Christian a cappella chorus at UNC says gay member is singing off key

✔ There seem to be an abundance of collisions at the intersection of Christian Street and Gay Way. The latest is in Chapel Hill, and it has the UNC campus roiled.

Members of an a cappella group called Psalm 100, which identifies itself as Christian, voted unanimously to oust senior Will Thomason, who has been singing with the group since his freshman year.

Blake Templeton, general director of the group, said Thomason was not removed for his sexual orientation now that he has come out, but for his opinions about homosexuality. He said the views clash with the ideology of the Bible, which the organization’s constitution mandates members must uphold.

That's Templeton's interpretation of the Bible, by the way. So far as Thomason's being gay, that's fine with Templeton and the rest of the singers. It's just his opinions.

(A Deputy Fact Checker has been in touch with a Loyal Reader, who says Duke also has a Christian a cappella group, Sapphire, which disallows non-Christians.)

If you think that is confusing, wait until you understand the fine line UNC must walk in responding. Adhering to Supreme Court decisions, UNC lets students associate with whomever they want. However, the university does not allow you to draw your circle based upon who other people are, which is to say race or sex orientation.

It may come down to this: whether UNC student funds will continue to be used to fund this chorus. The singers may be allowed to warble their forked version of Christianity on campus or off, but not with other people's money backing them.

UNC's Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Winston Crisp said. "We are on notice that there is a question as to whether or not a student organization has acted in compliance with the (anti-discrimination) policy or not,” Crisp said. “We take that very seriously and that will be investigated.”

This is very healthy.

Compare this, please, to the response that Duke's Justin Robinette got from the administration a year ago, when leadership of the campus Republicans met at night, changed the by-laws without telling anyone, and ousted Robinette because he was in the process of coming out.

There was -- in addition to ousting the chair -- also a pattern of harassing and discriminatory conduct by the Republican leaders who did this:

Constantly referring to gay people as "Shit on Dicks," a phrase for which this campus is indebted to Carter Boyle.

Continuing with a racist internal memo that grew uglier by the line, beginning with the suggestion blacks could be attracted to the GOP table on the plaza by boom box music.

And winding up with GOP stalwart Rachel Provost approaching Robinette at President Brodhead's Homecoming Dance, and telling her fellow student she saw a hickey on his neck, and wanted to know if it was planted by a male or female.

The pattern for the Duke response was set by President Brodhead, who refused and refused time and time again to see Robinette -- until he was granted five minutes.

The student government, including the judiciary, only considered the issue of group blame: whether the Republicans as a club had discriminated. Answer: no, they had not. Even though the Republicans all walked together like penguins, this was not their club speaking, only individuals.

And Duke declined to pursue the individuals for their gross misconduct. A witness to conduct that would, in our opinion, merit expulsion stepped forward and wrote FC. With permission, we passed that e-mail along to Vice President for Student Life Larry Moneta. He never contacted the witness.

It is one thing to say there is not enough evidence. It is another to disagree with FC on the penalty for this offense. It is quite another to fail to interview a witness. This surely ranks as the low point in L-Mo's career at Duke.

At UNC, the student government was scheduled to meet last evening. Its vice president has taken the lead.

At Duke, the student government waffled and the student judiciary failed. Though the leadership of the GOP club lined up like penguins and voted just as Robinette was coming out, the decision was that the club members acted as individuals, which was OK.

We can only hope for a better outcome at UNC.

Duke people in the news: All American Jon Scheyer, Trustee Gerald Hassell

Duke People in the News. A periodic feature, when stuff warrants it.

✔ NEW DUKE TRUSTEE HASSELL GETS TOP WALL STREET JOB
A new Trustee at Duke, Gerald Hassell '73 is making big news in the world's financial newspapers this morning, having won a joust in the board room of his New York bank. The former chair is out, and Hassell is now boss of one of the world's largest financial institutions.

The institution: Bank of New York Mellon. It has an amazing $26.3 trillion (with a T) in its custody and administration, and another $1.3 trillion (with a T) under management. And you thought the federal debt was big: as of August 3, 2011, the gross debt of the federal government was "only" $14.34 trillion

Hassell thus joins a long line of Dukies at the helm on Wall Street, a rather impressive roster: Bob Steel, former Duke Trustee chair, of Goldman Sachs and the US Treasury. John Mack of Morgan Stanley fame. Alan Schwartz who was boss when Bear Stearns collapsed. Steven D. Black, head of global investment banking at JP Morgan Chase. If you want some more names, this Duke Magazine article from 2009 is rather interesting:

http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/issues/091009/crisis1.html

Back to Hassell. BNY Mellon, as it is known, issued a press release that was unusually blunt, saying Robert Kelly, 57, had "differences in approaches to managing the company.” As Dukies know from recent changes at the university, shake-ups usually result in the loser's being given a convoluted explanation about new directions and challenges. This one is effective immediately. Ka-boom.

The following is from FC last June when Hassell was about to join Duke's Trustees:

Hassell is 59. He started at the Bank of New York (forerunner of the current entity) as a 21 year old management trainee. He rose and rose, to the top job of President of the Bank of NY at age 46. A merger in 2007 resulted in his current position. 2010 salary: $11,179,102. In addition to stock he already owns, he has options -- accumulated since joining Bank of NY -- which according to the FC calculation are worth just north of $300 million.

At the bank, he developed a specialty in financing media, and is on the board of Comcast Corporation, which, in case he is having a hard time making ends meet at his day job, paid a nifty extra $237,905 last year.

An example of how capitalism is supposed to work, he chaired the board of visitors at The Fuqua School of Business at Duke from 2005-11.

Hassell has a long list of other activities: Board of Visitors at the Columbia University Medical Center, and the boards of the New York Philharmonic, the Economic Club of New York, and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. He is vice chair of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York. And is a direct of Comcast Corporation.

Hassell lives in Chappaqua, New York, in a home totally surrounded by old growth trees so we could not get a peak on the Google satellite. This is in the arc of wealthy suburbs north of New York City, in Westchester County and nearby Connecticut, that has given Duke numerous trustees. For example John Mack and Roy Bostock of Library fame, merely to start the list.

We believe Hassel's daughter is Alyssa '08.

End of earlier FC post.


JON SCHEYER

This is a news release. Whenever we use a handout from PR -- we identify it carefully. Unlike some other news outlets, we do not say it is from "Staff."

The release is from Nefesh B'Nefesh, an organization that encourages immigration by Jewish people to Israel from North America and the United Kingdom.

The following story refers to aliyah. Wikipedia: Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael). It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida ("descent").[1

Duke University All-American basketball player Jon Scheyer made aliyah Tuesday on a group flight organized by Nefesh B’Nefesh in cooperation with the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption.

Immediately after stepping off the airplane at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Scheyer was accompanied by Nefesh B’Nefesh staff to the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption office in the airport where he received his Teudat Oleh (immigrant certificate) and officially became a new immigrant.

According to Danny Oberman, executive vice president of Nefesh B’Nefesh, Scheyer will receive his Israeli ID card at the Nefesh B’Nefesh office in Jerusalem on Thursday. After he obtains his ID card, Scheyer will officially become an Israeli citizen.

Brad Ames, a prominent NBA basketball agent, assisted Maccabi Tel Aviv in recruiting the 24-year-old originally from Northbrook, Illinois to play as its shooting guard in the Israeli Super League.

“I am really looking forward to starting my new life in Israel and playing for Maccabi Tel Aviv,” said Scheyer. “Nefesh B’Nefesh has been extremely helpful throughout the whole process and has allowed me to hit the ground running so I can fully concentrate on playing the best basketball I can.”

FC footnote: under rules of the international league that Scheyer will play in, any team can have only four players who are not from its own country. Thus, Scheyer will not consume one of these slots.

That's it. No other interesting Dukies today.

Potti Mess: Vice Chancellor says scandal is "one of biggest... in medical history." Many more papers to be retracted.

Search words Dr. Anil Potti, Duke University
✔✔✔✔✔
✔✔✔✔✔
✔✔✔✔✔ Buried in today's Chronicle story on academic research, there's some real news about Dr. Anil Potti, who thus far has had to retract five articles that he wrote for important medical journals. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

In case you are new to Duke, Potti was the golden boy of Duke Medicine, a cancer researcher who was exceedingly well funded. For years, Duke ignored warnings that Potti's research had holes in it, until last year it all exploded with revelation that he created a Rhodes Scholarship for himself. Subsequently, we learned that more than five years of study at Duke were founded on fantasy, fueled by falsification of data. Potti resigned from Duke late last year and is now ... get this... practicing cancer medicine in South Carolina. There are at least two investigations underway.

OK back to today's development: Dr. Robert Califf, vice chancellor for medical research: “We’re amidst one of the biggest retractions in medical history... (Potti) was a co-author on about 40 papers that had original data that was generated at Duke, and we’re in the process of retracting about a third of those papers, and there are another third... being partially retracted.”

Califf says throughout the rest of Duke Medicine, there are usually zero retractions every year.

Potti wrote many of his papers with Dr. Joseph Nevins, his mentor. And there were other Duke names that recurred on many of the papers. Stay tuned.

At Duke, black medical researchers buck the national trend and land federal grants. Well, not many of them.

✔ Fact Checker here. Good day fellow Dukies!

Under the direction of a vice provost who flies very much under the radar, James Siedow, this university does quite a bit of self-study.

Under the radar? Never before discussed in a Fact Checker report, Siedow, trained in the academic disciplines of botany and biology, popped up as a secondary player in only two Chronicle stories in the past year, with no direct quotes and only 39 words sourced to him.

So what does he study? A few years ago, one page from one tantalizing report was liberated from the usual Allen Building secrecy. The study compared the achievement of racial groups with what had been expected of them. In other words, given the credentials like high school grades, College Board scores and all the other factors that admissions officers looked at, how did white, Asian, African-American and Latino students fare. (We arranged so that the largest group comes first, the smallest last)

Only Asians did marginally better than expected as Duke undergraduates. Whites and Latinos had a little dip, but there was a significant drop-off for black students.

