Duke.Fact.Checker

Cameron Crazies disappear

2012-01-31T04:32:00.002-05:00

The Duke University men's basketball team is high in the ratings -- #5 and #7 this week -- but its fans continue to disappear.

DukeCheck.com reports this morning that K-Ville -- the tent city at the door to Cameron Indoor Stadium populated by the most avid fans looking for prime seats -- has drawn only one-third as many entrants this year as last.

Duke Fact Checker now posts as www.DukeCheck.com and we invite you ato join us there.

We call for a review of Dr. Anil Potti's medical licenses

2012-01-11T03:57:00.001-05:00

Duke Fact Checker now posts at DukeCheck.com Same people, same issues, same bite.

Here is today's essay... saving you the trouble of clicking just this once.

We are quite troubled and feel impelled to raise again with Loyal Readers the vexing issues that surround -- no, engulf is a better word -- Dr. Anil Potti. We wish to outline why we believe that the state of North Carolina should conduct a new review of his medical license, and South Carolina should re-visit its decision to grant him a multi-year license that allows him to practice in that state with no supervision.

We also believe that Duke University should obtain a court order stopping Potti from trading on the name of our school, for we now know that his entire six-year career here was replete with dishonor. Such an order would have prevented his hiring a PR firm to flood the internet with favorable press releases mentioning Duke, pushing the terrible news deep down in search engines. And it would have prevented the latest chutzpah, with Potti attaching Duke's name to a new "research" paper he has just published in a respected medical journal, the Annals of Surgical Oncology.

Potti's subject was ovarian cancer -- the same research that has resulted in several other journals retracting his publications. With eight retractions for ovarian and breast cancer under his belt so far, the prolific Potti will experience more, perhaps 20 before the end of this sordid affair.

While it is incredulous that Potti's latest paper survived the peer review process that preceded publication in the Annals, the editors share responsibility and should be ashamed. The court order we suggest would have planted a brighter flag of caution.

And before we return this essay to Potti's license, we note that Duke apparently never checked any of Potti's resume. President Brodhead has stated the policy Duke follows in taking these things at face value is working just fine. We think not.

As for Dr. Potti, we call for stern action; we do not write lightly. Here's how we reach our critical conclusions.

Potti's North Carolina medical license.

The North Carolina Medical Board says that in July, 2010, it received "information concerning possible misconduct related to Dr. Potti's oncology research work at Duke Medical Center." The Board investigated and reached what amounts to a plea bargain with Potti, giving him a reprimand, one of the lightest of punishments that might have escalated to revocation of his license.

In its reprimand order, the board states that simultaneously with the receipt of the first information -- and apparently not linked at all the problems alleged, but just a coincidence -- "Dr. Potti voluntarily suspended all of his clinical activities at Duke Medical Center on July 16, 2010."

Voluntarily.

That word certainly leaves a different impression than a lengthy memo sent by Chancellor Victor Dzau to the faculty of the Medical School, which tersely makes clear there was nothing "voluntary" about it:

"I felt it important to provide you with an update on our actions in response to allegations regarding Dr. Potti... Dr. Potti was placed on administrative leave at the end of the day Friday, July 16."

That's one dimension of the errors from the board: a fundamental misunderstanding of the rupture of Potti's relationship with Duke.

There is more. As part of its reprimand, the Medical Board read materials submitted by Duke Medicine wrong, the reprimand order stating "while there were some inaccuracies on the biographical sketch and curriculum vitae, they were largely the result of carelessness and honest errors with no clear intention to mislead."

Those words do appear in Duke materials that the Medical Board examined -- but they are ripped out of context. Those words apply to one narrow segment of Potti's work at the University. Looking at how the Medical Board employed the key words broadly in its reprimand order, Duke had a one word characterization: "inaccurate."

In a new statement to the Board, Duke called attention to the earlier words of Provost Peter Lange:

“... in a publicly released statement that followed the University’s investigation into Dr. Potti’s curriculum vitae and biosketches, ‘issues of substantial concern were identified’ and have resulted in corresponding sanctions. In fact, the inquiry committee evaluating the research misconduct matter also noted that ‘the sheer number of errors’ in Dr. Potti’s biosketches and CVs was a ‘serious concern.’ To suggest in the Consent Order that Duke concluded there were some inaccuracies, all the result of carelessness and honest errors with no intention to mislead, is inaccurate.”

With this new material in hand, lawyers for the Board, Duke and Potti went to work. And they sandpapered out a new version for a revised reprimand order:

"Dr. Potti's curriculum vitae and Duke Medical Center biographical sketches contained inaccuracies. Dr. Potti used the inaccurate curriculum vitae and biographical sketches in connection with obtaining funding for his medical research. Dr. Potti failed to correct those inaccuracies in a timely fashion. However, the Board has no evidence from which it could conclude that Dr. Potti received funding for medical research as a result of the inaccuracies that he would not otherwise have received."

Loyal Readers, we are not only talking about a faked Rhodes Scholarship. We are talking about a list of honors that simply were not tendered, a procession of lies. And we must wonder if the Board -- which says it has no evidence that this chicanery played role in getting the well-financed Potti grants -- actually looked for evidence.

Certainly, the American Cancer Society -- which demanded a refund of three quarters of a million dollars in research grants and got it from Duke -- might have evidence.

The sandpapering by attorneys is not enough.

The Board, in saying that Duke considered Potti's lies "honorable mistakes," built upon a foundation that was cracked. The plea bargain that Potti made with the Board resulted in a November 22nd order for a reprimand. Had the Board used valid information, it might well have reached for a sterner punishment for "professional misconduct," perhaps a suspension or even a revocation.

We note too that as one division of the Medical Board was preparing the reprimand order, another was receiving information that Potti and Duke had settled 11 malpractice claims, one dating back to 2007. These were patients who were enrolled in his faked clinical trials (which is to say human experiments) and the Board reports each received a monetary settlement. We only know the money involved in each case was more than $75,000, which is the only bracket the board uses.

And the 11 settlements are only the tip of the iceberg. Potti and Duke are being sued -- and it is likely more plaintiffs might emerge, with a federal lawsuit in West Virginia a distinct possibility.

The Medical Board notes that it is now reviewing each of these instances.

Fortified by the unfolding malpractice mess, the Board should have followed a better route: made it clear that the reprimand is an interim order pending full consideration of the many facets of this still unfolding scandal.

And now Potti's South Carolina license

His Duke career over, Potti quickly and amazingly found a physician's position with the Coastal Cancer Center, a small chain headquartered in Mrytle Beach. He works principally in the pint-sized town of Loring, which is quite close to the Atlantic Ocean and southeast corner of North Carolina.

Coastal Cancer does clinical trials, and has in the past contracted with Duke. We are assured by the Principal Investigator that a trial mentioned on the Coastal website is not active, the one Coastal patient involved in the Duke study having completed his involvement several years ago.

In applying for a South Carolina license -- which was granted on April 6, 2011 -- Potti sent an extraordinary letter on January 15. He describes the situation at Duke as "a past controversy" that was "in no way related to my abilities, performance or conduct as a physician or care giver."

Does he have responsibility now to update that, revealing the continuing questions surrounding him?

Potti states he made the error about a Rhodes Scholarship because as a poor boy from India, he did not realize the honor involved study at Oxford University. He says he got confused because an association of winners of the Rhodes awards from Australia (who go to England for study) helps a graduate student to study in that Down Under country every year.

Potti slurs through the fact that he was merely mentioned for this award, was not made a full fledged candidate and was never awarded the honor. His resume had no nuances: it said he was a Rhodes Scholar.

And it says Rhodes Scholar - Australia, and Rhodes Scholar (Australian Board) shaking his poor boy assertion that he did not know the real Rhodes was at Oxford.

While Potti contends the Rhodes was his only problem, he never mentions, for example, that at the same time he was supposedly on his Rhodes Scholarship, he said he was mentored at an Australian university that does not exist by a distinguished professor who never heard of him. To merely begin the list.

The Rhodes was his only problem. This statment also ignores very substantial issues in his clinical trials and treatment of patients.

This gets pretty deep.

--The North Carolina board says it learned of issues involving Potti in July, 2010. While it is not known when the pending charges were brought to Potti’s attention, he certified to South Carolina authorities in applying for a license he did not face any disciplinary charges. The timeline needs careful review.

– Potti also certified to the South Carolina board that there was never a period of 30 days or more that he did not engage in the practice of medicine. What we know is that he says he voluntarily stopped practicing at Duke on July 16, he was suspended on July 18, and he resigned on November 19, with Duke letting him, inexpicably, stay on until December 1st. We think there is a decent question here as to whether 30 days passed.

-- The South Carolina Medical Board considered Potti's application with the benefit of a rather preposterous letter sent by Dr. Jeffrey Crawford, the chief of Duke Medicine's oncology staff, that praised Potti to the hilt. This letter was actually addressed to the Coastal Medical Center as a recommendation for employment -- and not submitted directly by Crawford.

Crawford used these words:

"...Honesty, integirty and humility."

"...great admiration and respect.."

And the kicker, "Anil developed an impressive research program..."

This was written on official Duke University Medical Center stationery. And we understand Crawford got into hot water because of it.

Crawford, to his credit, responded immediately on two occasions to our challenge of his praise of Potti. He stated unequivocally that his letter was a mistake. Unfortunately, he diluted this confession by saying that he -- Duke's #1 cancer doc -- did not know of the extent of Potti's troubles at the time he wrote the effusive letter.

Crawford has also taken the position that his letter went to Coastal Cancer Center; that it became a central document in the application for a South Carolina license does not seem to drive him to contact the South Carolina board about his own reevaluation.

We believe he should.

We note that in his South Carolina application, which we obtained via a Freedom of Information Request, Potti stated he had never received psychiatric treatment. Meaning that whatever demons drove him to ruin at Duke may well be still alive in his head.

Those demons could easily once again cause him to falsify his credentials, to dream up theories about crazy treatment, and to fudge research to show his theories held water. And there is no saying what he might do in the privacy of an examination and treatment room one on one with a patient.

Patients who are seriously ill, who seek out a doctor in hope, should not find hell. That is our paramount concern, not to repeat what happened at Duke. At the very least, Dr. Potti should be on probation, required to undergo analysis, and have another doctor looking over his shoulder and affirming every important decision for a period of years.

Potti retracts 8th medical journal article

2012-01-09T19:37:00.002-05:00

Dr. Anil Potti, the disgraced Duke University cancer quack, has retracted his 8th article... this one from the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association.

Potti's mentor, Dr. Joseph Nevins, who is a Ph.D. and not a medical doctor, as well as other Duke scientists joined in.

Duke.Fact.Checker now posts at WWW.DukeCheck.com Please join us there for full details available after 1 AM Tuesday January 10.

Potti publishes new scholarly article based upon Duke research

2012-01-01T02:59:00.002-05:00

The thoroughly discredited cancer quack Anil Potti has published a new research paper in an authoritative medical journal -- with a Duke colleague joining as co-author.

The article appears with no notation of the unraveling of Potti's career.

Duke Fact Checker now posts as on www.DukeCheck.com and we invite you to join us there for further details.

POTTI MESS - quack explains his conduct

2011-12-16T20:26:00.002-05:00

December 16 2011 -- Dr Anil Potti has explained his conduct while at Duke University -- from the faked Rhodes Scholarship through research with made-up results -- in a letter to the South Carolina Board of Medical Examiners.

Fact Checker now posts as www.DukeCheck.com and we look forward to your continuing to read our blog at its new location.

Dr Anil Potti settles with 11 patients

2011-12-15T23:52:00.001-05:00

keywords Dr Anil Potti malpractice Duke University cancer

Our blog is now located at WWW.dukecheck.com

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Potti Mess: Duke challenges Med Board conclusion on resume

2011-12-06T11:30:00.003-05:00

Search words cancer Duke University Anil Potti

Duke came out swinging this morning, slamming the North Carolina Medical Board for saying the university had determined the fraudulent resume of Dr. Anil Potti — the cancer quack who faked a Rhodes Scholarship and other credentials — was the result of “honest errors.”

A no-nonsense letter from the University General Counsel’s Office to the president of the Medical Board used one word to describe its interpretation of Duke’s investigation: “inaccurate.”

Our blog is now at www.DukeCheck.com
Please join us there to continue reading.

Potti cops plea, keeps NC medical license

2011-12-05T04:33:00.001-05:00

Dr Anil Potti has gotten off with a reprimand from the North Carolina Medical Board.
See our new blog...... www.DukeCheck.com for details.

Fuqua guts plans for Kunshan. Chinese government to prohibit all religion on campus -- praying and teaching

2011-11-17T11:32:00.003-05:00

Key words Duke University Kunshan Richard Brodhead Duke Kunshan University

OUR BLOG has moved. Same stuff. No location. www.DukeCheck.com

Thanks!

We've moved. Same dog. Same bite. New location

2011-11-02T03:57:00.001-04:00

Fact Checker is now www.DukeCheck.com

Search words: Duke University, Duke Kunshan University, Anil Potti, Richard Brodhead.

