✔✔ FC here. Be sure to scroll down to the next post for the list of e-mail address for Duke Trustees. Make yourself heard on the folly of Kunshan!!
Assume for a moment you are a city official in Kunshan, China, and have had contact with top representatives of Duke University.
Judging by the faces you have met, you would rightfully conclude that you were dealing with an all-white, all-male school in America.
On top of this, Duke is insisting that it and it alone create the academic side of the new university. You see, white males know more than the Chinese know about what they need to know.
The three new Trustees put in place by the Imperial Brodhead Administration are the latest evidence. White. Male. (Brodhead and Company did not even go through the motions of a nominating process or some consultation with the faculty and other stakeholders first.) The three are Peter the Provost; Jim Roberts, who is identified as executive vice provost which apparently means he is in charge of counting the other ten vice provosts; and Thomas Gorrie. We will discuss Gorrie in a moment.
In addition to three new trustees, we have the top officials of the plantation who have visited Kunshan. White. Male. Brodhead. Global Vice President Jones. Fuqua's Dean Blair Sheppard. We believe Mike Schoenfeld, vp for public relations and obfuscation, also went.
Last summer a delegation went to Kunshan. Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment. Bruce Kuniholm, dean of Sanford. David Levi, dean of law. Dr. Michael Merson, director of the Global Health Institute. Steve Nowicki, supreme dean of undergraduate education.
Ah yes, one female. Catherine Gillis, dean of the school of nursing. Nursing is traditionally a female enclave so this is OK.
Check out the Duke Kunshan Planning Guide, some of which the Imperial Brodhead Administration has released to the faculty. Check the most important officials in Durham coordinating with the Kunshan campus:
Senior management, Lange, Jones and Tallman Trask.
Budget and planning: Jim Roberts, Tim Walsh
HR and payroll: Kyle Cavanaugh
Student housing: Larry Moneta
Research administration: Jim Siedow
Development: Bob Shepard (not to be confused with the Fuqua Dean)
The face of Duke. All white. Male.
✔ Of the three new Duke Trustees to serve on the Duke Kunshan Board, Thomas Gorrie is the most curious, because Fact Checker is unable to ascertain why he is so intensely interested in Duke University at all.
A graduate of Rutgers and Ph.D. from Princeton, and post-doc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Gorrie spent 35 years at Johnson and Johnson in New Jersey, retiring as a vice president. (Some information we have indicates he was vice chair of the board. This is not confirmed.)
Duke's official biography states he has been a volunteer at Duke for 15 years. We checked for other Gorries on the list of alumni. No females, so it is not traceable to his wife. And only one male: there is a Jason Gorrie who is a graduate, but his class year does not coincide at all with the service of Thomas Gorrie. Besides, an internet people search reveals Gorrie had one son, Robert.
Almost all of the information available about him indicates he focused on New Jersey. Recently he was made a trustee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Gorrie became a Duke trustee in 2006, the official biography identifying him as a "strong advocate for Duke University." He is on the all-important Executive Committee.
He not only is a University Trustee, but chair of Duke Health's board of trustees.
We have tried to reach Gorrie. J and J has no contact information. There is a listing in Princeton for Gorrie and Associates; we think that is his personal office, but no one ever answers. A Deputy Fact Checker is assigned.