Rather than spawning great concern that Duke was not coming through for them, and not allowing them to realize the potential they had demonstrated, this study frightened administrators into a tighter circle of secrecy.

This is important hot potato stuff, and try as hard as we could, FC and Deputies could obtain no more than one page. Realizing the substance of reports is so secret, FC switched and asked John Burness, now retired as VP for public relations, if we could at least see a list of the title of reports from Siedow's office.

The answer came back within the hour. No dice, this is Duke, this is the Brodhead years.

✔✔ So it was refreshing yesterday to see Siedow as the source of a Duke news release. My goodness, the University was actually telling us about something he studied.

That something is how our black research professors fared when seeking federal grants, specifically from the National Institutes of Health, which distributes a large slice of the available scientific money.

At Duke, the analysis was done by the Office of Research Support, which is one of the divisions found on the rather complex organizational chart of the provost's and vice provost's office.

Press release quote: "African-American faculty had a 33 percent success rate on all federal proposals over $100,000, versus 29 percent for all other faculty. On (grants made through the National Institutes of Health) black and non-black faculty at Duke both had a 29 percent success rate on their proposals."

Now the fine print. Proposals from African-American faculty accounted for just two percent -- correct, 2 percent -- of all the Duke funding proposals sent out in a six year period that was studied.

This press release undoubtedly was occasioned by an article in Science magazine, that found black researchers landing research dollars for a significantly smaller percentage of their proposals than whites. This has set off something of a time-bomb in the academic world.

More press release, this one from the NIH itself:

"Black applicants from 2000-2006 were 10 percentage points less likely than white applicants to be awarded research project grants from the National Institutes of Health, after controlling for factors that influence the likelihood of a grant award, according to an NIH-commissioned study in the journal Science."

As for other ethnic groups: Although Asian applicants also were less likely to receive an award than white applicants, those differences disappeared when the sample was limited to U.S. citizens. Award probability for Hispanic applicants did not differ significantly from white applicants.

The bosses at NIH, including Director Francis Collins, promptly called the findings "disturbing and disheartening, and we are committed to taking action."

Collins: "The strength of the U.S. scientific enterprise depends upon our ability to recruit and retain the brightest minds, regardless of race or ethnicity. This study shows that we still have a long way to go. It is imperative that NIH and its partners in the biomedical research community take decisive steps to identify causes and implement remedies. NIH is already moving forward with a framework for action."

FC is compelled to note that the NIH study covered 40,069 grant proposals. Only 1.5 percent -- 598 -- were from blacks. There were 3.3 percent from Latinos (1,319), 13.5 percent from Asians (5,402), 71 percent from whites, and 11 percent from researchers who either did not disclose or wrote "other."

That there is any racial disparity at all is surprising. An applicant can list race and ethnicity voluntarily when asking for a grant. But all that information is not available to reviewers, although an applicant's name or school which is in the reviewed materials can be suggestive of race or ethnicity.

And back to Vice Provost Siedow for a footnote: as FC wrote, it is refreshing to see some of Duke's institutional research available, but fellow Dukies, don't get used to it.

Thank you for reading and supporting FC!

Salt. Salt. And more salt. Fact Checker examines the sodium content of a meal at the Marketplace

✔✔✔Good day fellow Dukies.

We recently pointed out the excessive salt being used in food sold in the Medical Center's dining rooms for out-patients, the public and staff. Those facilities, as well as Fuqua's Dave Thomas Center, are run by Aramark, the international giant that for many years had a grip on a captive audience of students as well, dishing out just awful gruel and mystery meat.

Our earlier post:
http://dukefactchecker.blogspot.com/2011/08/dining-at-duke-chicken-sandwich-with.html

So -- from the perspective of sodium -- salt -- let's go to the Marketplace (the words are run together at Duke), run with considerable fanfare about healthy living by Bon Appetit.

Salt: remember, please, that healthy people should consume less than 2,300 milligrams a day. And on the website of the Mayo Clinic, there is a recommendation for a 1500 mg a day limit "if you're age 51 or older, or if you are black, or if you have high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease."

So let's do breakfast and dinner in the MarketPlace. Remember, it's all you can eat, but we specify the portions taken. And in terms of calories, you'll be consuming around 2300.

GOOD MORNING:

310 mg Two scrambled eggs
1320 mg Three thin slices of Canadian bacon
600 mg One corn muffin
80 mg One butter
105 mg Glass of 1 pct milk

2415 mg TOTAL for breakfast

GOOD EVENING:

1980 mg Bowl of clam chowder
Unknown Crackers
1450 mg Turkey 5 oz
Unknown Gravy
679 mg Side of mashed potato
Free Veggies
320 mg Pita
150 mg Glass of chocolate milk
480 mg Pecan pie

5059 mg TOTAL for dinner

FURTHERMORE, other options

490 mg Tomato Juice
760 mg Sausage, 3 links
710 mg Kix cereal
1010 mg Soy sauce packet
3249 mg Teriyaki sauce packeet
950 mg Pesto sauce 1/2 cup
1220 mg Chicken sandwich (fried)
670 mg Slice of pepperoni pizza
1230 mg Hamburger with bacon and cheese
830 mg Hot dog
530 mg Potato salad, 1/2 cup
1040 mg Chili with meat 1 cup
1460 mg Pretzel snack, 3 oz

In some respects, the Marketplace is better than Aramark food, on the salt index.
Pepperoni pizza 670 v 935. But is not something to write home about.

FC finds all this unacceptable. Our dining halls, after all, tout themselves: "Our goal is providing a healthy and enjoyable experience, no matter where you dine on Duke’s campus."

There's nothing healthy about a buffet that makes it easy for you to consume four times the recommended salt intake for healthy people.

Thank you for reading FC. Excuse me while I go get a hot dog and potato salad.

Brodhead, administrators waffle on drinking

✔✔✔ Good day, fellow Dukies. Fact Checker here. Probative. Provocative. Pro-Duke!

It's not often -- not often indeed -- that President Brodhead speaks out on a contemporary issue on campus. For example, we have waited all summer for his comments on the shaky status of the Kunshan Initiative, which in the past he has contended will be as transformative as James B. Duke's gift that turned Trinity College into a university named for his father. On June 1, the Fuqua faculty shot down two proposed degree programs, and sent the entire Kunshan timetable into a tailspin; none of this has ever been reported officially to stakeholders. Our President's only public response has been to stop off in Kunshan on a three week spree through Europe, Asia and Africa, to don a yellow construction hat as he posed smiling for a Twitter picture.

Another example is how Brodhead kept hands off Dr. Anil Potti, who falsified the premise and results of important cancer research. The Potti Mess, as our blog called it throughout the last academic year, started to unravel when a reporter discovered Potti's resume listed a Rhodes Scholarship that he never got. Brodhead advised us not to reach conclusions, because between truth and falsehood there can be an "intermediate explanation."

Which is a contortion that only an English scholar oblivious to the honor code could conjure up. Brodhead reserved this curious assessment for a private meeting with the editorial board of the Herald Sun, and the quote never even appeared in the Chronicle. Answering questions for the editorial board at the News and Observer, Brodhead said the vetting of professors was working just fine, and no other steps would be put in before they are hired. The Chronicle ignored this too, by the way.

The President was silent when Duke's #1 cancer doc praised Potti for "honesty, integrity" and his "research" in a letter for his medical license in his new home state of South Carolina. Using official Duke stationery.

✔ And so when we heard Brodhead in Duke Chapel for freshman Convocation last Wednesday, we applauded. Here was the President going beyond his usual annual rewrite and regurgitation of inspiring ideas from similar speeches at Yale, compiled in his book "The Good of This Place." Here was the President actually speaking out forcefully on campus culture.

Well sorta. On drug use, just short of rampant in some sections of the campus, the President ducked. He spoke only of watching out for "adult pleasures," which we guess means drugs.

On sex, Brodhead was just a little better, advising freshmen to "build a life you can be proud (of)," not do anything that would haunt them in the years ahead. FC would not be surprised if Uncle Dick was still shivering at that point from the enterprise of Karen Owen '10, who not only bedded athletes left and right, but kept score with full disclosure of their length, width and prowess. And Ms. Owen bound all this lascivious detail together in a document looking like a thesis that went to a friend, who was indiscreet enough to show it around, and so it wound up viral on the internet.

✔✔✔ And then there is the drinking problem, rampant to the extent that it defines this great school and destroys the ability of some students to benefit from it. The apologists refer to this as "the social scene." A close friend of FC says the drinking problem makes Duke the University of Southern California of the east, not the Harvard of the south.

Brodhead had been passing up the opportunity to speak out forcefully on this since his inauguration seven years ago. He did sign the Amethyst Initiative, a document from college presidents and chancellors dealing with questions about the 21 year old drinking age. At that time, Brodhead made a point of hiding where he stands, rather calling for national debate which he never started.

So surprise, Brodhead's words at Convocation were precise: "As for drinking, you know the law and are obliged to obey it."

Precise words, or were they? His next gasp failed the Breathalyzer test. Identifying Duke as a "domain of freedom," he no longer said each individual decision about drinking was already pre-empted by law, but rather "the object of your conscious and thoughtful choice."

✔✔✔ On the very day Brodhead spoke, members of his administration were disclosing plans for "GameDay." We can just see the minions gathered at a conference table, congratulating each other for the moniker. “The word ‘Tailgate’ will never exist,” said Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek. “We buried the term.”

GameDay was born because TailGate, the traditional Bacchanalia before home football games, died. Died on the spot last November when the 14 year old brother of a student was found slumped unconscious in a porta potty, a victim of alcohol overdose. We never did learn the blood alcohol reading, but sources say it was double the limit for driving.

Trust FC, the motto for GameDay is not "you know the law and are obliged to obey it."

Instead, Vice President for student life Larry Moneta, recognized by everyone who's been here more than a week as L-Mo, and Dean "Call me Sue" Wasiolek, have set in place a series of dampers.