We've moved!!! Fact Checker is now www.DukeCheck.com

2011-09-10T20:14:00.009-04:00

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✔✔✔✔✔ Our new address is www.DukeCheck.com

Same barking dog, same bite. New address.

If you did not see our posts about the resignation of Dr. Cuffe, and the lawsuits against Dr. Potti, please read them on this blog.

Thanks for reading, and let us know what you think!

Help

2011-09-09T18:32:00.002-04:00

FC wants to hear from more people on campus about their experiences during the tornado alerts last Tuesday.

What happened when Duke issued a high level WARNING in the early afternoon. What did you do? What did university employees do? Their supervisors? What training did you have.

We particularly want to hear from people who have contact with patients in Duke Health.

Fact Checker assures all sources of confidentiality. After your e-mail is read, it is deleted.

Duke Health losing its Chief Medical Officer after just 8 weeks. New job, and enormous salary increase, for Dr Michael Cuffe at Hosp Corp of America

2011-09-08T23:25:00.035-04:00

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Make sure you scroll down after reading this: first Potti Mess lawsuit filed.

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✔✔✔✔✔ Chancellor Victor Dzau said last night that he has "unofficial" word that Dr. Michael Cuffe -- named Chief Medical Officer for all of Duke Health just eight weeks ago -- was resigning.

In fact Dzau was just being careful and polite, leaving to Cuffe and his new employer, the Hospital Corporation of America, the formal announcement. The chancellor -- reached after FC received a flurry of tips from Loyal Readers -- joined others in contact with FC to express deep regret at Duke's loss and best wishes to Cuffe as he leaves for an unparalleled opportunity -- no longer in academic medicine but in the corporate world.

Word of Cuffe's resignation -- effective in November -- sent a shock wave through the medical campus, where Cuffe enjoys a sterling reputation. One source told FC his mood was one of disappointment; he praised Cuffe as "brilliant," and said he had seemed devoted to Duke and effecting change, and had been lured by high paying corporate offers before.

Cuffe, who had been vice dean of the Medical School (and holder of a couple other titles) leapfrogged over others at Duke Medicine to his post in the inner circle in July. He also was given the title of vice president for ambulatory care, with vast authority over the ever-expanding medical empire.

Cuffe -- an alumnus of the medical school '91 who took it upon himself to earn an MBA in 2009 -- is a cardiologist. He was regarded as having an inside track to succeed Dzau if the chancellor elects to retire in three years, when he will be 68 and his current five-year contract expires. We believe Cuffe is about 47 years old. We did not reach him last night, as it got pretty late before we put together elements of the story.

✔✔ Cuffe will join the Nashville based Hospital Corporation of America, a behemouth that runs for-profit hospitals, employs 180,000 people and had sales last year of $33 billion. He reportedly will hold the title of XXX president and chief operating officer, #2 in command under a board chair who will reach retirement age in six years. This position has been open for some time. XXX correction: While Dr Cuffe will hold the title of president, this is in a particular division, rather than being corporate wide. XXX

Correction: our original post, based upon what we understood to be his new job, estimated his new salary. We can no longer support those calculations and have XXX them to flag historians who value FC!

XXX Cuffe, who earned $535,201 in the last year for which we have information, can expect a rather hefty increase. His new boss, HCA chair Richard Bracken, earned a neat $38,201,047 last year.

Cuffe also does a leapfrog at HCA, landing ahead of eight group presidents. So far as FC can determine, the highest earning of those was Samuel Hazen, president of the operations group, who took down $15,001,816 last year. XXXX

✔ Fact Checker -- in compiling those numbers -- also spotted a rather serious diversity issue at HCA. There are 15 corporate directors -- all of them male, all of them white. Among the directors are two members of the Frist family, multi-billionnaires several times over, who founded HCA. The most notable family member is former US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Republican of course.

The diversity issue also pervades the list of senior officers of the corporation, pictured on-line. Among 23 senior officers of the corporation, there are three females. As for males, one is named Juan, one conceivably might be black, and the rest are all white.

✔ An important angle of this story involves the retired chair of HCA, Jack Bovender, Trustee of Duke and since July 1, vice chair of the board. The issue is whether he had any role in recruiting Cuffe, one of Duke's stars.

If so, it raises the question of Bovender's stewardship at the university. As a Trustee, he has a fiduciary responsibility to act totally in Duke's interests. In other words, we can't have Trustees going around stealing our key people for their profit enterprises!

Time will tell.

FC posted the following on July 13 when Cuffe was promoted to Chief of Medicine.

http://dukefactchecker.blogspot.com/2011/07/duke-medicine-makes-major.html

FC this weekend: No one knew what to do when Duke issued a tornado warning. One supervisor shrugged his shoulders.

2011-09-08T23:06:00.004-04:00

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More damning information about Tuesday's fiasco.

And Kushan has become a four-letter word that administrators dare not speak.

GO DUKE!

Keep scrolling down now. First lawsuit in Potti case.. is next.

Potti Mess: 8 patients file first lawsuit, naming University, Duke Health and five doctors as defendants

2011-09-08T20:35:00.027-04:00

Search terms Anil Potti Duke University

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✔✔✔✔✔ Eight patients -- six of them dead and thus being represented by their families -- have joined to file the first lawsuit in the Potti Mess.

FC predicts this is just the tip of the iceberg. Potti had 109 patients in his clinical trials for lung, breast and ovarian cancer when Duke halted them last year. Earlier, an unknown number of other people had either completed the trials, quit or died. And still other patients underwent painful invasive tests to see if they qualified for the genome-based treatment.

In all instances, the patients gave "informed consent" to medical studies that were not what they were led to believe. The plaintiffs say Potti promised "better than the standard chemotherapy" that would have "a higher likelihood of a favorable response." He also promised that his work -- with huge grants from the American Cancer Society and others for cutting edge genome research -- was enhancing "the public good."

In fact, Potti had falsified both his theories and his tallies of patient experience. And the cancer society demanded and got its money back.

As Loyal Readers know, so far five of about 40 articles that Potti and colleagues wrote for distinguished medical journals have been retracted. There are at least two investigations underway, a public one by the Institutes of Medicine, and a faculty misconduct investigation held confidentially under federal law. We have no idea how many faculty are included in the latter investigation.

The defendants in the lawsuit are the University, its wholly owned Duke Health subsidiary, the cancer quack Dr. Anil Potti, his mentor Dr. Joseph Nevins, and three other Duke doctors with administrative positions. A cancer diagnostic lab, believed to be owned by Nevins, was also named.

The administrators are:

Dr. John M. Harrelson, a retired orthopedic surgeon who headed the institutional review board that gave a ringing endorsement to Potti's work in early 2010.

And Vice Deans Michael Cuffe and Sally Kornbluth of the Medical School who were among administrators who signed off on the Harrelson board's recommendations. (Dr. Cuffe is also in the news today because of his unrelated resignation to become president of the Hospital Corporation of America. See separate FC post)

Potti was finally uncovered last year, initially because The Cancer Letter spotted a faked Rhodes Scholarship on his resume. He resigned his faculty position several months later.

Duke has a tradition of refusing comment on litigation, so we did not even bother to ask. It also has a tradition of dragging lawsuits out, hoping to wear down plaintiffs and build up their expenses. This litigation will take years and years. The plaintiffs' complaint alone is 78 pages of legalese.

Yes, delay and delay. That's our university.

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Separately, by coincidence, the director of all genome research at Duke, Dr. Huntington Willard of the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, sent a lengthy and very candid evaluation of the Potti Mess to his colleagues yesterday, saying the start of a new academic year is a good time to reflect on "a teachable moment."

Fact Checker will post on this document over the weekend. Loyal Readers can jump the gun on us by reading the document themselves!

http://www.genome.duke.edu/people/faculty/willard/dirmessages/Message%20to%20IGSP%20Faculty%20-%20A%20Teachable%20Moment.pdf

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It is impossible to say how much money is at stake in the lawsuit already filed, which seeks actual compensatory and punitive damages. The plaintiffs ask innumerable times for "more than $10,000" but that is just pro-forma.

The cases were filed in Durham Superior Court. The plaintiffs are represented by the Raleigh firm HensonFuerst, and its partner Thomas W. Henson Jr. This firm has tangled with Duke before, most notably in litigation growing out of Duke's negligent use of used hydraulic fluid from elevators to wash sterile surgical instruments.

One of the most frequent questions asked of Fact Checker is whether Dr. Potti will pay for his own defense. While this gets bogged down in insurance and liability issues, the simple answer is "probably not." The school is going to be hit.

✔✔✔ The lawsuits go well beyond problems arising directly from the fake research and clinical trials conducted by Potti. Clinical trials are experiments on human beings to see whether a drug, a test or a procedure lives up to its promise, or whether risks outweigh benefits. And in Potti's trials, the plaintiffs say they were exposed to "improper and unnecessary chemotherapy."

Duke's response to the accumulating evidence of fraud is deeply involved in the lawsuits.

The plaintiffs say Duke knew about issues with Dr. Potti as far back as 2006 but chose to ignore them because he was a rising star who roped in big grants.

There is also an allegation that Duke's internal review -- started in late 2009 -- which cleared Potti with a glowing report -- was conducted by a panel with numerous ties to Potti and his mentor.

The plaintiffs allege Duke "threatened staff with retribution, including legal action" if anyone spoke up about Potti to reveal his fraud.

"The entire response by (Duke) to the accusation of invalid and fraudulent science was deceptive. misleading and fraudulent conduct designed to protect its reputation and proprietary interests ... rather than protecting the safety of the patients involved in the clinical trials," the lawsuit states.

✔✔✔ Duke's motive allegedly included profit, a hope to create tests based upon Potti's research, that would tell precisely what drugs should be used against a given cancer, considering also the patient's DNA. This would replace the current trial and error evaluation that doctors use.

The plaintiffs say that had Duke been able to license these tests, it stood to gain "billions" of dollars, a substantial fee every time a test was given world-wide.

Six of the eight plaintiffs have since died, according to the lawsuit. All suffered from lung cancer and enrolled in the clinical trials under the belief that they would receive extra help fighting their disease.

The living patients are a Richmond County man with lung cancer and a Buncombe County woman with breast cancer.

After his resignation, Potti joined a cancer care clinic in South Carolina, that treats patients and does clinical research. He applied for and was granted a SC medical license.

Thank you for reading and supporting FC.

Confirmed: Medical Center shock. Dr. Michael Cuffe, just appointed Chief Medical Officer for all of Duke Health, is resigning

2011-09-08T20:18:00.005-04:00

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✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ Chancellor Victor Dzau said tonight he has "unofficial" word that Dr Michael Cuffe, recently named chief medical officer for all of Duke Health, is resigning. He reportedly will become president of the Hospital Corporation of America, a giant in the health care field.

This is sending shock waves through the Medical Center, where Cuffe, extremely highly regarded, was seen as having the fast track to succeed Dzau if he decides to step down when his current contract ends in three years.

FC has also learned that Dr Paul Lee, opthomologist and a spear-head of the huge expansion of the Eye Clinic that is just beginning, is also leaving. That much is confirmed. We believe he is going to the University of Michigan.

Potti Mess: First lawsuits filed. Five doctors named. Eight plaintiffs, six of them dead

2011-09-08T20:15:00.002-04:00

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✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ Developing. Post after 2 AM

Kunshan is now a four-letter word avoided by Administrators

2011-09-08T02:20:00.001-04:00

We promised this post for Thursday. Our research and writing is not complete. Stay tuned.

FC continues investigation into tornado fiasco. More deficiencies uncovered. Cavanaugh toughing it out, silent

2011-09-07T23:26:00.010-04:00

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✔✔✔✔✔ Good day, fellow Dukies. FC here. Probative. Provocative. Pro-Duke.

A continuing Fact Checker investigation into the failure of the university's emergency notification system during Tuesday's tornado alerts has uncovered more deficiencies than were first apparent.

The university vice president in charge, Kyle Cavanaugh, ducked in his Allen Building cocoon for the second day on Wednesday, refusing to answer any FC inquiries. We even provided him with a cell phone number to reach us after hours. It's too early to tell if Cavanaugh will enlist Vice President L-Mo as he did during another failure last spring, and write a letter to the editor of the Chronicle trying to wiggle out of all accountability.

And Vice President Michael Schoenfeld, who has specific responsibility to provide information about alerts under emergency protocols established on April 15, 2009, also ducked us.

✔ The protocols provide for a three-tier alert system; we have been unable to find out basic information, like which level Cavanaugh or his designee declared when the National Weather Service first announced a day-long tornado watch for the entire region. As Loyal Readers know, a watch means a high potential for tornado activity. A warning is an escalation -- imminent danger to life and property -- because a funnel has been sighted or radar gives indications of formation.

We do know that at some point -- how early we do not know -- the watch was listed on Duke's website, but no other steps were taken. People who had signed up for e-mail advisories, for example, received nothing at this point.

We have also not been able to find out, in building a timeline, if Duke still subscribes to a private weather service -- revealed last April in an earlier fiasco -- and if so, when alerts from this service arrived.

