Supreme Court majority decision (and appalling opinion) in the <em>Sanford v. Dred Scott </em>case. Mr. McCabe’s disdain, not only for Trump but by extension the Constitution, the Electoral College, and the American voter, led him to contribute mightily to an atmosphere where “tougher challenges and darker times” slipped the blindfold off Lady Justice with the expectation that her eyes would see the world through his eyes, and more ominously, through the eyes of any one person with the power to silence opposing voices—you know, that free speech bugaboo that yanked President Clinton from the jaws of shame. Who cared what he did in private, certainly not the American electorate.</p> <p>As many moderate Democrats know too well—including many of the people McCabe purports to protect—subjective justice is the foundation of tyranny. As he suggested, “This analysis paints a dark picture of our future, one in which division and politics tear the country into warring tribes, unable to unite around issues necessary to protect our nation and advance the lives of all Americans,” and he is right. Ironically, he failed to see the spirits of men and women rising ghost-like from the Pandora’s box that he opened, politicians yet to be elected who will author the very fate he fears: a tenuous and fearful nation where justice is no longer blindfolded.</p> <p>In the end, McCabe’s argument clarifies one point. He cares deeply about one person: himself. Not surprisingly, he failed to point out that free speech has become an endangered species in the United States. The issue has bipartisan defenders including Whoopi Goldberg, who recently rose in strong vocal defense of free speech and privacy within the voting booth. By printing McCabe’s article, you proved that free speech is not endangered in <em>Duke Magazine</em>. Kudos!</p> <p><em>Karen Humeniuk, P ’07/Greenville, South Carolina</em></p> <p><strong>Let’s be more inclusive</strong></p> <p>I just enjoyed reading the latest issue of <em>Duke Magazine </em>over a cup of coffee. I appreciated the insight and creativity of the contributors in thinking about the future. I am, however, truly disappointed that women were not included in the roster of faculty contributors. It’s very much an artifact of the past to exclude—even unintentionally—women from our conversations. And we have incredible women on our faculty here at Duke. Their omission was striking, especially given the theme of the issue.</p> <p><em>Joyce Gordon/Director, Jewish Life at Duke </em></p> <p><strong>Not the Marxism he knows</strong></p> <p>I just read “<a href="https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/seeing-beyond-now">Seeing Beyond the Now</a>” by Sydney Roberts of the Class of 2019. Given the hysterically retro and historically ignorant analysis of economics that she parrots, I assume she is a member of the Class of 1919. Certainly no one in 2019 could mindlessly recite Marxist dogma with no recognition of Marxism’s disastrous century of death, destruction, failure, and evil. Placing this foolish propaganda piece about the failed Marxist belief system in “The Future Issue” is the height of irony. Thanks for the laugh.</p> <p><em>Daniel Blonsky ’87/South Miami, Florida </em></p> <p><strong>CORRECTION:</strong> In the Spring 2019 issue, a caption accompanying “<a href="https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/little-help-civilians">A little help from civilians</a>,” about an interdisciplinary course that connects students and alumni with military groups to help solve problems, included a misspelling of a student participant’s name. Her name is Akanksha Ray.</p> <p><strong>SEND LETTERS TO:</strong> Box 90572, Durham, N.C. 27708 or e-mail dukemag@duke.edu. Please limit letters to 300 words and include your full name, address, and class year or Duke affiliation. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity. Owing to space constraints, we are unable to print all letters received. Published letters represent the range of responses received. For additional letters: www.dukemagazine.duke.edu.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2019-11-19T10:15:00-05:00">Tuesday, November 19, 2019</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/writing-1209121_1920.jpg" width="1920" height="1441" alt="Letter writing" title="Letter writing" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/alumni" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Alumni</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/campus-news" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Campus News</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/opinion" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Opinion</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/university-affairs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">University affairs</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/university-affairs-campus-buildings-and-grounds" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">University affairs (Campus buildings and grounds)</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/university-affairs-leadership" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">University affairs (Leadership)</a></li></ul></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/our-readers" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Our readers</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/issues/fall-2019" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fall 2019</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">Your thoughts about your magazine</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Tue, 19 Nov 2019 15:58:23 +0000 Adrienne Martin 18507916 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/letters-and-comments-editor#comments