Rather than a huge gathering for anyone showing up in the Blue Zone parking lot, GameDay involves closed parties for no more than 75 students who get a permit for a BBQ (you can also buy overpriced picnic lunches, the food necessary to tame the effect of alcohol). “These will be private events hosted by particular groups that want to host an event,” L-Mo said. “These are not events intended to be broad public events.”

There will potentially be incentives for the groups, still being decided. Wasiolek said they may have the ability to sit together in the football stadium -- which is to say they get preferred seating -- and their names might be featured on the scoreboard! Whee!!

There will be muted music, a requirement to end 45 minutes before the football game (many people at Tailgate never bothered to go to the game) and most of all, a location out front of the dorms or close to other buildings so, presumably, no porta-potties are needed. Or for cynics, close enough to return to the dorm to sleep.

Loyal Readers will note that the permits are for the Main and residential quads on West Campus. To hell with Central Campus. (We'll get to East Campus and its freshmen in a moment.)

And who is left out? Read these comments from a discussion board:

"Independents get screwed, as usual"

"So basically if you're an unaffiliated student, you no longer have ANY pre-game festivities to attend unless someone in a 'group' (aka fraternity) invites you, or you have enough money to register for your own 'private barbecue.'"

"What about just a bunch of six people who want to get together?"

"These new tailgate policies effectively ban all Panhellenic Sororities from congregating on Gamedays. As well as any kind of BBQ or Saturday gathering held by major student groups (over 75 people) think BSA, Mi Gente, most selective living groups.."

"The new proposal is, as other posters point out, narrow-minded, excludes independent Duke students, and cages in possible interactions between students to such an extent that not only is spontaneity nearly impossible, fun is measured-and-doled-out-by-administrators-in-small-inedible-portions."

✔✔✔ And now the hypocrisy. As for alcohol rules at GameDay, "you know the law and are obliged to obey it" gives way to what the Chronicle called "University alcohol policy, including a six-pack per person rule, a no glass rule and a no common distribution rule. These are the same regulations that apply on the Last Day of Classes."

The policy also involves Dean Sue, other administrators and Campus Cops drawing a cordon around the parties, keeping out city police, state ALE agents and anyone else who might want to honor the alcohol laws.

As noted, the announcement of GameDay focused on West Campus, filled with sophomores, juniors and seniors. In other words, some students who have attained the age of 21, but certainly not the majority.

It was consistent with the University's attempt to keep East Campus dry. The key word being attempt. It will be interesting to see if there is clamor for festivities on East Campus too, or if freshmen will be content to take a bus to West for the game, and walk by the BBQ and beer en route to the stadium.

Hypocrisy. Wrong message. Period.

✔✔ Oh yes, finally let's return to the line in the Chronicle story saying GameDay drinking policy is the same as on Last Day of Classes.

What's missing here?

The answer of course is the sacred cow, K-Ville, with hundreds of students, many of them freshmen, living for months in unsanitary conditions in cold tents, all in the name of building Duke spirit and getting good seats at one winter basketball game. With Brodhead failing in his responsibility, FC feels that Coach Krzyzewski, so dedicated to following the letter and spirit of NCAA rules, should speak out.

Coach K should no longer lend his name to this nonsense right under his office window. Aside from the tone it sets, it simply does not work to draw crowds to most basketball games. Not to mention the noisy disrespect for people living in nearby quads, its hazing on the final two days, and most of all the unfettered use of alcohol. And not just beer.

Unfettered. Hard stuff.

Thank you for reading and supporting FC, and for loving Duke.

Lacrosse litigation: Duke fighting to keep depositions, documents a secret

✔✔ There will be a key hearing in federal court on Wednesday in the lawsuits brought by 38 Duke lacrosse players against the university. The 36 escaped indictment in the hoax five years ago where a stripper at a team party alleged rape. Loyal Readers will recall that three players who were indicted by dishonest prosecutor Michael Nifong settled their claims against Duke right after they were declared "innocent" by the state attorney general.

The hearing deals with pre-trial discovery -- the right of the plaintiffs to bring in witnesses under oath and to demand to see documents like e-mails.

Issue 1: where will the depositions be held? The students -- now dispersed all over the country and world -- want Duke lawyers to travel to them. That's an uphill legal battle.

Issue 2: Duke wants a court order to keep everything it tells the plaintiffs lawyers a secret. There is some feeling that parts of the testimony and evidence will be highly embarrassing to President Brodhead and former Trustee chair Robert King Steel. The plaintiffs say they will probably go along with redacting any appropriate segments.

One key contention of the players is that Duke administrators violated confidentiality promises and conspired with local authorities to hide the fact that they released without subpoena key-card information about the players' comings and goings.

The City of Durham is also being sued. But that part of the case is on hold pending an appeal of preliminary issues.

The deposition phase and the appeal are expected to take another year. Down the road there will be a trial. And hopefully justice.

What hurricane? 1,200 freshmen party at the Nasher. Historic oak uprooted on East Campus. 1st report has Beaufort Marine Lab OK

✔✔✔ Despite anxious calls from parents, 1,200 freshmen ventured to the Nasher Museum Saturday night for their first giant party. There was a light drizzle at the time, a fringe of Hurricane Irene.

Duke and Durham escaped the fury of the storm, which tore into the Outer Banks and left millions of people along the Eastern Seaboard without power. At Duke, there was an outage in one area of student housing; and some employees living close to campus were out for a while too. The Duke and Durham power is largely, if not totally, restored.

A large oak tree that has stood watch outside the West Duke Building for generations of students was toppled by the hurricane. This around 2:30 PM Saturday.

According to Duke VP Kyle Cavanaugh, the university's emergency coordinator, the tree came to rest leaning against the building; there were a few students inside at the time, but no injuries. Duke Police evacuated the building as a precaution.

Around campus, several other trees suffered severed limbs.

We do not have the rainfall total from Duke and Durham yet, or more importantly from the watershed area. There is a minor drought, and there was not that much rain at all.

Air travel is a mess. The State Highway Patrol reports hundreds of roads, and 21 bridges, closed east of Interstate 95, which is about 20 miles east of Raleigh.

✔✔✔ Duke Marine Lab officials are trying to get to their research and teaching facility today. Initial reports indicate lots of water, but no serious damage.

The lab is in Beaufort, which was hard hit. The sea surge was estimated at seven feet, and the town lists itself as being 12 feet above sea level. As of 5 PM Saturday evening, weather observers reporting to the US Weather Bureau said there had been 16 -- 16, correct -- inches of rain so far. The Mayor has declared an emergency, and a dusk to dawn curfew remains in effect.

The Outer Banks in general were very hard hit. "Epic flooding" is one description. Many towns are closed for future evaluation.

Irene: Landfall at 7:47 AM. Durham area power outrages. Man far inland killed by falling tree limb.

Unless Duke and Dukies are specifically involved, this post concludes our Hurricane Irene Watch.

Updated at 11:40 AM

Landfall was at 7:47 AM near Cape Lookout. Winds were sustained at 90 miles an hour, with one gust of 115 recorded at the Cedar Island ferry terminal. Next stop: Morehead City.

There are numerous reports of tornadoes.

There are hundreds of thousands of people without electric service in the eastern portion of the state. In addition, Duke Energy had 1,063 customers in Durham County and 1,618 customers in Orange County without service.

By 11 AM some portions of eastern NC already had measured 9 inches of rain.

There are conflicting reports whether the storm ate away a portion of the Outer Banks and created a new channel at Hatteras Island. Some locals say it's merely a surge of the ocean that will subside. The surges are expected to be as much as 10 feet in some areas.

It's a bad day to be a pier sticking out into the ocean. Waves sheared off about 90 feet of the Sheraton pier in Atlantic Beach. The Bogue Inlet pier stands no more.

One man was killed when he went out to feed his animals and was hit by a falling tree limb. This was far inland in the town of Nashville. A man is missing in the Cape Fear River; he may have jumped in, unclear if this was to swim or commit suicide. A rescue boat had to call off a search after only a few minutes because of conditions.

At 11 AM the National Hurricane Center, which issues new readings every three hours, said sustained winds were 85 miles an hour, a Category 1 hurricane, with a forward movement of 15 miles an hour.

For the Durham area, the forecast is for winds maxing out at a sustained 30 miles an hour, gusts to 45, more or less what was predicted. However, rain will be less than any of the predictions. While there is no total yet of what has fallen already, Accuweather (again, this is at 11 AM Saturday) says there's less than an inch on its way. Some forecasts on Friday indicated three to five inches.

The Duke University website has posted no new advisories since yesterday (Friday). We'd give you the URL but it is useless; every time administrators post something new, they change the URL.

We have no confirmation that the men's basketball team arrived. It advanced its return from Dubai by about 12 hours to beat the storm and was due in around 6:30 AM.

The Raleigh Durham airport website is a mess. The lead paragraph on a press release says the hurricane will not impact operations on Saturday. The next sentence says American and American Eagle have cancelled all their flights until Sunday at 10 AM.

The www.GoDuke.com website -- official Duke athletics site -- has not been updated.

This site does have some neat pictures of the team -- which won four meaningless games against ad hoc opponents in China and Dubai -- on the 124th floor observation desk of the Burj Khalifa, at the moment the world's tallest building. The building actually rises to 160 stories and 2,717 feet.

In NYC, the subway is shut down for the first time in its history. 350,000 people are under mandatory evacuation order. This morning Mayor Bloomberg warned the entire Wall Street area that it may be deliberately blacked out. Salt water from New York harbor may wash in, and the cables would be damaged less if there were no power in them.

Dukie has big payday at Apple Computer, just shy of $400 million

✔ As Loyal Readers know, Steve Jobs bowed out at the head honcho at Apple because of his health, and the man who has filled in for him three times over the years got the job permanently.

The new CEO: Timothy D. Cook, Fuqua MBA '88.

We were able to report on Cook's compensation last year: as chief operating officer of Apple, Cook had a salary of $800,000, a bonus of $5 million, and got restricted stock worth $59 million.

By contrast, Jobs took only $1 a year. But as founder of Apple, his stock was worth $8.3 billion as of March.