And we do not know if Cavanaugh or his designate moved Duke to a higher tier in its internal protocols when the National Weather Service escalated to declare tornado warnings. The warnings occurred twice during the morning and once in the afternoon.

✔✔✔ We demanded to know why no notice whatsoever was given of the morning warnings.

✔✔✔ We asked about the afternoon warning, why some methods of notification that the emergency plan provides for were employed -- and others were not. We demand to know why this discrepancy occurred.

One method is the internet. We did not monitor Duke's three websites providing DukeAlert information at the time, so we are unable to provide an assessment. In the past, a student writing on the Chronicle blog noted "The "Duke Alert" page was a challenge to find"

We know that people who signed up for e-mail alerts received notification of the afternoon warning. A half hour late.

✔✔✔ But the sirens that surround all areas -- West, East, Central and the medical campus -- were not employed. At UNC, in the same forecast area as Duke, the sirens sounded twice. As we noted in our report yesterday, these procedures and the sirens were put in after the Virginia Tech massacre, and are used for any life-threatening situation on campus. If someone pushes the button.

And we have been unable to trace where Cavanaugh -- who is at the vortex of the university's emergency planning -- was at the time, and what methods there are to communicate with him. If there was a duty officer, we cannot find out his or her name.

✔✔✔ Deputy Fact Checkers have picked up on a debate among Dukies -- whether tornado activity was in fact close enough to campus to merit great concern.

This discussion is beside the point: the National Weather Service having upgraded to an alert, it was incumbent upon Duke to provide this information. And having decided to fulfill this responsibility -- as Duke did on one of three occasions on Tuesday -- immediate notification was required -- not a lackadaisical half hour delay.

We want Cavanaugh to explain precisely why the earlier alerts were ignored, and the last acted upon. There is nothing in the official Weather Service bulletins that would allow FC to make that distinction.

✔✔✔ Last spring, another failure involved a good dose of stupidity.

The siren system is tested once each semester and once during the summer. The purpose is two fold: to make sure the sirens are working and to familiarize people with them.

So far this semester, there has been no test. Meaning one/fourth of all undergraduates have no orientation.

Last spring, the test was scheduled for April 21st, with advance notification throughout Duke and the surrounding neighborhoods. No, we have no idea in hell why the tests aren't held on the first day of the semester.

April 21st. But three days earlier, a severe storm smacked its way through North Carolina, and at the height of the rain, wind and fury, someone at Duke got the bright idea to test the sirens right then. To make sure they would work in case they were needed.

This caused -- to put it mildly -- a great deal of confusion on what was happening, and how individuals should respond.

As a Chronicle editorial noted, at least students had the Weather Channel on cable TV. We are checking, but believe that is no longer available since Duke has given up cable TV service and substituted transmissions over phone lines that do not include all cable channels.

More from the editorial: "Whether or not students are in real physical danger is beside the point. Students deserve to be made aware of severe weather activity. This is all the more important when the campus is buffeted by wind, rain and talk of tornadoes. DukeALERT could allay much of the student anxiety generated by imminent severe weather by updating students on the status of the weather and, more importantly, by letting students know what to do if the worst does happen."

On Tuesday, it was deja vu: OK we hear the tornado alert, we want to take action, but what?

✔ Our list of failures would not be complete if we did not note a major continuing snafu during 2010. On many occasions, alert e-mails sent out by L-Mo did not go through.

We tried to inquire at that time, but he squiggled away: we wanted to know precisely when L-Mo discovered this and what he did about it.

✔✔✔ The administrator in charge of this mess, the emergency coordinator, Vice President Kyle Cavanaugh, has a deep obligation to explain these failures to the entire community. We are sad to report that he apparently views his job differently.

When Cavanaugh first arrived at Duke from the University of Florida in 2008, he earned praise from Fact Checker. Specifically we mentioned his role at forums for worried employees facing possible layoffs.

Cavanaugh seemed particularly helpful, a far cry from the humppphh that we heard from his boss, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask.

That has changed. Cavanaugh has turned either indifferent or arrogant. He -- like Shoenfeld -- has gotten a severe case of Brodheaditis. This is an unctuous disease that spreads from the head down, for which there is no medicine. Rather, it requires surgical removal of the host. More and more, we believe this is going to be necessary.

Thank you for reading FC.

Big lag in tornado alert. Administrators duck FC questions

2011-09-06T18:04:00.021-04:00

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✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ An initial Fact Checker investigation shows very serious -- and potentially life threatening -- deficiencies in Duke's response to three tornado warnings from the National Weather Service -- high level alerts meaning imminent danger -- on Tuesday.

Late yesterday afternoon and last night, Duke's emergency response coordinator, Vice President Kyle Cavanaugh, and the Brodhead Administration mouthpiece, Vice President Michael Schoenfeld, ducked e-mails and phone calls seeking a minute-by-minute timeline of the university's response and other information.

Their refusal to be transparent, however, will not shield them from accountability. FC is on the case!!

✔ During much of the day, the entire central region of North Carolina was under a tornado watch as remnants of Tropical Storm Lee pounded the area. By definition from the Weather Service, this means that conditions are ripe for the development of a tornado.

✔ On three occasions, the Weather Service upgraded the alert to a tornado warning, meaning tornadoes may be imminent. (Relax, either spelling with or without the e is correct.)

This level alert can be issued after a tornado or funnel cloud has actually been spotted, or after radar shows indications of tornado formation. The warning means that people should take immediate precautions.

One of these warnings was issued at 1:31 PM by the weather service. By 1:35, WRAL-TV and other outlets had broadcast the alert.

Duke has several methods in place to notify people of extreme danger -- a system similar to that developed by many universities after the massacre at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, that killed 32 and wounded 25.

One of these methods is an e-mail blast.

A Deputy Fact Checker who has subscribed to receive these e-mails reports that the first one was not sent until 2:01 PM -- meaning people were exposed for a full half hour to a danger that was established and known. The tornado warning was cancelled at 2:15 PM, meaning people were exposed two/thirds of the time it was in effect.

Duke apparently did not deploy another of the methods of notification: sirens that have been placed strategically all over campus. We say apparently because our survey was limited and none of our Loyal Readers who responded heard the sirens where they were.

At the University of North Carolina -- just seven miles away and covered by the same forecasts as Durham -- the sirens went off twice, once around 11:30 AM and then around 1:37 PM for the alert where Duke did not get out an e-mail until 2:01 PM.

With more urgency than at low-key Duke, Carolina buildings were evacuated, classes were ended and people hustled to the interior on lower floors. On one occasion everyone in the student union -- a building with particular exposure -- was rushed down to a part of the building that seemed safer. It was a text and twitter's paradise, ending when one person said, "Thank you for visiting our basement."

✔ Duke Today, the on-line "newspaper" for Duke employees, posted the following at 12:30 PM, "Since this morning, two tornado warnings have been issued and subsequently cancelled by the National Weather Service for Durham County."

We do not know about these warnings since we sleep late and then go to morning meetings.

But we do know that Cavanaugh and his emergency preparedness team did not take any proactive steps when faced with these two warnings of imminent danger.

Afterward, the "newspaper" Duke Today asserted "these storms were actively monitored by Duke officials and were determined, based on the direction of the storm, not to pose a threat to the Duke campus."

Bullshit.

Pure bullshit, Mr. Cavanaugh. As the Weather Service website tells us, tornadoes are volatile and unpredictable. This is not a hurricane that sets a path, and a week later is still aiming at its target.

Rather, "Some tornadoes have changed direction mid-path, or even backtracked. A tornado can double back suddenly, for example, when its bottom is hit by outflow winds from a thunderstorm's core."

And this line, "Tornadoes can appear from any direction." So your watching and waiting, Mr. Cavanaugh, was the wrong move.

See http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/

We believe that Duke also subscribes to a private weather service, and one of our interests -- had Cavanaugh or Schoenfeld thought enough about the safety of students, faculty, staff, patients and visitors to respond -- was to find out what additional information was provided. We also wanted to know what departments of the university were alerted, for example Duke Police, and what mobilization meant.

According to a PR handout, Duke tests its sirens three times a year. Once each semester, and once during the summer. The aim is to make sure that everyone is familiar with this system. However, at the moment one fourth of the student body has never experienced a test, and we have no idea when one will be scheduled.

This morning's post concerns a specific set of circumstances yesterday. We regret to say the lack of response from Cavanaugh and Schoenfeld has become the general rule of an imperial administration. In the past, a legitimate inquiry of such urgency would not be ignored and indeed it would have been welcomed; in the Brodhead years, people asking questions are regarded as pests.

This is a festering sore that shows no signs of healing, and probably will only be cured by surgical removal of its source.

Thank you for reading FC and loving Duke!

Duke plans big blow-out for 9-11 anniversary, in sharp contrast to ignoring Veterans Day and Memorial Day.

2011-09-06T03:47:00.015-04:00

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✔ Duke University is planning several events to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, culminating with a program in the Chapel next Sunday afternoon. Dukies should attend these observances and contrast them with the continuing neglect of our heroic classmates, faculty and staff who gave their lives in the nation's wars.

In the Chapel, the program will include a performance of Mozart's Requiem -- symbolic of mourning and consolation -- by the Chapel Chair, Duke Chorale, the Choral Society of Durham and the Orchestra Pro Cantores.

There will also be remarks by President Brodhead, Durham Mayor William Bell, Dean of the Chapel Sam Wells and Duke's Muslim chaplain, Imam Abdullah Antepli.

FC has long pointed out that while Duke promptly erected a memorial to the six Dukies who happened to be in the World Trade Center on that September day, and while the Alumni Department has laid a wreath every year, Duke neglected for more than half a century the campus memorial to our war dead. That is, the memorial not to people who per chance were attacked, but to men and women who deliberately stepped into harm's way.

It was only after intense pressure -- intense -- with repeated batterings of Brodhead in newspapers and blogs -- that Duke fixed the war memorial and rededicated it two years ago.

But then it fell into neglect again. There were no observance of Memorial Day nor Veterans Day until another furor. And then a minimal effort, just an Alumni Department wreath.

Aside from the re-dedication of the war memorial, Brodhead has never spoken out about Dukies who gave their lives in the nation's service, possibly because he -- and just about everyone else in his administration -- never had the honor of wearing a uniform in the Armed Forces.

Neither has Dean Wells, who came to Duke from Cambridge, England, spoken. Nor has the Chapel been used.

This is a study of contracts. FC thinks 9-11 is overdone, and Duke continues to neglect its veterans.

On a national scale, we point out that a member of our Armed Forces who is killed in battle will only leave his family a small life insurance policy that he or she has paid for personally through payroll deductions. In some instances, there will be continuing salary benefits. But the families of those killed in 9-11 have gotten multi-million dollar awards, from a federal fund set up to keep them from suing the airlines whose jets were hijacked during the attack, and from generous public contributions. Another study in contrasts.

(The 9-11 memorial was temporarily moved to allow for construction of the new Keohane Quad dorm)

Superb editorial in Chronicle takes aim at Brodhead Administration

2011-09-06T02:19:00.002-04:00

It's the kind of editorial that we usually have to wait until second semester to see.

It's well conceived, well executed, emphatic. And it takes direct aim at the Brodhead Administration for top-down control, leaving students out of decisions that directly affect them.

Loyal Readers, this contempt by the administration for the proper role of others in the governance of Duke also infects relationships with the faculty and with alumni. It is tragic.

Here's a link. The first time that FC has posted a link to the Chronicle!

http://dukechronicle.com/article/transitions-exclude-student-voice

Guest FC: Human rights concerns surround Fuqua's entrance into Kazakhstan

2011-09-06T01:50:00.010-04:00

FC is developing a new website that will allow for even more input from Loyal Readers!!

✔✔ By a member of the faculty: The Fuqua partnership to run a business school with Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan should raise eyebrows.

First reported by Fact Checker on August 9, it was confirmed by the administration for publication in The Chronicle and the Triangle Business Journal, conveniently just as students return. It allows Duke to trumpet its international reach and conveniently distracts attention from Fuqua's Kunshan project, widely seen as dead in the water with the departure of Dean Blair Sheppard of Fuqua and nigh-on insurrection among its faculty.

But perhaps the rather more sordid story is the willingness of Duke to cavort with Kazakhstan's leader, Nulsultan Nazarbayev -- who built the Nazarbayev University and had it named after himself -- and associate itself with Kazakhstan's less-than-gleaming human rights record.

The international monitoring group Freedom House categorizes Kazakhstan as "not free" on a score of the country's political rights and civil liberties record, rating its political rights as being second from worst on its scale, and civil liberties only a notch higher. In its 2010 report, Freedom House notes that these assessments continue on a downward trend due to media crackdowns, arbitrary arrests and "grossly deficient judicial proceedings" against a human rights activist, Yevgeny Zhovtis.

In a 2011 report, the US Diplomatic Mission to Kazakhstan lists an even greater litany of complaints about human rights abuses: "severe limits on citizens' rights to change their government; military hazing that led to deaths; detainee and prisoner torture and other abuse; unhealthy prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of an independent judiciary; restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and association; pervasive corruption, especially in law enforcement and the judicial system; prohibitive political party registration requirements; restrictions on the activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); discrimination and violence against women; trafficking in persons; and societal discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender persons, and those with
HIV/AIDS."

Administrators in the Fuqua Business School have sought to assure faculty and students that they would not enter into partnership with an institution if, according to a report in The Chronicle, "they were unsure that Kazakhstan would make education and academic freedom top priorities."

The same Chronicle report quoted Dr. Michael Merson, director of the Duke Global Health Institute and interim vice president and vice provost for global strategy and programs, as describing Kazakhstan as “a region of the world that has been a bit turbulent and is trying to invest in terms of human capital.” This is an astonishing outburst of chutzpah, and a strong a contender for the most euphemistic statement of 2011. This quote might well have been applied to the US during the era of slave transportation.

Jennifer Francis, senior associate dean for programs and Douglas and Josie Breeden professor, and Valerie Hausman, assistant dean of global business development and executive education, are the Fuqua administrators behind the plan and are less shy about their descriptions: “Fuqua believes that in order to effect change in the world, it is important to actively engage in the regions of the world that matter,” Francis and Hausman said. “We will be involved to the extent that we can help promote innovation and critical thinking around global business issues. This is consistent with our global strategy.”

It is intriguing to note that for Francis and Hausman, effecting "change in the world" means "innovation and critical thinking about global business issues."

Global businesses have consistently been at the bulwark of thwarting human rights, and the only "innovation" in changing the world has usually been to find ever more cunning ways to get round the weak international standards that do exist. Their further comment, that Kazakhstan "could be a major player in the world economy because of its wealth of natural resources, including oil" belies the real thrust behind the current Duke administration's extension of its international tentacles.

All this suggests that either Fuqua has a cavalier attitude towards human rights, and is happy to engage with odious dictators with the right money, or that, despite the spin, entities like Fuqua are driving Duke's global strategy even while, with the departure of Dean Sheppard, they remain effectively rudderless. Either interpretation does not bode well for the current administration, Duke's academic reputation, or its "global strategy".

Masked gunmen holds up three grad students just off West Campus

2011-09-05T06:42:00.001-04:00

✔✔✔ The semester was barely five days old when three female grad students were held up at gunpoint by a man wearing a mask over his face.

This Durham on Duke Violence happened at 1 AM Saturday about half a mile off campus, near an apartment complex filled with Dukies at 2750 Campus Walk Avenue. (Please note: despite the name of the street, these are privately owned off-campus apartments.) We anticipate Duke will omit this crime from its Clery Report, a federally required tally of crime on and near campus that is full of loopholes.

Directions to this location: from the Law School, go out Tower View Road, which soon becomes Morreene Dairy Road. Campus Walk runs to the right, to connect with South LaSalle Street. Loyal Readers will recall several serious crimes last year against Dukies on South LaSalle within a half mile of Saturday's location -- including the robbery of two friends from China on consecutive nights.

The victims this time were also Asian. The gunman described as black. He took personal belongings and fled on foot. There were no injuries.

Following this, we got the usual pap from the Brodhead Administration. Extra patrols.

We had been assured last year that this precise area was going to get extra patrols by both Durham and Duke Police. But Deputy Fact Checkers who spent hours there at night saw only minimal police presence -- presumably also the observation of local thugs.

In fact, this is just one of four areas that Duke Police have promised supposedly "extra" patrols. The Administration has refused and refused to answer our questions about where this manpower was coming from -- if some other areas were being stripped.

The administration has also refused to answer our questions about the overall strength of the department, and to see whether it includes as many officers as the latest Clery Report states.

Sounds like a good project for student government.

Duke dining: administration eats crow. After not announcing changes, there is no announcement of their withdrawal either

2011-09-05T01:57:00.012-04:00

Loyal Readers will recall last week's major essay on the lack of student input into decisions directly affecting their lives.

This was sparked by significant changes in Duke dining -- including manipulating the "merchants on points" program in a way that would have made it impossible for some eateries to continue to participate. The changes would also have put new restrictions on delivery hours to dorms.

(For Dukies puzzling about Merchants on Points, this allows some dollars in pre-paid Duke dining plans to be used off campus, in eateries that have a deal with Duke.)

The changes were not announced to students. People trying to order food found out.

And now, while students were eating mystery meat in Marketplace and the Great Hall, the administrator at the heart of this fiasco has been made to eat crow.

After negotiations described as intense with student government, the changes were rescinded. At least for this year.

Guess what, no one announced this either.

The administrator running this show is assistant vice president Rick Johnson, head of housing and dining under VP Larry Moneta. He's destined to rise in the Allen Building ranks -- because faced with the lack of student input, he cited a meeting last spring that he did not attend as proving there was consultation.

Nice try Rick. Next time you dine in the Great Hall, I hope they give you two lumps of gravy instead of one, as a thank you.

First Nifong. Now Cline. In Part 1 of series, Raleigh News and Observer points to illegal conduct by Durham DA

2011-09-04T23:53:00.008-04:00

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✔✔✔✔✔ Michael Nifong needs no introduction. Durham District Attorney in 2006, he falsely accused three white members of the Duke lacrosse team of raping a black stripper at a house party, roiling town and campus alike. The players were declared "innocent" by the state Attorney General and they are now suing. Nifong was later stripped of his law license, sent to jail for a symbolic one day for criminal contempt of court; today he's morally if not financially bankrupt as he claimed.

And now his elected successor, District Attorney Tracey Cline, is under fire for very similar conduct: misstating facts to judges and failing to provide evidence favorable to defendants as required by North Carolina law.

Part one of a three part series called "Twisted Truth" in the News and Observer on Sunday says Cline is under investigation in at least six cases.

Example: Cline stated to a judge that the state crime lab was to blame for years of delay in tests on crucial evidence in a burglary and home invasion prosecution. In fact, the newspaper reported, Cline waited more than three years to submit the evidence to the lab.

And when the evidence was finally tested, none of it matched the defendant.

Another example: a judge found that Cline and a deputy violated the rights of a man charged in the death of a two-year-old girl. Result: the defendant was set free when the judge found that prosecutors deliberately withheld information they were obliged to give the defense under North Carolina law.

"I would not sit in a courtroom and lie. I wouldn’t," Cline told the newspaper in an email message. "That is not who I am. And anybody that knows me will tell you that. But people make mistakes.’"

Here's a link. This is Pulitzer Prize stuff:

http://www.newsobserver.com/twistedtruth/

Communist Party stirring for new crackdown on internet in China.

2011-09-04T15:22:00.008-04:00

Loyal Readers have sent us several news articles this weekend about a new crackdown on the internet that is possible in China. This seems to set up a collision: on the one hand, President Brodhead's assurances about full access on the Kunshan campus, and on the other, the Communist Party and its grip on government.

Reuters, the international news agency, says there are "signs that Beijing, jolted by the growing audience and influence of Twitter-like microblogging websites, is weighing fresh ways to tame and channel online opinion."

Several party leaders joined in a long op-ed in the People's Daily -- the main newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party -- warning that Party control is at risk unless the government takes firmer steps.

"Among the many controversies stirred up on the Internet, many are organized, with goals and meticulous planning and direction, and some clearly have commercial interests or political intentions in the background," said the commentary.

"Unless administration is vigorous, criminal forces, hostile forces, terrorist organizations and others could manipulate public sentiment by manufacturing bogus opinion on the Internet, damaging social stability and national security."

China already heavily filters the Internet, and blocks popular foreign sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

The commentary listed a string of offending actions that have had their origin in microblogs. The first was the public outrage over a fatal crash on the bullet train -- the very train that former Dean Blair Sheppard touted as giving Dukies in Kunshan 9 minute access to Shanghai.

The bloggers aimed outrage at government officials for evasive statements, safety failures and feverish expansion of high speed rail. The trains now have been slowed down.

"In Internet battles, usually negative views crush positive ones," said the People's Daily, adding that extreme online opinion abounded with "unvarying suspicion of government policies, official statements, mainstream viewpoints, the social elite and the well-off."

The commentary said that the Chinese government had shot itself in the foot by letting Internet technologies take off and win huge followings before effective control was in place. That must change, it said.

"We have failed to take into sufficient account just how much the Internet is a double-edged sword, and have a problem of allowing technology to advance while administration and regulation lag," said the commentary.

Once the government tries to control an Internet technology that has already become popular, it faces "fierce resistance and a backlash" from users, and also international criticism, said the newspaper.

"Clearly, in the future when developing and applying new Internet technologies, there must first be a thorough assessment, adopting even more prudent policies and enhancing foresight and forward thinking in administration."

Hmmm we used to be Blue and White

2011-09-04T01:58:00.004-04:00

From WRAL TV's website

"The Blue Devils warmed up in their traditional blue jerseys and white pants, but they returned from the locker room with a new look. Duke's players donned black jerseys and black pants, running back onto the field as "Back in Black" by AC/DC boomed out of the speakers just before kickoff."

I am not sure what I think of this!!

A new academic year, but the same old tune for student rights

2011-09-02T00:54:00.025-04:00

Three posts this morning, two of them about football, highly appropriate for the weekend of the first home game. One post is sad: the expansion of the UNC football scandal into the Afro-American studies department. Another is hilarious: a Brodhead Administration's sell-out on Tailgate. The almighty dollar $$$$. Be sure to scroll down

✔ ✔ ✔ Good day Loyal Readers and all Dukies who are new to this blog and the university. This is FC. Probative. Provocative. Pro-Duke. The blog that is read first thing every day in Allen Building!

On the third day of the new semester -- which is to say, in record time -- the president of Duke Student Government, Pete Schork, confirmed that the Brodhead Administration had made major decisions directly affecting students without consultation.

The decisions involve student dining.

First decision: changing the way the "merchants on points" program works, which is to say sharp, new limitations on how a student's pre-paid meal plan can be used with off campus eateries, including those that deliver to dorms. Said Schork: "We were taken aback... just like you were.”

Second, there were also changes involving two on-campus eateries, the Tower and the Devil’s Bistro, news to Schork. "It is certainly troubling... You have to consult students first. It’s not okay to act first and notify students later.”

All this must be particularly frustrating for Schork for a number of reasons.

This is the same Pete Schork who has focused on "campus services" during his entire political career here, becoming the student government's vice president in this area as a sophomore, insuring he is totally familiar with dining options and might have been an excellent resource for administrators.

This is the same Pete Schork who drew this headline in the Chronicle during his junior year campaign for president: "Schork looks to increase student stakeholder voice." And who told a reporter his goal is to see students "empowered in ways they haven’t been before.”

The reporter wrote, "He also plans to improve the way... students help create policy."

And this is the same Pete Schork who now has a new vice president handling housing and dining policy -- mirroring the latest configuration in Allen Building so communication and consultation should be a given constant.

✔ ✔ Schork's predecessors got run over too by the Brodhead juggernaut. But not in the first week of the semester.

It was in December before president Awa Nur was rolled over, ironically also on a dining issue, two years ago. Her words: "I want to make my position on that clear... There is no way in hell that I am going to support that."

FC applauded her determination. She enjoyed all but unanimous student support. But it did no good; Allen Building rolled as it wanted.

✔ ✔ There are many other examples too.

Students returning two years ago for the fall semester discovered weekend housekeeping in the dorms had been eliminated -- no consultation -- assuring that vomit deposited on Friday night festered until Monday.

Yes, 2009 was a banner year. Duke Conversations, which allowed students to invite speakers for, of all things, a dinner round-table which sounds like precisely the atmosphere the administration seeks, was sliced and diced by 33 percent. No consultation. The impact was actually more than one third: fully half the Conversations had to be cancelled, and there was no more dining in the gracious and expensive Washington Duke Inn, although our Trustees feasted there on Duke's dime later that very week.

The administration also "merged" International House and the Center for Multicultural Affairs with great insensitivity to both students and staff, closed the student health pharmacy making a hassle to get a prescription filled, and even reduced the level of campus cop patrols while Durham hoodlums were having target practice with Duke students.

The granddaddy in FC's opinion was the construction of the new Keohane Quad dorm. We have no idea how this bubbled up as top priority. But when it did, The Supreme Undergraduate Dean Steve Nowicki (who apparently no longer tells freshmen to "Call me Steve") appeared before Campus Council with great fanfare, to invite students to join in the planning. Three weeks later, the guy down the Allen Building hall, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask, let slip that the architect was all but done with his work -- contributions of students be damned.

We subsequently wrote Steve, telling him we wanted to do an essay on student contributions to the dorm, what ideas had been accepted. And guess what, Loyal Readers, we're still waiting to hear from him three years later. Shame on you, Steve.

✔ ✔ The latest dining changes are the culmination of a lot of juggling and power-grabbing.

The story begins when Trask canned his vice president for campus services, Kemel Dawkins. T3 -- his initials and the insider's handle -- of course did not use the word "canned," but anyone who studied the arcane federal tax Form 990 could see what was happening to Dawkins salary. Oh you didn't study the 990? Luckily you have a Deputy Fact Checker on your side!!