So... come on Fact Checker... what's the news. Enough with the background.

According to an Apple 8K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the directors of Apple cemented the deal with Cook by giving him 1,000,000 shares of stock, worth $383,580,000. The value has since jiggled up a bit.

Cook must wait until 2016 for half the shares to vest and 2021 for the remainder. All subject to his continued employment.

Apple has yet to disclose what Cook's annual salary and perks will be -- aside from this signing bonus.

Irene: Duke, Durham should escape with conditions no worse than a good thunderstorm. Storm weakens as it nears Outer Banks.

✔✔✔Following includes the 2 AM Saturday update from the National Hurricane Center.

Downed trees. Some wires. Some flooding. That's the most likely scenario for Duke and Durham.

In fact, the city is so confident that it has held off opening its emergency command post -- and it's allowed 11 firefighters trained in search and rescue to go to Rocky Mount in preparation for deployment to the coastline. Another team could go, too, if the situation warrants.

At Duke, aside from the Marine Lab in the ocean town of Beaumont, which is evacuated until further notice, the big news is the early return of upperclassmen. Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta blasted e-mail on Tuesday offering everyone the chance to come early to avoid the hurricane on Saturday. Only incomplete totals are available: 671 students moved into West starting Thursday. We do not know if that includes all of Friday. And the PR department made no numbers available for Central campus.

As FC has previously noted, the University changes the URL for storm advisories every time there is an update. We consider this particularly dumb; we give you the latest available, not at all confident if you look that it will not have been superseded.

http://today.duke.edu/2011/08/bracingforirene

Durham forecast: peak winds between 1 and 5 PM Saturday. Sustained around 30 mph, gusts to 55. The amount of rain expected has increased dramatically from earlier forecasts, which is good given the medium drought in the area. New prediction: 2 to 5 inches. Old prediction 1 inch.

The National Hurricane Center has not focused precisely on where Irene may landfall -- saying only southeastern North Carolina. Nor is there a precise time beyond saying in the afternoon.

As of 2 AM Saturday, the storm had lost a bit of power, its sustained winds now 90 miles an hour versus 100 three hours earlier. Still gusts to 125 though.

The storm h as returned to the 14 mile an hour forward pace it's had for much of its life. The movement three hours earlier was 13 miles an hour.

There's still plenty of wind, rain, and surge to go around. "The hazards are still the same," Hurricane Center specialist Mike Brennan said. "The emphasis for this storm is on its size and duration, not necessarily how strong the strongest winds are."

The Hurricane Center updates these statistics every three hours.

After blasting North Carolina's beaches, the storm will follow the coast-line north, where extensive preparations are underway. In New York City, 370,000 people have been ordered out of their homes. These include some low-lying areas, plus Battery Park City, a nest of high-rises built on landfill over New York harbor. The big fear is flooding and a storm surge.

The mandatory evacuations are unprecedented. So is the total shut down of the city's mass transit system at noon Saturday. No subways. No city buses. No suburban buses. No suburban trains. All airports are closed. In Atlantic City, New Jersey, for only the third time since gambling became legal 33 years ago, all casinos are closed.

Hurricane Irene weakens to Category 2. Here are 5 AM Friday statistics

Scroll down. There are five posts on the hurricane:

1) Latest statistics on the storm
2) Duke prof welcomes Irene, says it's good for Outer Banks
3) Threat to Outer Banks and eastern seaboard
4) Situation at Duke and in Durham
5) Basketball team tries to fly in before storm.

The following are 5 AM satistics. The National Hurricane Center will update every three hours throughout the day. Unfortunately, Fact Checker is unavailable, and will not update here until midnight Friday.

✔✔✔✔✔
✔✔✔✔✔ The storm has weakened just a bit to Category 2. However, some forecasters believe it will landfall as a Category 3, meaning "devastating" effect. There seems to be no longer a danger of a Category 4 "catastrophic" effect.

Here is the discussion on this point from the Hurricane Center:

WATER VAPOR IMAGERY AND ANALSYES FROM CIMSS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
WISCONSIN SUGGEST THAT IRENE IS ENCOUNTERING LIGHT TO MODERATE
SOUTHWESTERLY VERTICAL WIND SHEAR. THIS...ALONG WITH THE CURRENT
CYCLONE STRUCTURE AND DRY AIR ADVECTING TOWARD THE HURRICANE IN
WATER VAPOR IMAGERY...ARGUE AGAINST SIGNIFICANT STRENGTHENING....
AND INDEED THE INTENSITY GUIDANCE SHOWS LITTLE CHANGE IN STRENGTH
BEFORE LANDFALL. ON THE OTHER HAND...THE EYEWALL CONVECTION IS
CURRENTLY STRONG...AND THE SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES ALONG THE
FORECAST TRACK ARE 28-29C. THIS SUGGESTS SOME MODEST STRENGTHENING
IS POSSIBLE.

Sustained winds 110 an hour.

Going north at 14 miles an hour, unusually slow since many storms move at 30.

Pressure 942 mb. Very low.

Eye 20 miles wide

Landfall estimate 36 hours (5 PM Saturday)

Hurricane Irene: Duke prof says nasty storm will be good for Outer Banks

✔✔✔✔✔ A Duke professor welcomes the hurricane!

Who is this dude?

This following is not a misquote. Here are the words of Orrin Pilkey, James B. Duke Professor emeritus of geology in the Nicholas School of the Environment: "The storm that is coming up the coast here is just what the islands need."

Wait a second. The Outer Banks -- the thin, long line of barrier islands jutting into the sea -- will take the brunt on Saturday. Property will be destroyed. Wildlife will drown. Salt spray from the waves will kill vegetation that lives on fresh water.

The professor: "We are going to see an awful lot of buildings destroyed and an awful lot of buildings damaged... And because it's so slow-moving, there are not only going to be high winds and big waves, but they are going to last a long time."

So where's the flip side, the good? Pilkey -- author of "A Celebration of the World's Barrier Islands," told the Los Angeles Times -- of all papers, one that is clear cross country -- that storms of this magnitude are essential to the islands' survival. "Heavy storms bring new sand to the islands, helping them stay at sea level rather than eroding and disappearing into the sea."

"It's a strange thing to live in a place where a natural disaster is essential for the environment. Californians who live in fire-prone areas are familiar with this dilemma. For people, fires are catastrophes, but some of us live in environments that depend on fire for survival...... A naturalist living on a barrier island knows that protecting your house is not a good thing. Because protecting your house ends up destroying the beach."

Hurricane Irene: Basketball team

✔✔✔✔✔ The Duke basketball team -- having beaten its opponent in China three times and a team in Dubai once -- is trying for one more victory: to beat Hurricane Irene's arrival in North Carolina.

The team and hangers-on aboard a chartered jet will fly home almost 12 hours early, sacrificing time in their $800 hotel rooms nestled on the Arabian Gulf.

Yes $800 a night. Single rate, one night includes taxes and service charge.

Originally scheduled into Raleigh Durham Airport at 4 PM Saturday, the new arrival time is 5:30 AM.

The chartered plane is a Boeing 757. While pilots have a great deal of discretion, the manufacturer's manual advises a cross-wind limit of 29 knots, or 33 miles an hour. The hurricane is most likely to cause far heavier winds when it strikes later in the day.

While the eye is likely to follow the shore-line north, the storm is unusually large -- with hurricane force winds of at least 74 miles an hour extending out 70 miles. Tropical force winds of at least 40 miles an hour extend 255 miles in all directions. The airport is roughly 100 miles from the shore-line.

The charter airline is thus hoping the Duke plane gets here just in time. Other options include holding the plane at its refueling stop (we believe in Anchorage) or seeking a safer airport inland.

✔Final basketball note: , since the uber expensive charter for the team and fans was first announced, FC has made a point of saying you really did not get very much for your money if you went along. Some Loyal Readers challenged our assertion that the jet was narrow-bodied with seating 3 and 3, meaning you had a 33 percent chance of being in a middle seat.

Well all of us were right; originally a 757 3-3 was scheduled. Then the plane was upgraded to a 767, which is 2-3-2 seat configuration. However, the 767 had a mechanical problem that kept it on the ground at Raleigh Durham, and 24 hours later, the 757 was substituted.

In describing the 757, FC said it had business class seats. This was wrong. The team members -- some approaching seven feet -- are wedged into a limited number of "premium economy" seats -- a little more leg room and a 2-2 configuration but still economy seats. This will also affect Coach K, whose contract gives him a private jet when he is not with the team.

Thanks for reading Fact Checker!

Hurricane Irene: after the Outer Banks, northward

✔✔✔✔✔ This hurricane is unusual. After making landdfall, probably around Wilmington NC on Saturday evening, it will hug the coastline as it goes north. Thus, 65 million people are directly in its path. Unprecedented.

Along its path, the storm is likely to be the worst in two generations -- a "once in fifty years" hurricane. It is rare in that it threatens every state along the seaboard -- with governors in Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut also declaring emergencies. That's 65 million people.

In Washington, Sunday's dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. statue has been postponed.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg has warned a quarter million people to leave their homes, and says he will order evacuations if necessary. These include residents of traditional areas affected by storm surges, like Coney Island, but also the new and very expensive high-rise towers of Battery Park City, built on landfill at the tip of Manhattan for commuters who want to walk to Wall Street. The New York City subway system is preparing to shut down if need be -- an unheard of precaution.

Hurricane Irene: Duke and regional preparations

"Conditions will deteriorate overnight Friday into Saturday across the eastern half of the state," said WRAL Chief Meteorologist Greg Fishel. "We are in for a very long couple of days."

✔✔✔✔✔ In the Duke area, the winds are the only true danger. While the storm is dumping up to 12 inches of rain in the Bahamas, forecasters are sticking with a prediction of only one inch locally. Too bad; the area is in a mini-drought.

Best estimate of the winds: 50 miles an hour at their peak.

At Duke, there was minimal preparation.