The next to go was Eddie Hull, executive director of housing. Dispatched with great warmth by the Brodhead Administration's principal spokesman, Michael Schoenfeld: "He's chosen for personal reasons to move on to some new opportunities. If there's anything more specific, you'd have to talk to him about it."

✔ And now Jim Wulforst, the respected 15-year director of dining. Vice President for Student Life Larry Moneta spoke, parroting the words of Schoenfeld as if they have become part of this administration's operating manual: “It was a personal decision on his part to leave his current position. I can’t speak for his reasons.”

Wulforst actually listened to students. Not only that, he sent an e-mail to FC when we first started this blog, giving us contact information if at any time we had a question about dining. Unprecedented. I mean, unprecedented!

Wulfhost might have sensed trouble when L-Mo (Moneta, for people new to Duke) picked up some of Dawkins responsibilities, reorganized them and basically sought to give a new person the same job title as Wulforst. Sadly, nasty in fact, T3 and L-Mo and their ilk -- surely knowing what was afoot -- made Wolforst sit on the search committee to find his executioner.

✔ ✔ As Loyal Readers know, Wulforst was killed off last week. Timetable for departure immediate. By now, the man the search had uncovered, Rick Johnson, from that well known culinary masterpiece, Virginia Tech, had been on the job for nine months.

When Johnson first came in, he sat for an interview with the Chronicle's thoughtful and perceptive columnist, Gregory Morrison, who earns even more FC praise because he was the only op-ed contributor last year who regularly showed signs of actually doing research. Morrison served this university and his fellow students well as executive vice president of student government as a junior. He told FC he tired of elective politics and thus did not seek the presidency in his senior year.

In the Devil's Bistro, Morrison listened and then wrote: "Johnson will take a 'student focused' approach, in which incremental changes are tested with students to 'make sure we’re going in the right direction.'”

Hey, don't blame Morrison. That's what Johnson told him.

✔ ✔ We can't resist inserting here the comments of Campus Council Programming Chair Betsy Klein, who sat on the search committee. She revealed what she liked most about Johnson: in the words of a Chronicle story, "a commitment to incorporating student opinions into his future plans."

Klein e-mailed the Chronicle a response to its questions: "I could tell that he cares a lot about the student voice, and I think he will take our opinions into account for every major decision he makes."

Right on, Betsy, right on. You sure read Johnson right.

✔ We conclude this essay with more from Morrison. He had advice for the student government when one of his columns took a long-range philosophical look: "A good DSG president should have perseverance in the face of adversity."

He also had faith in the new administrative structure, housing and dining together, as L-Mo described it, putting "a huge chunk of student life under one umbrella." Morrison liked the student government response, as noted above, with a new vice president with a similar role.

Wrote Morrison: "I wonder what type of plans the two might hatch together?"

Yes, we wonder too, and it is Duke's loss that we are highly unlikely to find out during the tenure of the Brodhead Administration.

Thank you for reading FC. GO DUKE! Defeat Richmond.

Tailgate resurrected.

2011-09-01T21:42:00.004-04:00

✔ ✔ ✔ Six days ago, Dean Sue declared, “The word ‘Tailgate’ will never exist.” And Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek added, “We buried the term.”

Loyal Readers will recall the sanitized replacement: Game Day!! Whee!!!

What the Brodhead Admnistration buried, Coca Cola has now dug up. An official announcement from the Blue Devil IMG Sports Network says it will air the "Coca-Cola Duke Football Tailgate Show" live from a stage in Blue Devil Alley one hour prior to Duke home football games.

Hey they pay money! Cash! They can have Tailgate all they want!!

From the PR news release: "The show will be hosted for the 13th season by John Roth and will feature guests and interviews with a myriad of Duke University coaches, players and former players, including football coach David Cutcliffe and director of athletics Kevin White. The show will take a look at Olympic sports at Duke as well as preview and track the scores of games around the ACC."

Blue Devil Alley is located at the north end of Cameron Indoor Stadium near Krzyzewskiville. And the first show is Saturday at 6 PM, before the Duke-Richmond home game.

New troubles for UNC football, as head of African American studies "resigns" over academic "irregularities"

2011-09-01T18:41:00.020-04:00

✔✔ The football scandal at UNC in Chapel Hill took an ominous turn yesterday, moving beyond the athletics department into the academic heart of the university. Thus, while we usually restrict ourselves to Duke, this merits a Fact Checker report.

A grim statement from Chancellor Holden Thorp revealed "irregularities" in courses offered by the University's Afro-American Studies Department, including one course taught by the chair himself and another by a sports agent who simultaneously represented UNC athletes.

Previously, some UNC fans had been able to laugh off the scandal, which, after all, in its early stages involved some one's delving into the disposition of parking tickets that football players received. But this revealed a pattern: a link to a car dealer currently in federal prison for money laundering.

One early focus: the talented receiver Greg Little who, in two months time in 2009, got 16 parking violations on a Dodge that had three different license plates. In one three day period, Little got three tickets, same car, different plate. And on the 13th unlucky day of April, he got two tickets, same car, with different plates.

With play for pay lingering in the air, there were also allegations that an assistant coach took cash from an agent; that a former UNC football player who is now an agent had access to current players in the weight room; and that numerous athletes accepted trips, parties and other perks. 14 UNC players missed part of last season, at least seven sitting out the entire season. Still, there was hope that academic integrity had not been compromised, even though all this other shit was going on.

✔✔ Yesterday, Thorp announced the "resignation" of chair Julius Nyang’oro: “Because academic integrity is paramount, we have every obligation to get to the bottom of these issues... This process has been difficult, and we’ve been through a lot this past year, but the only right thing to do is to pursue the facts and fix the problems.”

Because of the sensitivity of this move, Thorp was impelled to state he had his cards lined up, with specific support of the Chairman of the Board of Trustees Wade Hargrove and UNC-system President Thomas Ross.

Thorp followed the same formula when he had to can Butch Davis, the head football coach, on July 27: "I have lost confidence in our ability to come through this without harming the way people think of this institution. Our academic integrity is paramount, and we must work diligently to protect it. The only way to move forward and put this behind us is to make a change.”

There was another casualty: athletic director Dick Baddour, who served 14 years as athletic director, and 44 years in total at UNC.

Nyang’oro was the only black chairman of a department in the College of Arts and Sciences. Moreover, the department has been battered by UNC's budget cuts. For example the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History and the Institute of African American Research both suffered budget cuts of 20 percent this year alone.

Nyang’oro became a focus of the football scandal in July when it was found that former defensive end Michael McAdoo had plagiarized a paper for Nyang’oro’s class, and the plagiarism had not been flagged despite the use of tracking tools on the internet.

Worse, when the issue got to UNC's Honor Court, the court ruled McAdoo had improper help from a tutor -- but overlooked what the internet tool showed. Shaken, Thorp instituted a faculty-led review of the Honor Court that is just beginning.

McAdoo, banned for life from college sports by the NCAA, is suing.

✔ Nyang'oro's was also surrounded by controversy because of his grade to football player Marvin Austin. He was in a 400-level course as a freshman, a move that required consent of the professor. He earned a top grade despite SAT scores that indicated he could not read very well at all. And no one got less than a B minus.

The Raleigh News and Observer later chimed in that Nyang’oro had hired a sports agent to teach a summer class popular with athletes, Foundations in Black Education, without bothering to inform the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences of his background.

Score one for Duke in dragging out the lacrosse litigation, again

2011-09-01T04:07:00.007-04:00

Read Fact Checker every day!! The boys in Allen Building do. There are three posts this Thursday morning. Be sure to scroll down. Have a good day!!!

✔ ✔ Duke University's lawyers got what they wanted in federal court yesterday -- the right to drag an amazing 233 people into the lacrosse litigation and stagger dates for their depositions during the next year.

Lawyers for lax players got the right to take an additional 60 depositions; it is possible the same person will be on both the plaintiff and defendant's list, and the federal court provided that each witness only has to be deposed once.

Another year! And it means that the most important depositions -- of President Brodhead and former Trustee Bob Steel can be delayed some more. Duke did promise it would not destroy e-mails and other evidence that the defense hopes to see. Some day.

Depositions are part of the pre-trial process. They allow lawyers to build their case with greater lee-way than when the witness appears before a jury. And they lock the witness into testimony, for the deposition can be used to detect any attempts to change the story.

Depositions also take a lot of time -- and run up legal bills mercilessly. Duke likes that idea, trying to wear down the plaintiffs and consume their lawyers.

And you thought the lax hoax was simple: a Durham loon lying about rape, and a dishonest prosecutor pursuing charges.

✔ Also in yesterday's court hearing: Duke did not succeed, yet, in having all the depositions take place in Durham. Plaintiff's lawyers pointed out that 29 of the plaintiffs now live in New York, New Jersey and Maryland -- and having Duke bear the expense of sending its legal team there might be fairer.

Background: generally speaking, we are talking about lawsuits against the university for violating player's privacy and other rights in dealings with Durham Police during the 2006 lacrosse hoax. The University settled with the three indicted players; these are from 38 other team members.

The city of Durham is among the defendants. But that part is on hold. The city has an appeal pending challenging its liability -- and when that's settled, it too will want depositions, dragging and dragging and dragging this out.

Lesson: if you want to sue someone, be prepared to have the defendant drag it out mercilessly.

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

2011-08-31T23:08:00.015-04:00

✔ 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

2011-08-31T20:17:00.015-04:00

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.

2011-08-31T03:13:00.007-04:00

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.

2011-08-31T02:11:00.008-04:00

✔ 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

2011-08-30T02:50:00.006-04:00

✔✔✔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

2011-08-29T00:42:00.011-04:00

✔✔✔ 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

2011-08-29T00:26:00.004-04:00

✔✔ 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

2011-08-27T20:36:00.019-04:00

✔✔✔ 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.

2011-08-27T11:28:00.015-04:00

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

2011-08-27T00:20:00.006-04:00

✔ 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.

2011-08-26T23:41:00.005-04:00

✔✔✔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

2011-08-26T04:37:00.023-04:00

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

2011-08-26T04:37:00.022-04:00

✔✔✔✔✔ 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

2011-08-26T04:36:00.026-04:00

✔✔✔✔✔ 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

2011-08-26T04:36:00.025-04:00

✔✔✔✔✔ 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

2011-08-26T04:36:00.023-04:00

"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

2011-08-24T23:47:00.064-04:00

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

2011-08-24T21:33:00.018-04:00

✔✔✔✔ 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

2011-08-24T18:55:00.011-04:00

✔✔ 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

2011-08-24T18:43:00.008-04:00

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

2011-08-24T15:32:00.011-04:00

✔✔✔✔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!

2011-08-24T15:15:00.008-04:00

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

2011-08-24T13:57:00.018-04:00

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

2011-08-24T00:46:00.011-04:00

✔✔✔ 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

2011-08-23T08:50:00.007-04:00

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

2011-08-23T01:40:00.004-04:00

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

2011-08-22T16:53:00.017-04:00

✔✔✔✔ 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

2011-08-22T12:25:00.018-04:00

✔✔✔✔ 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.

FC admits the following is a diatribe. Don't write in and complain.

2011-08-22T00:50:00.015-04:00

There are three posts today. Scroll down: changes in ACES. Parking rules for move-in days. And in case you missed our Friday post, Brodhead Administration giving up on opening Kunshan on present timetable.

✔ Since no one believes the news release that Blair Sheppard voluntarily stepped down as Dean of the Fuqua Business School -- with seven days notice, barely three months after Peter the Provost extended his term until the year 2017 -- you would think he would take a back seat for a while. Low profile, low key.

But no, with full chutzpah, there was Shep guiding Duke's male basketball players and hangers-on around the Kunshan Campus, as if nothing had happened to his career.

In his favor, the official story line was that he and former vice president Greg Jones noodled this meaningless publicity stunt, so maybe it was fair for Shep to see it through.

But as the trip progressed, we learned more and more that Shep and Jones weren't the only initiators, that there was a commercial motive as well: Nike -- which pays to outfit all Duke teams -- dictated the schedule. For example, having the Duke coaches and their Georgetown counterparts all in Shanghai on the same day for clinics festooned with Nike banners. The precise financial arrangements are secret, but we know that in some schools Nike cuts checks directly to the coaches, by-passing any salary scrutiny.

The gawking at the new campus was a vapid look-see by the team and its followers, avoiding the very substantial issues that swirl around this folly. Look at what one MBA student wrote in the English-language Shanghai Daily, to see the mistaken perspective:

"The premise is simple yet powerful. As Duke University embraces the necessity of preparing global leaders, it is important that its students learn about and get to know China from China, not solely from a classroom at the University's campus in Durham, North Carolina. This is about moving beyond the traditional four walls of a lecture hall into the world's teaching lab."

That's the vice president of the Fuqua student government speaking, one Fallon Ukpe, this position granting him a free-bee to bolster the numbers on the trip.