Generators were checked, procedures were reviewed. Upperclassmen previously scheduled to come in starting on Friday, were permitted into their rooms on Thursday, though hardly any knew this was the case. And all student events scheduled through the weekend are still on.

Here is the current official Duke update. We warn our Loyal Readers that Duke keeps changing the URL when it posts new information, so if you check, this may or may not be the latest. A rather totally dumb way of doing it.

http://today.duke.edu/2011/08/irenecoast

✔✔✔✔✔ The University evacuated its Marine Laboratory in the seaport of Beaufort, NC at noon on Thursday, where one of the main dangers is a storm surge.

Hurricane Irene: Earlier story

Remember to scroll down. Good stuff on Thursday too!!

The following was updated 8 PM Thursday. At 2 AM Friday the National Weather Service said the hurricane's strength and movement had not changed from earlier. Next full report at 5 AM Friday.
✔✔✔✔✔
✔✔✔✔✔ The Duke basketball team -- having beaten its opponent in China three times and a team in Dubai once -- is trying for one more victory: to beat Hurricane Irene's arrival in North Carolina.

The team and hangers-on aboard a chartered jet will fly home almost 12 hours early, sacrificing a night in their $800 a room hotel nestled on the Arabian Gulf. Originally scheduled into Raleigh Durham Airport at 4 PM Saturday, the new arrival time is 5:30 AM.

Yes $800 a night. Single rate, one night includes taxes and service charge

The chartered plane is a Boeing 757. While pilots have a great deal of discretion, the manufacturer's manual advises a cross-wind limit of 29 knots, or 33 miles an hour. The hurricane is most likely to cause far heavier winds when it strikes later in the day.

While the eye is likely to follow the shore-line north, the storm is unusually large -- with hurricane force winds of at least 74 miles an hour extending out 70 miles. Tropical force winds of at least 40 miles an hour extend 255 miles in all directions. The airport is roughly 100 miles from the shore-line.

The charter airline is thus hoping the Duke plane gets here just in time. Other options include holding the plane at its refueling stop (we believe in Anchorage) or seeking a safer airport inland.

In the Duke area, the winds are the only true danger. While the storm is dumping up to 12 inches of rain in the Bahamas, forecasters are sticking with a prediction of only one inch locally. Too bad; the area is in a mini-drought.

Governor Perdue has declared a state of emergency for all counties in North Carolina east of Interstate 95, which runs roughly 20 miles east of Raleigh. Evacuations are underway in beach areas, in some cases involving only tourists, in others involving everyone.

Thursday night, President Obama, vacationing on Martha's Vineyard off the Massachusetts which may well have its own Irene problems late in the weekend, declared an emergency in North Carolina. Federal aid will supplement state and local responses to the storm, and the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can coordinate all disaster relief efforts.

Further north, the storm is likely to be the worst in two generations -- a "once in fifty years" hurricane. It is also rare in that it threatens every state along the seaboard -- with governors in Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut also declaring emergencies. That's 65 million people.

In Washington, Sunday's dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. statue has been postponed.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg has warned a quarter million people to leave their homes, and says he will order evacuations if necessary. These include residents of traditional areas affected by storm surges, like Coney Island, but also the new and very expensive high-rise towers of Battery Park City, built on landfill at the tip of Manhattan for commuters who want to walk to Wall Street. The New York City subway system is preparing to shut down if need be -- an unheard of precaution.

At 8 PM Thursday the storm was centered 535 miles south of Wilmington NC, considered one of its prime targets on Saturday. It was moving at only 14 miles an hour, far slower than most hurricanes.

Even though it is lingering over warm waters which should fuel its strength, its winds slowed down in the past few hours, now clocked at "maximum sustained" 115 miles an hour. This keeps Irene as a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, capable of "devastating" damage. Earlier Irene flirted with becoming Category 4, capable of "catastrophic" damage. This requires winds of 131 an hour; the maximum recorded was 126.

Forecasters still say Irene may achieve Category 4 status.

✔✔✔✔✔ The University evacuated its Marine Laboratory in the seaport of Beaufort, NC at noon on Thursday. But in Durham, there was minimal preparation. Generators were checked, procedures were reviewed. Upperclassmen previously scheduled to come in starting on Friday, were permitted into their rooms on Thursday, though hardly any knew this was the case. And all student events scheduled through the weekend are still on.

Here is the current official update. We warn our Loyal Readers that Duke keeps changing the URL when it posts new information, so if you check, this may or may not be the latest. A rather totally dumb way of doing it.

http://today.duke.edu/2011/08/irenecoast

✔✔✔✔✔DUKE PROF SAYS HEAVY STORM IS JUST WHAT OUTER BANKS NEED.

Whoa. This guy is in a majority of one!

This is no misquote. Here are the words of Orrin Pilkey, James B. Duke Professor emeritus of geology in the Nicholas School of the Environment: "The storm that is coming up the coast here is just what the islands need."

Wait a second. The Outer Banks -- the thin, long line of barrier islands jutting into the sea -- will take the brunt on Saturday. Property will be destroyed. Wildlife will drown. Salt spray from the waves will kill vegetation that lives on fresh water.

The professor: "We are going to see an awful lot of buildings destroyed and an awful lot of buildings damaged... And because it's so slow-moving, there are not only going to be high winds and big waves, but they are going to last a long time."

So where's the flip side, the good? Pilkey -- author of "A Celebration of the World's Barrier Islands," told the Los Angeles Times -- of all papers, one that is clear cross country -- that storms of this magnitude are essential to the islands' survival. "Heavy storms bring new sand to the islands, helping them stay at sea level rather than eroding and disappearing into the sea."

"It's a strange thing to live in a place where a natural disaster is essential for the environment. Californians who live in fire-prone areas are familiar with this dilemma. For people, fires are catastrophes, but some of us live in environments that depend on fire for survival...... A naturalist living on a barrier island knows that protecting your house is not a good thing. Because protecting your house ends up destroying the beach."

A FINAL NOTE ON BASKETBALL

Finally, on the flight home from Dubai, since the uber expensive charter for the team and fans was first announced, FC has made a point of saying you really did not get very much for your money if you went along. Some Loyal Readers challenged our assertion that the jet was narrow-bodied with seating 3 and 3, meaning you had a 33 percent chance of being in a middle seat. Well all of us were right; originally a 757 3-3 was scheduled. Then the plane was upgraded to a 767, which is 2-3-2. However, the 767 had a mechanical problem that kept it on the ground at Raleigh Durham, and 24 hours later, the 757 was substituted.

In describing the 757, FC said it had business class seats. This was wrong. The team members -- some approaching seven feet -- are wedged into a limited number of "premium economy" seats -- a little more leg room and a 2-2 configuration but still economy seats. This will also affect Coach K, whose contract gives him a private jet when he is not with the team.

Thanks for reading Fact Checker!

Duke's Global Health Institute: Noble idea, troubling execution. Exporting education programs with no faculty oversight

✔✔✔✔ The Duke Global Health Institute is a noble idea of the first order, a part of Duke University that's only five years old but truly can be said to be doing God's work on earth, and an enigma because its leadership is refusing to discuss with Fact Checker some very serious, emerging issues.

One of the key issues: whether academic programs -- including those leading to a Duke degree -- have been approved by the Institute faculty and the Academic Council as provided in the university by-laws, a process that insures viability and integrity and rigor. Our faculty source said no.

From one e-mail: "It's unbelievable. I just heard through the grapevine that global health is preparing to hire faculty to be full-time in Kunshan, and we regular faculty have not even voted on whether we want to pursue programs there! This endeavor will be a disaster."

We will return to this issue of governance, which may well come up in Friday's meeting of Global Health faculty, in a few moments. We begin the body of our essay by turning to the enigma.

✔✔ Our interest was piqued when a faculty member in the Institute who wishes to remain anonymous provided FC with some disturbing information which we will detail. After initial study and a multitude of questions for our source, we approached Dr. Michael Merson, the institute's director (who is also sitting in as the university's interim vice president for global strategy) via e-mail, laying out our concerns and requesting an interview. We told him that we not only wanted to gain his perspective on any controversy -- but welcomed his telling us about the Institute's good work.

We regret very much having to report to Loyal Readers that we were treated rudely: e-mail after e-mail and phone call after phone call, and Merson never responded. We finally informed him of our policy, and told him we would be writing about this failure, to no avail. We even set back the date for this essay, hoping that when Merson returned in mid-week from a trip he would speak to us. No dice.

✔✔ The Institute was founded in 2006 with seed money from Duke University and its separately incorporated and well financed Health System. The basic idea is simple:

"The 20th century was a century of spectacular medicine – and equally spectacular failures to distribute health and health care fairly across the globe."

"Our aim is to become a world-recognized authority in global health and to make significant contributions to the prevention and treatment of health problems, thereby reducing health disparities in vulnerable and underserved populations around the world."

The Institute has grown like wild-fire. Two years ago it had 60 students in its various academic programs. Last year it had 120, and in the semester about to start, the Institute expects far more.

It has 42 faculty -- with an amazing 10 searches underway for additional appointments. And that's not counting 48 faculty shared with other Duke divisions. (We believe the faculty totals are correct; we wish we could have confirmed them with Dr. Merson or with Duke PR which also ignored a request.)

The amount of money involved in the Institute is not revealed in its reports, but we know that since its inception, the number of grants has grown from 2 to 14 to 30 to 34 to 55.

✔✔ We told Dr. Merson that we were troubled by the financial pie graphic in his 2011 annual report, which shows substantial money flowing into administration and allied activities, at the expense of education, research and other field work.

Some specifics;

Finance and administration is swallowing 20 percent of the Institute's budget.

The top-heavy Office of the Director another 16 percent.

And PR -- identified as communications -- another 7 percent.

Total so far, 43 percent.

And in addition to allocations for education (28 percent) and research (19 percent) which goes on all over the world, we were curious about another 11 percent listed only as "international operations." Another administrative cost perhaps?

The Institute has 120 active global health research projects in 28 countries. Students ran 74 projects in 20 different countries. We wanted to know about the philosophy of operating thin in so many places -- versus an intensive, more thorough involvement in a few.