Slight problem, the Kunshan campus is for Chinese, we're lucky if a handful of students from Durham ever go there, or any from Kunshan make it to Durham, and a big qualm is what contribution this international venture will make to Duke in Durham. If any.

While the Chronicle's reporter on one of three buses in the entourage joined the excitement by saying he heard someone exclaim "wow!", at least the team -- which stepped from its charter jet wearing basketball uniforms -- did not don yellow construction hats for its pictures, avoiding duplication of the silly shot Brodhead and wife were in when they hit Kunshan in July.

✔ In one of his most ludicrous statements, Shep compared Kunshan with Palo Alto (home of Stanford, in case you are a Philistine), noting that both were within the ambit of major financial and cultural cities, Shanghai and San Francisco.

Now FC has been privileged to spend considerable time in Palo Alto and some in San Francisco, and so far as I know no one who practiced his or her religion -- whatever it was -- was beaten to a pulp by the government. So far as I know, every academic in Palo Alto who spoke his or her mind went on with his or her business right on his or her schedule -- no one interrupted by detention or shoveling into a gulag.

And all my friends and contacts in either city seem to get my e-mails readily, and respond freely.

Moreover, Palo Alto has given birth to Hewlett-Packard, and served as an incubator for Facebook, Google, Logitech, Intuit, Sun Microsystems and PayPal. Not bad for a city with a total population of 64,403. No one has called this place a backwater, nor went on a tour that was restricted to a couple college buildings under construction because there is nothing else in town to see.

It's hard to say what Kunshan's population is -- 1.2 million is mentioned for the city proper and surrounding areas -- because hordes of people are not counted as residents. They are peasants who left the rice paddies in rural China in search of a better urban life.

Rather, they find themselves crowded into dormitories behind barbed wire, protected by safety nets in case they try suicide from the upper floors, all in the walled compounds of the factories built by exploiters from Taiwan where they typically labor 72 hours a week. Sample job: one woman whose sole responsibility was to stick four rubber pads on the bottom of each mouse whisking by on an assembly line.

As he led people along a boardwalk above the marsh around the campus, Shep specifically praised the never-before tried curved glass wall in one of the rising buildings. Whoops. So far as FC can determine this is the wall that would not hold up the roof, prompting Duke to spend an extra $5.5 million on architects and engineers to make sure everything was up to Duke standards.

And the former Dean noted that, unique in China, you'd be able to drink the water on campus. Uhmmm our understanding is that some of the water will be from rain basins near land fertilized by human excrement, some of it from recycling. So if you don't mind the cold stream arching from the cooler toward your face being hot urine just an hour ago, you're all set.

✔ Yes, as Shep continues to sing praises of Kushan, let's remember he is the one who sold us a bill of goods. He said Kunshan would not cost Duke a cent and we'd have 20 years free occupancy of the land and buildings. Today's truth: we have a six year lease, and Kunshan has negotiated its share of the subsidy down to 45 percent over the next five years, and we have no idea in hell what will happen after that.

Let us remember Shep is the one who planned a masters program with classes twice the size of Durham, with only 25 percent of the faculty holding appointments in Durham, the rest being far cheaper adjuncts. Shep is the one who foresaw tuition of more than $40,000 a year, because, he explained, Chinese who pay through the nose think they are getting quality. Never mind that the government is only likely to approve a tuition for $5,000 to $10,000, Shep assured his faculty that within two years, Fuqua would be making money on Kunshan, as if turning a quick profit were a value here at Duke.

And Shep was the one who thought all this would sail through his faculty for approval, and then through the Academic Council. What a misreading: even in Fuqua there seemed to be only six professors out of 95 eligible to vote in June who were ready to approve. And campus wide, the chair of the Council said the only support he could find was "tepid," with no one stepping forward to "champion" the initiative.

All of this is bad enough, but just about the same time that Shep was speaking, President Brodhead was on public radio in North Carolina bragging that Kunshan would be just the first of a series (franchises?) of full-scale research universities spawned by Duke, spanning the globe. Given the official (and out of date) projections that this one alone will put us $40 million in the red over six years, one has to wonder how many sinkholes the President thinks we can afford all at once.

Upon departure from the Kunshan campus, basketball staffer Jeff Capel won the Brodhead Obeisance Award with his twitter, "Pretty amazing vision by the leaders at Duke."

We note that no one went on the supposed nine minute train ride into Shanghai but rather changed hotels, trading up from a Marriott in the lake country west of Kunshan into a Ritz Carlton.

✔ OK enough of the diatribe. Let's look forward. As we reported last week, our administrators are ready to concede that we'll miss the August, 2012 opening date in Kunshan, but the issue remains how honestly this will be handled.

Will Brodhead himself speak? Will he leave it to Peter the Provost? Will they punt to the hapless Dr. Michael Merson, sitting in as VP for global strategy.

Or will our administrators just skip the coming announcement and let stakeholders figure it out. It won't be the first time.

The next few weeks will be very telling about their character and the way they view stakeholders.

ACES: University trying to cut down on sharing of Net-ID and passwords, making limited "guest" access available

2011-08-22T00:17:00.006-04:00

✔ A mole sneaked Fact Checker an internal memo signed by the Assistant Vice Provost and Director of Student Information Systems, and we share the gist with Loyal Readers.

(Hey, if you have stuff to sneak to FC, e-mail Duke.Fact.Checker@gmail.com. Be assured of strictest confidence, adherence to limitations you may went, and prompt deletion of your e-mail from our super computer. 16 gig memory!)

Students will be able to grant a guest -- a parent, spouse, anyone -- access to ACES, the Duke-developed computer interface. Hopefully this will reduce the number of students who share their Net-ID and passwords.

The student will be able to tell the system what he or she wants the guest to see. For example the bills without the grades.

In most instances the guest will be able to look -- but not change anything. One exception: the guest will be able to pay bills!

The assistant vice provost, Katharine Pfeiffer, advises this will be a "soft roll out." If a student finds it while browsing around, great. There will be no memo until the end of the first week of classes when Pfeiffer traditionally sends out a memo about computer experiences.

"This gives us the opportunity to get some experience with the new functionality, and reduces the possibility of an unwanted strain on the system during the advising (course selection) period. In a project this complex, there a bound to be a few things that need to be tweaked."

Pfeiffer adds that none of the changes will violate student rights under federal confidentiality laws.

Here memo lists what a student access a guest can potentially received, if the student checks the box:

Financial Aid Items:
Awards Package
Estimated Parent Contribution
To Do List
Student Financial Aid Budget
Loan History

Student Financials Items:
Account Activity
Bills
Payments Summary
1098T for tax reporting

Student Records Items:
Schedules
Academic History
Grades – final and mid-term
Bio/Demo Items

Demographics
Student addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses

The list from the Assistant Vice Provost did not include e-mail, so we will assume you cannot give someone else access. Time will tell.

The freshmen are coming! The freshmen are coming. FC plays the role of Paul Revere

2011-08-21T02:09:00.008-04:00

✔ There will be special parking rules in effect as freshmen move into their East Campus dorms on Tuesday, and upperclassmen arrive on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Some traffic will be detoured. Some parking lots restricted. All to make room for people who are unloading.

http://today.duke.edu/2011/08/moveintraffic2011

We're pleased to report there will be no inconvenience for the Academic Executives who get to park right on the main quad, so they only have to duck 30 feet into Allen Building and are not bothered.

These seven parking spaces -- quite close to the Few Quadrangles -- were carved out of the quad grass. Another series of spaces was carved on the other side of the traffic loop, to accommodate service vehicles.

Not only are they close, they are on the same elevation as Few. Other parking lots require a substantial hike up several flights of stairs.

FC feels that the spaces for Academic Executives in particular should be eliminated. On a campus where we designed a new dorm (Keohane 4) to allow people simply to hold the door for each other and otherwise have casual encounters, walking down from the Clock Tower each day would do our administrators good.

Potti Mess: 5th journal article retracted

2011-08-20T13:55:00.006-04:00

✔✔✔ The medical journal Blood has published a retraction of a 2006 article by Dr. Anil Potti, Dr Joseph Nevins and others that involved genome science and thrombosis.

This is their fifth retraction of their Duke research to date. Stay tuned.

Text from Blood follows

RETRACTION: Potti A, Bild A, Dressman HK, Lewis DA, Nevins JR, Ortel TL. Gene-expression patterns predict phenotypes of immune-mediated thrombosis. Blood. 2006;107(4):1391-1396.

The authors retract the 15 February 2006 paper cited above because they have been unable to reproduce the results that were performed independently by the first author, Anil Potti, regarding validation of predictive models for thrombotic phenotypes. It has also been recognized that multiple samples appear to be duplicated in the training and validation datasets pertaining to the analysis presented in Figure 2 of the paper, which was also performed by Anil Potti. Since these results are fundamental to the conclusions of the paper, the authors formally retract the paper. The authors deeply regret the impact of this action on the work of other investigators and apologize to the readers, reviewers, and editors of Blood.

Submitted August 19, 2011.

Mole: Provost, ready to acknowledge Duke will miss another Kunshan deadline, to set new timetable that would allow 2 year Academic Council review

2011-08-18T21:34:00.034-04:00

Be sure to scroll down for the shocking basketball pictures from Beijing: Georgetown and Chinese team riot on the same court where Duke will play Monday. We cannot confirm if we will face the same Chinese team.

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

Damn interesting too.

Two sources revealed on Thursday that Peter the Provost is planning to announce a major delay in opening the new Duke Kunshan University.

A mole in Allen Building told a Deputy Fact Checker that this will be highly embarrassing to the Brodhead Administration -- because the delay results from its own failure to consult the Duke faculty and from its gung-ho thrust that ignored clear early warning signs about finances and academic freedom. Already President Brodhead, Provost Lange and the mysteriously departed Dean Blair Sheppard of the Fuqua Business School have suffered rebuke; on June 1 the Fuqua faculty shot down two proposed degree programs that Sheppard designed on his own, tossing the entire Kunshan timetable into turmoil.

A second source -- consistently right on target -- told FC that the Provost has discussed in confidential meetings moving the current August, 2012 opening date to the following spring semester, that is, January, 2013. But the provost has apparently concluded that even that target may not be met, so the fall semester starting August, 2013 will be set.

This source says that Lange mumbled that he was unhappy -- but did not want to have to move the deadline yet again. Thus, August, 2013 was defined as "hard."

The mole says there is concern about how this will fly with the Trustees: how they will view the delay, and how it will reflect upon the Trustees themselves in general, and specifically on the special China committee headed by Vice Chair David Rubenstein (in the news yesterday for his mega-million gift to the Library).

It is impossible to get confirmation from the Administration, whose leaders have withdrawn into a tight circle. The Provost never answers FC inquiries, Vice President for PR Michael Schoenfeld only sporatically and never on mole reports like this.

✔✔ The Kunshan campus -- a radical concept with Duke's giving birth to a major research university in another nation, teaching indigenous students in English -- was originally scheduled for 2011.

August, 2013 will ironically provide two years for new debate about the venture -- the precise length of a moratorium that senior faculty -- led by Thomas Pfau, Eads Professor of English and Professor of German, and others -- have been proposing. The most important goal of the two years is to have the Academic Council -- with staff and a budget -- take an independent look at Kunshan. This would mark a dramatic turnaround in faculty involvement -- for up until now the Brodhead Administration has provided all the financial projections.

There have been general briefings when the faculty was told what had been decided, erroneously identified as consultation by President Brodhead.

Key unresolved issue: how much financing -- if anything -- the Administration is willing to give the Academic Council for its review. Even so, the principle of a top to bottom, independent review will be established.

✔✔ Don't count on the Provost to use the word "moratorium."

The Mole told the Deputy FC that framing the announcement of a delay is likely to involve as many meetings as making the decision itself. The PR must be postured so stakeholders and the public do not see this as a Brodhead failure -- but at the same time it must avoid the pitfalls of the announcement of Sheppard's voluntary departure which no one believes.

In fact, the administration has yet to inform the university-wide faculty itself, or alumni, or other constituencies of the June 1 Fuqua faculty meeting. The Chronicle did not bother to cover it either. So if you don't read FC, you are lost in the wilderness.

✔✔✔✔✔ There is no indication if, as part of the morator--- whoops, whoops -- part of the two year delay, Lange will release information that would allow stakeholders other than the faculty to conduct an intelligent examination and dialogue. When the Fuqua faculty considered two possible degree programs -- a step necessary to put the issue before the faculty's elected Academic Council to gain approval -- the Administration only begrudgingly gave up consultant's reports and other documents. The documents were intended only for limited Fuqua faculty eyes -- but FC got his hands on them, and after taunting Brodhead to release them generally or FC would do it, FC did post them.

We believe administrators are morally obligated to enable debate -- not only drive their own proposals to fruition. Enable debate, not try to stifle it, as is their pattern.

Here is some of the key information that is needed by stakeholders to consider the Kunshan Initiative anew. We call upon the Administration:

✔ To reveal the status of Duke's application to the local and national Ministries of Education to operate in China. And in particular, tell us what tuition the administration projected in the application. Has China answered? That nation's answer is past due.