✔✔ And now the academic programs of the Institute. Here are the programs we have been able to discover:

"In fall 2010, DGHI welcomed 24 individuals from Uganda, India, Kenya, Nigeria and the United States into the second cohort of the Master of Science in Global Health. Also in 2010, DGHI celebrated the first two students ... to successfully defend their thesis and complete the program. The future of the program is equally bright, as DGHI received a record number of applications for the third cohort who will be welcomed in
fall 2011.

"The Duke Global Health Institute has launched its first program targeting Duke doctoral students interested in pursuing global health research in tandem with their primary discipline. Beginning in fall 2011, the Global Health Doctoral Scholars Program aims to foster dynamic intellectual exchange between Duke doctoral students and DGHI faculty.... The program, which requires a minimum commitment of nine months, enables students to work on a global health project with a DGHI faculty mentor, develop a global health dissertation and become involved in the DGHI’s growing community."

"DGHI is training the next generation of global health leaders, whether they are in Durham, Moshi, Beijing or elsewhere in the world. Education programs range in level and focus, from the popular undergraduate global health certificate to the training of medical professionals in Rwanda."

"Faculty from Duke, UNC-CH and NC State are working together within the Triangle Global Health Consortium on a new graduate course dedicated to the burgeoning
field of One Health."

✔ And most of all Kunshan.

As Loyal Readers know, the Fuqua Business School has taken the lead in putting forth large-scale degree granting programs in this Chinese backwater, with both proposals so far being shot down by the faculty on June 1. Presumably, although there is no confirmation, Fuqua's new dean Bill Boulding is consulting with his faculty about creating alternative proposals.

While Fuqua garnered the headlines, the Global Health Institute was also proposing a degree program for Kunshan.

Our faculty source: "As far as I know, the global health faculty has not formally approved any academic programs in Kunshan. Participation in Kunshan never came up for a formal faculty vote. No faculty committees have played a role in creating specific Kunshan programs, or reviewing them for rigor and content. As far as I can tell, the global health programs submitted to the Chinese government for Kunshan were developed mainly by a non-academic Associate Director of Education who lists no significant training in global health or higher education on the global health website."

A Fact Checker review of transcripts of the Academic Council meetings uncovered no discussion of the Global Health proposal, which must clear the Council before beginning.

Make no mistake. This is not a turf battle. Our faculty source again: "If Provost Lange approves this model of academic development and standards, I worry about the future of Duke and Kunshan. Universities can only be successful when faculty interests, initiatives, and leadership drive academic programs."

Or put another way in another e-mail: "It's (troubling) to me how the university announces Kunshan programs that have not been approved by professors and university committees. It's Fuqua all over again.

"At Global Health, it's really troubling since the non-academic staff seem to make so many academic program decisions and then present to the faculty for a quick rubber-stamping at meetings, or they make decisions that involve one or two male faculty members (people named, FC omits) who will support whatever the staff wants so that the Director can say that the decision was faculty-based.

'Any other segment of the university would have faculty setting the agenda, not staff who lack substantive academic qualifications in the subject area... The Global Health Institute does have named faculty directors of the undergraduate and graduate programs who just seem to carry out but not make decisions. If the Director involved more faculty, he would not need such a ridiculously large staff or have so much of the budget spent on administration."

✔✔ Beyond the questions surrounding degree granting programs, it is obvious that various divisions and schools at Duke are moving in new directions. Previously, one professor might travel to another country to teach for a semester or for a sabbatical. But now Duke is exporting entire academic programs -- like Fuqua's intent to operate a new business school for the government of Kazakhstan. The same is true of the Global Health Institute. All this has escaped any vote of approval by the Fuqua faculty, and most important, any Academic Council review because the degrees involved will not be from Duke.

Even so, our imprimatur is on the venture, our reputation at stake. The need for guidelines and oversight is acute.

✔✔ We also asked via e-mail Dr. Merson how much he is willing to bow to foreign governments. For example, the Institute recently awarded "diplomas" in Beijing; while we are unclear if this is the equivalent of a degree, the document bore the Duke name. We wondered if it also bore our seal, the motto "Eruditio and Religio" that is part of our heritage, and the Christian cross as well.

✔✔ We also sought to discuss with Merson his board of advisers. The chair is Thomas Gorrie, also a University Trustee and chair of the board of directors of the Duke Health System. FC has never been able to trace why Gorrie is interested in Duke at all. He's from New Jersey, a former executive at Johnson and Johnson, and a scientist. He is not an alumnus, neither is his wife nor son. He's very well hidden; it took us a long time to find his Princeton NJ office, where there is never any answer.

There Global Health board also includes two University Trustees who were bounced by term limits, and if we are not careful the Institute board will become the last gasp for power by people on their way out.

The two include Alan Schwartz, most famously CEO of the Wall Street giant Bear Stearns that disappeared in the financial meltdown.

And Robert King Steel, who has a long Duke resume. As chair of the Trustee search committee, he discovered Richard Brodhead who was Dean of Yale College. He stood at his side through the lacrosse crisis, abandoning our boys.

Steel came out of Goldman Sachs and was at the top of this Wall Street pig until bounced, and then his rabbi from Goldman made him the #1 federal Treasury official dealing with the domestic economy in the presidency of George W. Bush. Overnight, Steel flipped from regulator to CEO of one of the companies most in need of regulation, Charlotte's Wachovia Bank, which subsequently disappeared too.

Thank you for reading FC and for loving Duke.

Fuqua alum succeeds Steve Jobs as head of Apple

✔✔ Timothy D. Cook, a Fuqua MBA graduate '88, has been named Chief Executive Officer and a director of the world's most valuable tech company -- Apple.

This after Steve Jobs, a cancer survivor who has had a liver transplant, stepped down from the company he founded at age 21. "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know," he wrote. "Unfortunately, that day has come."

The news stunned the tech world, but election of Cook, who has filled in for Jobs three times since 2004 when his health broke, was no surprise. Jobs was elected chair of the board, a part-time position that is considerably less demanding.

Cook: age 50. Undergraduate degree from Auburn. Huge Auburn football fan. Fitness fanatic, gym at 5 AM. Joined Apple in 1998 as senior vice president of world-wide operations. Previoiusly with IBM for 12 years and a brief stint at Compaq. Earnings last year: $59 million.

Wall Street Journal: "People who know him at Apple say he is polite but persistent and unyielding in his demands. They also say he can absorb a huge amount of data and quickly pinpoint any problems."

And this: "Mr. Cook isn't the showman that Mr. Jobs is, but people who know him call him an "operational genius" who was responsible for crafting Apple's current supply-chain system and helping to transform the company into one of the most efficient electronics manufacturers today."

Biggest challenge: having grown by leaps and bounds, the big challenge now is to sustain the momentum.

Turmoil at Columbia U: Dean who said she'd leave next June told to pack it in now. And unrelated, a Duke vice provost will depart with 8 days notice

Occasionally Fact Checker covers news from beyond Duke. It's interesting to see a quick departure at Columbia too. Scroll down: Duke losing its vice provost for academic affairs next week.

On Saturday, the supreme undergraduate dean at Columbia University, Michele M. Moody-Adams, sent out an e-mail to stakeholders saying she would resign when the 2011-12 academic year ends next June.

It's just been learned that on Monday, Columbia President Lee Bollinger told her to pack it in immediately.

She's the first female, the first black to be Dean of Columbia College, the undergraduate division. Moreover, in June, another prominent black administrator, Columbia Provost Claude M. Steele took a step or two backward and left to become dean of Stanford University’s School of Education.

In her e-mail, Moody-Adams wrote that she was losing power, as the university had started to “transform the administrative structure” of the faculty of arts and sciences. The changes cut into her authority over “crucial policy, fund-raising and budgetary matters.” Moreover, she complained the changes would eat into “the college’s academic quality and financial health” and had gotten to the point where she could not reverse them.

Columbia did not release the text of the message she got Monday from President Bollinger.

Brodhead unusually frank in confronting alcohol use, sex with Class of 2015

✔✔✔✔In a switch from his traditional, grand sweeping philosophical speech, President Brodhead used opening Convocation for freshman on Wednesday to address drinking and sex. He made oblique reference to illegal drugs when he said other "adult pleasures" are also available on campus.

While speaking bluntly, he was also confusing.

He told the new students "you know the law and are obliged to obey it," but one breath later he said the freshmen were entering a "domain of freedom," where they could make a "conscious and thoughtful choice" about drinking.

✔✔ Separately, the Supreme Undergraduate Dean Steve Nowicki advised students to avoid the easy road in their class work, to take reasonable chances in choosing their academic courses -- and not be afraid to fail.

The message on alcohol and sex formed only one part of Brodhead's address, the rest being devoted to the expected.

Some quotes from the text as furnished by Duke PR follow. Often the President drifts from the text and rewrites while he is speaking.

"In college you will have freer access to alcohol, sex, and other what used to be called adult pleasures. I trust this is not news to you: the association of college, drinking, and sex in an alcoholic haze was already well documented in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, written in the fourteenth century.

"As for drinking, you know the law and are obliged to obey it. But such laws have never made alcohol and the conduct it aggravates less prevalent on any American campus. Many of you have strong values on this score, and many of you will find those values tested. My message to you all is, this is a domain of freedom. Make it the object of your conscious and thoughtful choice."

And on sex: "I say it seriously: take responsibility for your conduct; don't do things you are not proud of. And if you say, of any practice you'd really rather not partake of, well, I have to, or what will They think? I reply, have some courage and see where it gets you. Having escaped the tyranny of all kinds of adult supervision, it seems a poor sequel to cave in to the tyranny of some imagined Them. Here's the truth: if they were candid, "They" might turn out to be ambivalent too and to welcome alternatives and frank discussion."

And the peroration of this part of Brodhead's address:

"My first rule for the use of your freedom is, build a life you can be proud of. My second, at least as important, is: make great education happen for you."