As FC reported in May, there is a huge gulf, with Duke anticipating tuition of $41,000 for Fuqua programs and $46,000 for a masters offered by the Duke Global Health Institute. Duke's consultants have found Chinese families might pay up to $15,000 for degrees -- while the Chinese government has typically approved tuition of only $5,000.

✔ To be honest with us about likely operating losses. The numbers we have seen are a year old. Some numbers have changed; we know so.

As Brodhead emphasized last week in an interview with public radio in North Carolina, this is the first of a number of similar Duke start-ups around the world. Yes, Duke, the McDonalds of education; if only we can put golden arches over the main entrance to campus. Brodhead -- faced with losses that his team puts at $40 million in the next six years in Kunshan -- did not say how many of these sinkholes he thinks Duke can afford.

FC does not understand at all why we need bricks and mortar in these international cities. Certainly when Duke moved from being a regional school to a national powerhouse, Presidents Terry Sanford and Nan Keohane did not put up buildings in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. Rather, we should enrich what we do in Durham.

Strangely, Duke fell silent about all these other international adventures as opposition to Kunshan grew; one of the concerns has been that we are going in too many directions, too fast.

✔ To permit Executive Vice President Trask -- Duke's chief financial offer -- to speak freely on Kunshan; the muzzling of his comments, amid indications he questions the financial viability, is no longer acceptable.

✔ To provide to all stakeholders copies of documents negotiated with the Chinese about academic freedom. Months ago, Peter the Provost told the Chronicle a final agreement was at hand.

FC is particularly concerned about Brodhead's wishy-washy response to questions relating to access to the internet.

✔ To assure us that people of faith will be able to practice their religion on campus. And that Duke is making space available: a chapel, a prayer room, a meditation room. And to insure that Duke's motto - Eruditio and Religio -- appears on diplomas, along with the traditional seal which includes a Christian cross.

✔ To provide precise information about how Kunshan and all these other places will benefit the home campus. Brodhead's latter-day thought that faculty going to Kunshan would bring home new context for their teaching in Durham is rather weak, particularly given the small numbers of faculty involved.

✔ Lastly fund-raising. Ever since Brodhead came home empty handed from his unprecedented spree this summer through Europe, Asia and Africa, Michael Schoenfeld, PR vice president, has been promising a major announcement about a donation. Contributions like this -- quite apart from the fundraising to be conducted by Duke Kunshan University itself -- are key to Duke's meeting its obligations to plug the on-going deficits.

Total received to date: zero.

Brodhead did announce a pledge of $1 million a year for five years to ramp up fund-raising at Duke/Durham, the money to be spent in Durham to raise money to ship to Kunshan. He was vague at best, as to whether this would rob Duke/Durham of donors. For sure, it dilutes the attention he is able to give to the mother campus.

✔✔ So what else are the new leaders of our international aspirations doing?

After the faculty rejected Dean Sheppard's proposals, he had little time to get back to the drawing board before his very very rapid departure. So what's two-year Dean Bill Boulding been doing? There is little apparent in Fuqua -- a source tells us -- though he may be having small meetings with one or two members of the faculty. This is surprising; we expected him to land running.

And the interim VP for global strategy, Michael Merson, also has a low profile. FC has tried repeatedly via e-mail and phone to reach him about Kunshan. Plus, we want to discuss very substantial and disturbing questions sent in by an Institute faculty member involving Duke Global Health Institute, which Merson also heads. Next week we will write what we know -- with or without his input. (Update: our latest e-mail got an auto-reply that Merson is out of town until late next week. We'll give him to the 30th, a courtesy he has not extended to us in repeatedly failing to answer e-mails or phone calls.)

Thank you for reading FC and loving Duke. And have a good final weekend before the freshmen arrive.

Shocking pictures: Ugly riot at Georgetown BB game in Beijing. Duke heads to same venue for game Monday.

2011-08-18T15:39:00.014-04:00

✔✔Bad news all around from China.

First, more pictures from Kunshan, that tell the story with more emphasis than the Chronicle's shots. The stands were all but empty in the 6,000 person arena, meaning the city is hardly embracing the new Duke Kunshan University as its own.

http://slide.sports.sina.com.cn/k/slide_2_786_15674.html#p=3

You may notice Duke's coaches were not in their customary suit and tie. Kunshan temperature 97, humidity 81.

✔✔✔✔ Also in China... The Georgetown men's basketball team -- on a trip that parallels Duke's -- was involved in a riot in Beijing -- right on the court during a Friendship Game. When order was restored, Georgetown's coach marched his team to the locker room and forfeited.

We have not been able to confirm -- nor get a denial -- if the Chinese team involved in a riot with Georgetown last night is the same team that Duke will face Monday.

These pictures are the easiest to get to on line

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2027576/US-Chinas-basketball-brawl-Joe-Bidens-visit-marred-mass-fight.html

There are seven pictures in all in this set. A bit annoying to get to. Shocking!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/fight-ends-georgetown-basketball-exhibition-in-china/2011/08/18/gIQAs1zeNJ_story.html

The largest gift in Duke Library's history. As only Fact Checker can report it.

2011-08-18T00:30:00.024-04:00

✔✔✔ Fellow Dukies. Good day. FC here. Probative. Provocative. Pro-Duke.

Refreshing too. The following is not a press release.

Raising money from David Rubenstein is like shooting fish in a barrel. The multi-billionaire has promised to give half of all his loot away, part of The Giving Pledge organized by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and this magna cum laude alum is the new vice chair of Duke's Board of Trustees.

He also sits on 20 or 30 other boards, according to his own count, including being incoming chair of the Kennedy Center in Washington and vice chair (and head of the fund-raising committee) for Lincoln Center in New York. In fact anyone visiting Lincoln Center will probably stop by the Rubenstein Atrium across the street, to buy tickets and use the luxury bathrooms!

Yes, he's stretched thin. He even missed the Duke Trustee meeting at Commencement when he was elevated to vice chair.

Already on campus, we have Rubenstein Hall, part of the then-nascent Sanford School of Public Policy. He got that cheap in 2002, for only $5 million whereas most universities of our stature would require a donation to finance all of any named building. The dedication was noteworthy: former Secretary of State Colin Powell flew in to speak (we believe for a hefty fee), and Rubenstein himself thanked the anonymous admissions officer who admitted him -- and helped him meet the $2,000 annual tuition with a financial aid package -- forty years earlier. One part of the package: Rubenstein worked in the library.

In 2009, when Sanford wanted to become a full School, the highest ranking division of the university, its $40 million fund-raising effort was languishing -- until Rubenstein unexpectedly stood and tossed in the final $5.75 million.

So this time it's the library, $13.6 million. And no, we have no idea why he didn't round it off like to $14 million.

As a thank you, the official press release informs us that the Trustees are expected (trust me, the deal is sealed) to attach the donors name: The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. There are 350,000 printed volumes, more than 20 million items in manuscript and archival collections. Ancient papyri to records of advertising agencies trying to convince Americans that smoking was healthy. Yes healthy, thank you J Walter Thompson advertising, which has its archives at Duke.

Plus archival collections related to Women's History and Culture, African and African American History, the History of Medicine; Sales, Advertising and Marketing History to begin the list.

University Librarian and Vice Provost Deborah Jakubs: “What is distinctive about a school is in its special collections and archives” because all schools can subscribe to on-line databases and thus be equal.

This is the largest gift in the history of Duke Libraries, and yes, we did sell Bostock his memorial cheap, and Lilly too, and Perkins even cheaper. Duke simply has got to raise the prices on its buildings -- and its named professorships, because we are done giving fund-raisers high marks for lackluster performance.

In case you are wondering where this leaves the beautiful Biddle Rare Book room, the answer is, right where it is. Biddle houses part of the Rubenstein collection, as we understand it. The entrance to the primary collection itself is behind the Biddle Room.

Duke PR distributed a picture showing some outside touch-ups, with a new, small plaza at the entrance.

✔ Rubenstein has a particular interest in things like manuscripts and rare books. He is the person, after all, who prevented a copy of Magna Carta that had been in American hands from being sold back to a British citizen. His winning bid: $21.3 million.

Having already given the National Archives in Washington $13.5 million for a new visitor center (sound familiar, more bathrooms) and gallery, the next step seemed logical. He's made a perpetual loan of the Magna Carta to the Archives, were you can go to see it.

While Rubenstein may own Magna Carta, there is some doubt that he has read it (it is in Latin, circa 1215 AD) or understood it. It's the king being challenged, an end to total authority and recognition that ordinary people have rights.

Duke Trustee Rubenstein hasn't lived up to that at all.

FC has tried for months and months, e-mail after e-mail, phone call after phone call, to find out the membership of the Trustees special committee on China, which Rubenstein chairs. We wondered too if students and faculty were represented, as they are on other Trustee committees, and just by asking around if anyone heard of a representative, we conclude the answer is no.

There were tougher questions for King David (Rubenstein) as well. After the Fuqua faculty shot down the first two degree-granting programs planned for Kunshan, which was on June 1, we added an inquiry: how the faculty could look at the same data as Rubenstein's committee and conclude there was no way all this would fall together financially, while the Trustee committee endorsed the proposals. We wanted to know what due dilgence had preceded the endorsement.

Silence. Surprising no one.

✔✔ Rubenstein's wealth derives from the Carlyle Group, a private equity buy-out group that operates at the intersection of wealth, unbridled ambition, and Washington power. He was one of the co-founders. If you want a good introduction, fish out Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 911" which tears Carlyle apart while opposing the re-election of George W. Bush. Bush Senior has been a director of the Group.

Speaking at Harvard Business School, Rubenstein said, “I analogize [private equity] to sex...You realize there were certain things you shouldn’t do, but the urge is there and you can’t resist.”

Not everything has always gone right: when Mark Zuckerberg was still a Harvard student tinkering with the idea of Facebook, Rubenstein declined to meet him. He says this is his greatest regret.

✔✔ And finally, we wonder where Rubenstein's gift fits into the larger picture at Duke. We are past due a major fundraising drive -- something on the order of $4 billion. And gifts like this would typically not be announced until we were in the "quiet phase" when about one-third of all the money is raised.

The only thing we know about a fund-raising drive is that President Brodhead briefed the Priorities Committee on April 12, 2010. Correct, 2010. His silence is deafening.

Thank you as always for reading FC and loving Duke!

Duke basketball in Kunshan: big margin of victory, small crowd for first game

2011-08-18T00:15:00.008-04:00

Posted 2 AM Thursday

✔✔✔ And so our men's basketball team is in China.

We now have confirmation that the trek over was even worse than FC had predicted: the full day's delay, the flight plus a long bus ride to the hotel meant the team arrived at 2 AM Kunshan time, Wednesday morning.

Coach K, dragging his baggage thru the airport -- seen in an official picture on go.Duke.com -- seemed particularly weary.

After some rest, later on on Wednesday, the team and hangers-on went to the site of the Duke Kunshan University. Alas, no yellow hard hats for the pictures like Dick Brodhead and entouraged donned for show when he was on his summer spree in Europe, Asia and Africa. Basketball staffer Jeff Capel wins this week's Brodhead Loyalty Award, for his twitter, "Pretty amazing vision by the leaders at Duke."

The initial Chronicle account of the first game left out the name of the opponent, and the headline said incorrectly it was the Chinese Olympic team. Not that it mattered. As FC has been writing, the Olympic team is in London for a tournament; we got a U23 (under 23, for the uninitiated) team that has been practicing for less than a month. It seems silly to keep score, but they did: 77 to 64 Duke.

And if you study the Chronicle's pictures from Kunshan, you will see plenty of empty seats in the 6,000 seat arena -- meaning the Duke brand has room to grow among the locals.

✔ FC has received several e-mails about how this trip is possible -- given the NCAA's rules on when practice can start. Well, another set of rules allows summer travel once every four years.

This was a window of opportunity for Duke-- with Coach K having the summer off from responsibilities with the US national team.

Recall please, that Coach K took JJ Redick and Shelden Williams abroad when they were freshmen in 2002 -- and many believe they benefited not only from the trip but the 10 practices allowed beforehand. So with five incoming freshmen this year, voila, off we flew.

Second game, 9 AM Durham time, Thursday, on ESPNU and ESPN3.

Seattle Police: Formal murder charges against Duke doc. He could face death penalty. Gay partner stabbed 100+ times. Baby in bathtub, throat slashed

2011-08-16T16:47:00.030-04:00

Warning: gruesome details.

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In Seattle on Tuesday, police formally lodged aggravated first degree murder charges against Dr. Louis Chao Chen, who left Duke in July after a two year fellowship. The 39 year old endocrinologist -- still hospitalized with injuries that have never been publicly disclosed -- was ordered held without bond.

Washington State has the death penalty for this degree of murder. King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg has not yet decided whether to seek execution in the case. The alternative, upon conviction, is life in prison without possibility of parole.

Chen is scheduled for arraignment August 29th. The prosecutor must announce his intentions on the death penalty within 30 days.