✔ While in previous years, Brodhead has cited with fanfare his Open Office Hours for students, often leaving the impression that it was easy to schedule an appointment, there was no mention today. As reported by FC, Brodhead's website did not even list any dates for the spring semester.

✔✔✔✔ The Supreme Undergraduate Dean, Steve Nowicki, also speaking at the Convocation, advised freshmen not to take the easy road.

"...if you try to always be perfect, then you'll only do things you know you'll succeed at. And if you never attempt anything where you might not succeed, where you might fail, then you can never know what you're really capable of, you'll never know the full range of what you can possibly do. And so, now that I've assured you that we expect you to succeed at Duke overall, I want to suggest that you risk some failure, just a little bit of failure. I want to suggest that you allow yourselves the luxury of chancing failure once in a while."

Nowicki's text as released by Duke PR did not have him leading the traditional GO DUKE cheer, the first from the Class of 2015.

Thank you for reading FC!!!

Duke losing another key administrator: vice provost for academic affairs John Simon. Next week!

Please scroll down for other late breaking news. Hurricane heads toward Outer Banks and Duke makes initial preparations.

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ Just ten days after shipping the Dean of the Fuqua Business School into obscurity and two days after announcing the retirement of the Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy, another surprise from Peter the Provost:

John D. Simon, who has served as Duke University's vice provost for academic affairs for the past six years, has been named executive vice president and provost of the University of Virginia, becoming that university's chief academic officer.

Short notice too: effective September 1. Luckily there are ten or so vice provosts remaining, including an executive vice provost in charge of keeping track.

Provost Lange ordered a quick start to the search for a replacement: deadline for nominations September 9.

And an unusually quick deadline for a search committee to make recommendations: September 26. Committee members include Peter Burian, professor of classical & comparative literatures; Susan Roth, vice provost for interdisciplinary studies; and Jim Siedow, vice provost for research.

There is also a search underway for a vice president for global strategy; and the replacement for Fuqua's Blair Sheppard holds only a two year appoint.

U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan cited Simon's success "in leading important, visible and complex initiatives during a period of tremendous growth in research and advances in quality at Duke."

And Peter the Duke Provost: "John has been a superb contributor to Duke's progress over the last several years. In his role he has been central to the development and implementation of Duke's strategic plan and priorities, to major interdisciplinary initiatives in the sciences, to the devising of new programs to support faculty research and teaching, and to the development of processes to meet our assessment requirements.

"John has also been a wonderful collaborator, working seamlessly with the provost's team, with the deans and with faculty throughout the university. As a leader and trouble-shooter, he has always been available to those with opportunities to exploit or challenges to meet. He will be sorely missed and U. Va. is lucky to have him as their new provost."

Prior to serving as vice provost at Duke, Simon chaired the university's chemistry department for five years. He also holds appointments in biochemistry and ophthalmology at Duke's medical center. He joined Duke in 1998 after holding a series of positions at the University of California, San Diego.

Leaving hardly any doubt, hurricane Irene is headed directly for Outer Banks; Duke issues PR handout to assuage concerns

Tomorrow on Fact Checker: serious questions at the Duke Global Health Institute.

Following Update at 2:08 PM

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ Hurricane Irene strengthened this morning to a Category 3 storm -- and computer models took some of the wobble out of its path. Hardly teasing anymore with the possibility of moving further east, and thus over the ocean off North Carolina but directly at states north, the National Hurricane Center says Irene is most likely headed for landfall on the Outer Banks.

Before landfall, it is expected to soak up more power from the warm Gulf Stream, and grow to Category 4.

Category 3: "devastating."
Category 4: "catastrophic."

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/sshws_table.shtml

Evaculations have begun on Okracoke Island at the southern tip of the Outer Banks, reachable only by three ferry boat lines.

✔ At Duke, this from PR: "We are monitoring the storm closely and are in discussions with the Marine Lab in Beaufort about contingency plans, if needed," said Kyle Cavanaugh, Duke's emergency coordinator and vice president for administration.

Text, although this handout does not say much:

http://today.duke.edu/2011/08/ireneupdate

At the very least, Durham can expect drenching rains and brisk winds.

Freshman Convocation

✔✔✔ Good day, fellow Dukies. FC here. A change of pace this morning -- from our usual probative and provocative essays to one that is merely pro-Duke. Tomorrow we return to full form: some very disturbing questions about the Duke Global Health Institute.

Universities have such nice ceremonies to mark great occasions and transitions.

The most notable is Commencement; at Duke it means bringing forth 4,000 men and women into the community of educated people and casting them "on life's broad sea," to quote from the Alma Mater.

Freshman Convocation is a close second (plus the separate afternoon ceremony welcoming new graduate and professional school students.)

Where else can you find a cadre of otherwise intelligent and sane professors -- on an August day in Durham that is often torrid -- wearing heat-clinging robes from medieval times? Garb modified over the generations only by the addition of some color and the substitution of chapeaus in some cases for mortar boards.

✔ And so as music fills the choir, nave and transepts, reverberating forcefully from Indiana limestone and Guastavino tile, the Class of 2015 assembles.

In the organ, there are 6,700 pipes at work, ranging in size from a soda straw to 32 feet in length. Traditionalists know this as the Aeolian, named for its manufacturer. More recently, a brilliant restoration and addition of a Festival Trumpet with 61 pipes resulted in the re-dedication of this munificent instrument for alum Kathleen McClendon.

✔ In FC's view, the highlight is the exuberance. Duke has captured 1,725 students who represent 46 states and 55 countries and it's time to cheer.

Perhaps even more exuberant than the students, radiant in fact, is the Dean of Admissions Christof Guttentag, who is marking his 19th class of freshmen. (Written at 2 AM today; we did not want to wake him up to confirm that total)

He arrived in 1992, just two years out of graduate school at Penn where he studied not administration, but musicology.

So how did these kids get in? "We're most interested in those students who will challenge us, make original discoveries, use their leadership skills in new venues, and take advantage of the depth as well as the breadth of this university's offerings.

"We (find) the ambitious and the curious, students who want to tackle issues head-on and are open to change. Duke is a community of talented learners, and we look for people who have unique qualities, who can challenge us as much as we challenge them.

"We want some bumps. We want some students who are well-rounded, some with sharp edges. We want people who are not afraid to undertake things that are messy, complex, and extremely difficult to do well —- because they love it. We like students who already know what it means to succeed and those who know what it means to reach and not succeed and reach again. We like students who make intelligent and interesting mistakes, students who understand that only in risking failure do we become stronger, better, and smarter."

Guttentag says Duke undergraduates are "the most engaged, brilliant, passionate, and funny students in the world."

Funny? Yes, funny. He loves to read a list of weird e-mail addresses and internet handles used by the people going through the very serious business of seeking to come to Duke.

✔ Loyal Readers, in case you are wondering, California produced the most students, with 191 (11 percent), then North Carolina with 185 (11 percent), and third was New York with 152 (9 percent) and then Florida with 126 (7 percent).

This is the last time any of these people will be identified this way, that is, by their hometowns and state. From now on, they are from Duke.

And more statistics: This year’s class sets a record for the number of blacks in a first-year class (192 or roughly 11 percent), and includes the third-highest number of both Latino (117) and Asian freshmen (450) in the school’s history. More than 11 percent (200) are from other countries.

Guttentag again: "Our selection process focuses on the nature of the class as a whole and on the combinations of qualities of the individuals that comprise it. I think that at times many of us participating in -- or observing -- the admissions process think of or describe applicants in terms of a few of their many attributes or identifiers; ultimately, though, my staff and I always consider them as individual people and—as such—potential members of the Duke community.

"It’s an intensely personal process. Ultimately each decision is based on our sense of the student as a whole—the sum of all of his or her characteristics, accomplishments, qualities, attributes, and contexts as well as we can understand them —- and how that person would benefit from and what that person would offer to the communities of which they will be a part.

"The class of 2015 .... around 1720 individuals -— talented, interesting, and engaged-— who can be grouped and categorized in all kinds of ways, but ... in the end (we) thought the match between the individual and the institution was a particularly good one."

And finally this thought: "While I’m excited by and quite interested in the truly exceptional applicants, the ones who look like they’ll have an immediate and visible impact on Duke while they’re here and on the world once they leave, my greater focus is actually on the absolutely terrific young women and men who make up the overwhelming majority of the class. and who have as much potential to be world-changers as the identified superstar coming out of high school.

"I expect all of my admissions colleagues would agree that the predictions we make about our applicants are imperfect, and that we’re always struck —- and generally very pleased -— by how students change, grow, and develop while they’re in college. Part of what makes Duke so special is the environment created by the unique combination of all of the students (and adults) who are here together."

✔ In our book, the second highlight of Convocation comes from the Vice Provost for all things undergraduate, Dean Steve Nowicki. Interrupting his formal remarks, he leads the class in its first chant of "GO DUKE."

Small suggestion. Get everyone to stand for the chant. This will grab every one's undivided attention, and the diaphragm works better.

Thank you for reading Fact Checker and loving Duke.

Category 4 hurricane could slam N.C. this weekend

There are several posts this morning. Please be sure to read the analysis of President Brodhead's message Monday afternoon to the faculty on Duke's international ambitions.

✔✔✔✔ Weather update 9 AM Tuesday:

Hurricane Irene shows signs of growing into a Category 4 storm, the 2nd most powerful, and slamming into North Carolina this weekend with force not felt in years. Just in time for upperclass move-in!!

The storm now seems far less likely to landfall in northern Florida, as had been forecast, with Cape Fear, NC now seen as far more likely.

Category 4 means means winds of up to 155 miles an hour that would be "catastrophic."

The storm could hit inland areas (that is Durham) as a Category 3, with winds of 115 miles an hour that are considered "devastating."

At least it should help ease if not end the drought.

Categories:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/sshws_table.shtml

Welcome, Class of 2015

Please scroll down after reading our Welcome. There is an important post covering President Brodhead's e-mail on Monday afternoon to all faculty.

Welcome. Welcome.

✔✔ This is Fact Checker, a blog covering news about the governance of Duke University. Occasionally we reach beyond that franchise to report on items of substantial interest.

We have two motto's: "Probative. Provocative. Pro-Duke."

And "Never a press release."

Our mission is not to see our ideas turned into policy. We aim to provide you -- from the newest freshman to the oldest alumni -- with information that will empower you to be active, contributing citizens of the Duke community.

We look forward to your joining our cadre of Loyal Readers!!

GO DUKE!

Brodhead e-mails entire faculty on international initiatives, but dodges all questions that vex them

✔✔✔✔ Seven weeks after returning from a three-continent spree on Duke's credit card, Richard Brodhead got around to sending a post card home. In a rare e-mail sent to all university faculty -- but no other stakeholders -- he is exuberant about Duke's international adventures -- but silent on the very substantial issues confronting them.

The post card reads like a PR man wrote it. His descriptions of countries that he went to in Europe, Asia and Africa -- "excitement" and "an exquisite green landscape" -- lack depth and color and character. His discussion of the work that Dukies are doing in each location -- "I can't do justice to all the people and programs I visited" -- does not have the poise and power that we have come to expect from his words.

For those of us waiting for Brodhead to break his silence on Kunshan, there was disappointment. As he has correctly said, this initiative in a Chinese backwater (he of course did not employ that word) is the most important step for Duke University since James B Duke bribed (not his word either) Trinity College to change its name to his.

But something is going radically wrong with the Kunshan Initiative, swept under the rug. Can anyone recall the last time we heard from Brodhead?

Our president and his team have never, never reported to the general faculty, much less other stakeholders, that the faculty in Fuqua rebuked him and on June 1 tossed out plans for two degree granting programs at the heart of the new Duke Kunshan University.

The Fuqua faculty acted for reasons which our President -- cloaking himself in Teflon -- has never acknowledged, much less taken responsibility for.

The financial projections do not add up. They do not for the two proposed programs, and it is unlikely sandpapering them will change that. We are likely to lose $35,000 or more on every student who enrolls, now and in the future.

There is no enthusiasm for the initiative; even professors in Fuqua told they can fulfill one-half of their annual teaching requirement by going to China for just six weeks are not interested. As the chair of the Academic Council publicly told Brodhead to his face, support throughout the university is tepid at best. And there is no champion speaking up.

✔✔✔ Brodhead should have assured the faculty that in the dawning academic year, they would play a vigorous role in defining the future of Kunshan. Boy, would that be a change.

He should have said that Peter the Provost is proposing to move the deadline for the start-up, so that there will be no academic programs for two years.

The president should have said that in this period (notice FC did not pull out the word moratorium) he would provide the faculty with all the resources they need to fulfill their mandate under University by-laws to evaluate independently and approve all academic offerings. He should have pledged this, given us his word.

That means a staff for the Academic Council. That means a budget. And it means a flow of information previously kept secret. Dick, start with the agreement your administration has apparently reached with the Chinese on academic freedom, a subject of vital interest to faculty. Or more accurately, the agreement that defines how far Duke will bend in limiting academic freedom in Kunshan. Your provost said months ago this document was almost complete.

✔ Brodhead should also have addressed all the places Duke is trying to land all at once, for, as he told UNC public radio, Kunshan is merely the first. Mr. President, how about uttering the word Kazakhstan for the first time, where, as FC revealed two weeks ago, you are planning to run a new business school. Or Brazil, what's up there? Or all the other cities that we started to become familiar with. St. Petersburg, Delhi, London and all the others. Why did you drop them from the radar as opposition to Kunshan grew?

✔ Our president should also have commented on the shaky team he has put together -- in shambles we would say.

The two people most responsible for driving us into Kunshan are gone. Greg Jones, vice president for global strategy, stepped down for health reasons barely a year after he bounced the vice provost for international studies back a notch or two. Blair Sheppard departed ka-boom. The new dean of Fuqua, Bill Boulding, won only a two year term, and Jones's replacement, Dr. Michael Merson, not even that.

Yesterday we learned that another important driver, Bruce Kuniholm, whose Sanford School was also planning a start-up in Kunshan, will depart next June.

✔✔ And so Dick, like a parent or friend expecting a long detailed letter and getting a post card, we are disappointed. Yes, you tried to address a couple of issues.

For those of us who see no strategy, only opportunism, the president wrote: "when you travel the globe and are able to connect the dots in experiential fashion, you can see how compelling each individual project is and how the parts add up to a whole."

For those of us who think Kunshan is the wrong idea in the wrong place, he repeated his mantra: "Eighteen months ago, Duke's Kunshan site was a muddy field; today an academic village is halfway built. In five or ten years, this will be a major educational 'draw,' a place for bright students to learn together from around the world."

For those of us who question precisely how building Kunshan to teach Chinese students in English will bolster Duke in Durham, he proclaimed his assurance, but did not say at all how this was going to be true: "What's more, the energy of our international programs circles back to Durham; the insights gained abroad enrich our work here and remind us anew of the importance of scholarly inquiry in its many forms."

So Dick, we really do want to hear from you again. We urge you to send another post card, to everyone and not just faculty. We invite you again to a Fact Checker interview, and if that's too much for you, we invite you again to submit any material you wish that would enlighten us as to your position.

GO DUKE

Surprise development: Dean of Sanford School to step down

✔✔✔✔ Fact Checker here. Probative. Provocative. Pro-Duke.

Peter the Provost announced this morning that the Dean of Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy -- Bruce Kuniholm -- will step down next June in the middle of his five year term.

But unlike another Monday morning surprise -- when Peter announced the abrupt departure of Dean Blair Sheppard of the Fuqua Business School with seven days notice -- this one has reasons everyone can understand and appreciate.

Dean Kuniholm -- who was appointed to lead the Sanford Institute 12 years ago and grew it into a School, doubling the number of public policy faculty -- will be turning 70 years old. (Facts: The faculty increased by 29, three more searches are underway)

Said Kuniholm: The school is on solid financial footing, and 12 years at the helm “is long enough for anyone... Some of us have been here from the beginning and we believe it is time for a new generation of leaders who have joined our faculty and contributed to our growth to build on what has been done and develop an enhanced vision for the future.

“I have loved every minute of it, but I will be 70 next year and I would like to do a little more research and teaching -- which I have sorely missed -- before I retire."

✔✔✔ Kuniholm is one of the few high level administrators who is an alum, earning a MA in public policy, an MA in history, and a PhD in history. He was an undergraduate at Dartmouth.

✔✔✔ A Deputy FC reports that Kuniholm is also one of the few who served in the military, as a Marine rifle platoon commander in Vietnam. He is notable -- and appreciated by FC -- for holding seminars and other appropriate observances of the contribution of our veterans on holidays like Veterans Day and Memorial Day -- occasions that President Brodhead ignored despite the continuing pleas of stakeholders.

Kuniholm's father was a West Point graduate. His son Jonathan was also a Marine, losing an arm in Iraq.

The above was not in the press release. This was:

“Bruce has been an outstanding campus leader,” said Lange, the university’s chief academic officer. “Not only did he lead the complex process of transition (from Institute to full fledged School) with great skill, including raising all of the targeted resources despite the economic downturn, but he also worked with his faculty to place the new school at the hub of the university’s strategic priorities, with outstanding new faculty hires and extensive faculty and programmatic collaborations.

“We are deeply indebted to him for his vision as a Sanford and Duke leader and collaborator. We are fortunate that while he is stepping away from the dean’s role, he will not be lost to our community.”

The university will conduct a national search for a new dean that will be led by Helen F. Ladd, the Edgar T. Thompson Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and professor of economics. Ladd is the president of the Association for Public Policy and Management, the principal national organization for scholars and schools of public policy.

End of press release.

✔✔✔ Kuniholm came to Duke in 1975.

His record in the administration (that makes it sound like a rap sheet, lol) includes service as vice provost for academic and international affairs, and director of the Center for Institutional Studies. Despite that background, FC finds it rather interesting that in Duke's current push to land in all four corners of the globe at once, the Sanford school has been so low key, letting Fuqua take the lead and stumble so badly.

Rather than plant Duke in other nations to serve indigenous peoples, Kuniholm seemed to favor enriching the experience for students and faculty in Durham as a way to achieve distinction as an international university. Thus he led the initiation of the Global Semester Abroad in India and China, a partnership with Ho Chi Minh University in Vietnam, and a Duke in D.C. public policy program is being developed and is expected to launch next year.

✔✔ Kuniholm was called upon twice to lead Sanford. First when it was an Institute in 1989 to 1994, named of course for the beloved former President of Duke who had been Governor of North Carolina (and later would serve as a U S Senator) and then starting in 2005 when the Institute began to stir about elevating itself into Duke's 10th school. Under his leadership, the Sanford School was created in 2009 and he was made founding Dean.

He guided the effort to raise $40 million in initial endowment funds for the new school, started an annual fundraising program for the school, and negotiated the necessary organizational and fiscal restructuring.

Raising the money was difficult. Falling short of its goal, but nonetheless gaining approval for expansion, Trustee David Rubenstein -- in the news today for a $13.6 million contribution to the Library -- spoke up unexpectedly after hearing a progress report and put the final $5.75 million in the endowment pot. His fellow Trustees, elated, named the 2nd Sanford building for him: Rubenstein Hall.

“Bruce Kuniholm played a decisive role in driving the transformation of the Sanford Institute to a full-fledged school,” said President Brodhead. “We are deeply grateful for his dynamic leadership and his ability to connect Sanford’s teaching and scholarship with so many other parts of Duke. His vision has been imprinted on the history of this university.”

Before Duke, Kuniholm taught at Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey and was in the U.S. Department of State, first in the Bureau of Intelligence, then as a member of the policy planning staff.

And to round out his biography, he received fellowships from a list of places: the Council on Foreign Relations, National Endowment for the Humanities, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Norwegian Nobel Institute. Publications: yep, more than 100 books, articles, chapters and book reviews.

In 1989, he received the Trinity College Distinguished Teaching Award for his classroom work with undergraduates.

Thank you for reading FC.