Chilling details in court papers: Chen's husband of at least 11 years, 29 year old Eric Cooper, had been stabbed more than 100 times and had wounds to his face, neck, chest, back and hands. An adopted boy -- son of both men -- named Cooper Chen, nearing his third birthday, was also killed. Both may have been dead for three days.

Eric Cooper was sprawled in the living room, clad in boxers. Cooper Chen, also stabbed, his throat slashed, was in the bathtub.

There are also new details about how this was discovered: Chen's sister, becoming concerned she could not reach him, called the manager of a swank high rise apartment where Chen had rented the penthouse after arriving from Duke.

The manager knocked on Chen's door. The doctor spoke with him briefly from behind the closed door and said he would contact his sister.

There was another concern too. Chen missed an orientation meeting at his new position at Virginia Mason Medical Center. He did not answer his phone, and a personnel manager -- a nurse -- went to his apartment.

The property manager and Medical Center representative knocked on Chen's door. This time he opened it, and slumped as he did.

"The defendant was wearing no clothes," a detective said in court documents. "He was covered in dried blood, his right eye was swollen shut, and he was holding a box in front of himself."

The box was actually a meat cleaver with blood on it. Following instructions from the 911 operator, the nurse kicked this away from Chen and into the kitchen.

A butcher knife and a knife blade broken off from the handle were found in the living room. Three knives with reddish-brown stains were found on the bed of the master bedroom.

Chen -- semiconscious when police arrived -- was asked by the first cop who was administering first aid, "Who stabbed you and your partner?" Chen replied, "I did."

As for the timing of the violence, no one in apartment building in Settle saw Chen, Cooper or their son for three days. And electronic access cards hadn't been used for three days either. The timing has yet to be confirmed by results of autopsies.

✔✔✔✔✔✔
✔✔✔✔✔✔ The following is all based on reporting by The Seattle Times newspaper.

Chen and his partner shared a consuming desire to have a child.

Before going to Duke for a fellowship, Dr Chen was at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis, and laid plans for a child through a surrogate. This corrects an earlier report that the child had been adopted out of abject misery in SouthEast Asia.

Rather, the child was conceived with Chen's sperm and an egg from an anonymous Taiwanese woman. The child was carried to term by a surrogate mother from Oregon. The child -- born nearly three years ago -- was adopted at birth, and the gay couple gave him their names: Cooper Chen.

Quotes in the Seattle Times: "They loved that baby. They adored him," said a friend who had gone to medical school with Chen and is now a physician in Massachusetts. "It was one thing they always agreed on, and it was really very sweet."

The couple met when Chen -- from Taiwan -- was attending the University of Chicago School of Medicine 12 years ago. Cooper was 17, a high schol senior from Tinley Park, Illinois. A Cooper relative says he ran away from home to be with Chen; he was "head over heels in love with that man and followed him everywhere."

"He was a gay kid from a small-town high school," the Massachusetts physician said of Cooper. "He felt isolated. ... It was the kind of town where Chicago was the big city, but you didn't go there that often."

Chicago: with Chen studying for his MD, Cooper worked on his GED high school diploma.

San Diego: The couple moved so Chen could do a residency in internal medicine at the U of California.

Seattle: Chen changed his speciality to physical medicine and rehab at the U of Washington School of Medicine.

Back To San Diego: Chen changed his mind again about his specialty, returning to San Diego to complete his training in internal medicine.

Minnesota: Chen got a faculty appointment at the U of Minnesota and was an attending physician at the VA Hospital. Cooper earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota. The couple adopted their son.

Duke: Chen got a prestigious two-year (not three year) clinical fellowship in endocrinology. Chen loved his work, Cooper stayed at home with the baby, "very sweet, very nice and extraordinary" with their son. Cooper started an on-line flavored tea company that went nowhere. He made plans to go back to school to become a nurse. Cooper's interests included theater, non-Western cuisine and celebrity gossip, a friend said.

Duke has clamped the lid -- instructing everyone not to talk to reporters. Before this, Chen's supervisor, Dr. Mark Feinglos, praised him as "outstanding."

New job, Seattle: before moving, friends saw the couple's relationship eroding. But no hint of violence. They rented a high rise penthouse in the best neighborhood. And Chen -- after years in the closet -- came out and told his family about his husband and son.

"They completely accepted him, and his mother was excited to meet the child," said one friend. "She was coming out to Seattle to help them take care of him."

The plan: Chen and Cooper would separate amicably, Chen would rent a second apartment nearby, and they would co-parent their son equally. Apparently Cooper returned to Durham during this time, but later returned to Seattle.

The friend who related much of this information had not been in contact for three weeks. And then police were summoned to the penthouse. And Chen's mother flew to Seattle to find a lawyer for her son.

Update at 6:30 AM Tuesday Durham time: BB team's jet scheduled to land momentarily though we have no confirmation

2011-08-16T06:43:00.011-04:00

Scroll down for additional stories: Durham police claim crime rates are down. Our story says rape and homicide are up.

Note: for Loyal Readers who tried to follow the basketball jet on the Flightaware map, much of the Anchorage to Shanghai segment was outside of the website's tracking area. So we did get data, but not the moving map.

✔✔✔ The Duke basketball team and dozens of fanatic supporters should be nearing Shanghai airport after a grueling trip that included a delay of more than 24 hours because of a mysterious malfunction that prevented the original jet from taking off from Raleigh Durham Airport.

Mysterious because FC could not find out all day Monday what went wrong.

Luckily the replacement jet had some business class seats for the lanky team members. Yes luckily, because most of the possible replacements on charter operator North American Airlines did not. And the word "some" -- meaning only 20 comfortable seats versus the 40 first class and business class seats that were in the planned jet.

And in coach, everyone had to sit 3-3, meaning you had a one in three chance of getting a middle seat. Remember these fans paid between $12,000 (double room) and $14,000 (single) for this, but they were on notice. This is the plane originally scheduled when the trip was in the infant stages. Later a more comfortable jet was advertised and this is the one that failed.

Shanghai Airport: The next step, after customs, is a bus trip that we estimate will take as long as three hours. The airport is on the East China Sea, and the team must negotiate a teeming city of 22 million people and then travel thru outlying rice paddies to a hotel west of the backwater of Kunshan. We anticipate arrival at the hotel just before midnight Tuesday local time.

And then a whirlwind. Because of the loss of a day of rest and light practice, the planned visit to one of the ancient watertowns (think Amsterdam and canals) in the region apparently has been scrubbed; that's a shame because that's the only thing to see for dozens of miles around Kunshan.

There will be on Wednesday (local time) a quick visit to the construction going on for the planned Duke Kunshan University, and then later in the day a game in a 6,000 seat arena in town. This is not on the campus as some reports have indicated.

As of this writing, the precise time of the game is up in the air. So is the opponent. Originally billed as China's national Olympic team, all the best Chinese players are in London for a tournament. So we'll see who dribbles onto the court.

The first game was not scheduled for TV, as later contests are. There will be games in Shanghai and Beijing, and then Dubai.

The second contest is also a whirlwind. After playing on Wednesday, the team and its entourage will not return to its hotel outside Kunshan, but will bus into Shanghai, for a different hotel and different arena for a game on Thursday. Whew.

✔ This concludes Fact Checker's breathless coverage of this publicity stunt -- made newsworthy only because of the travel delays. We do not know if the two Duke administrators who brought this absurdity to fruition are on the trip. One is Greg Jones, who had to resign as VP for global strategy because of ill health. The other is Blair Sheppard, who departed the Dean's chair at the Fuqua Business School on seven days notice.

The trip was conceived in the go-go days. Duke would have a second consecutive national championship! And it was rah-rah Kunshan, as Duke proceded oblivious to the risks and extreme costs of the Kunshan adventure.

Basketball jet should land in Shanghai at 6:15 AM Durham time

2011-08-16T01:59:00.001-04:00

You can follow its progress:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/NAO70/history/20110816/0300Z/PANC/RJCC

Scroll down for earlier stories.

Changing times: Is a college degree worth the cost, with job boom for bankers, lawyers & government over?

2011-08-16T00:54:00.006-04:00

Scroll down for additional Tuesday posts: Durham rape, homicide rates up. Flight delay screws basketball team's schedule in Kunshan.

The following with permission of The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

By Doug French, Guest blogger / August 10, 2011
This is the institutional blog of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and many of its affiliated writers and scholars commenting on economic affairs of the day.

A college degree once looked to be the path to prosperity. In an article for TechCrunch, Sarah Lacy writes, "Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe."

But the jobs that made higher education pay off during the inflationary boom, kicked into high gear by Nixon waving goodbye to the last shreds of a gold standard, came primarily from government and finance.

In 1990, 6.4 million people worked for federal, state, and local governments. By 2010, that number had grown almost 6 times — to 38.3 million — with many of these jobs being white-collar.

In 1990, the financial sector was less than 7.5 percent of the S&P 500. By 2006, this sector had grown to 22.3 percent of the S&P, and that year the financial sector constituted 45 percent of the index's earnings.

"Prices and wage rates boom," writes Mises.

Everybody feels happy and is convinced that now finally mankind has overcome forever the gloomy state of scarcity and reached everlasting prosperity.

In fact, all this amazing wealth is fragile, a castle built on sands of illusion. It cannot last. There is no means to substitute banknotes and deposits for nonexistent capital goods.

Times have changed.

Last week, HSBC Holding Plc announced plans to eliminate 30,000 jobs worldwide by the end of 2013. The job cuts will affect "support staff where we believe we have created an unnecessary bureaucracy in this firm over a number of years," HSBC chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver said.

Goldman Sachs plans to cut 1,000 positions. Bank of America is laying off 1,500 employees and closing 600 retail branches.

At the same time that banks are trimming their fat, according to a Labor Department report released earlier this month, from May 2010 to May 2011 local governments shed 267,000 jobs and state governments 24,000. Local government employment in May, at 14.165 million jobs, was the lowest since July 2006.

An increase in the amount of real savings, which induces a fall in the interest rate and a lengthening of the production schedule, increases an economy's productive capacity, creating genuine growth brought about by the investment in higher-order goods such as factories and other production assets.

Conversely, easy, cheap credit fools entrepreneurs into believing that society's collective time preference has fallen, enticing them into investing in higher-order goods, such as land, factories, and the like — when in fact the collective time preference hasn't changed, and the demand for higher-order goods is merely a mirage. The result is booms and busts rather than genuine growth.

College degrees are similar to what the Austrians call higher-order goods. It's thought that a student will gain knowledge and seasoning in college that will make him or her more productive and a candidate for a high-paying career. The investment of time and money in knowledge pays through higher productivity and is translated into higher income. Higher education is the higher-order means to a successful career.

A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed. Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It's like telling the world there's no Santa Claus.

The excesses of both college and homeownership were always excused by a core national belief that, no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.

The New York Times' David Leonhardt even claims,

Construction workers, police officers, plumbers, retail salespeople and secretaries, among others, make significantly more with a degree than without one. Why? Education helps people do higher-skilled work, get jobs with better-paying companies or open their own businesses.

Using data from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, Leonhardt asserts that dishwashers with college degrees make $34,000 a year while those without make $19,000.

No employer in their right mind would pay nearly double for a dishwasher with a college degree. However, there are plenty of fresh college graduates cobbling together multiple low-level jobs just to make ends meet.

"More college graduates are working in second jobs that don't require college degrees," writes Hannah Seligson in the New York Times, "part of a phenomenon called 'mal-employment.' In short, many baby-sitters, sales clerks, telemarketers and bartenders are overqualified for their jobs."

Nearly 2 million college graduates were mal-employed last year, up 17 percent from 2007. Nearly half of all college graduates are working at a job not requiring a degree.

In the United States, 80,000 bartenders as well as 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees. Nearly a quarter of all retail salespersons have a college degree. In all, 17 million Americans with college degrees are working at jobs that do not require a bachelor's degree.

Young college graduates working multiple jobs is a natural consequence of a bad labor market and having, on average, $20,000 worth of student loans to pay off," said Carl E. Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers.

"The median starting salary for those who graduated from four-year degree programs in 2009 and 2010 was $27,000, down from $30,000 for those who graduated in 2006 to 2008, before the recession," Seligson writes, adding, "Try living on $27,000 a year — before taxes — in a city like New York, Washington or Chicago."

Like all booms, higher education has been fueled by credit. In June of last year, total student-loan debt exceeded total credit-card debt outstanding for the first time, totaling more than $900 billion.

All of this credit has pushed the average cost of tuition up 440 percent in the last 25 years, more than four times the rate of inflation. But while the factors of production on campus have been bid up, just as they are in any other asset boom, the return on investment is a bust. In 1992, there were 5.1 million mal-employed college graduates. By 2008, the number was 17 million.

Not only are the returns poor, but the quality of the product is poor (as in the case of new-construction quality in the housing boom). According to the authors of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, 45 percent of students make no gains in their critical reasoning and thinking skills, as well as writing ability, after two years in college. More than one out of three college seniors were no better at writing and thinking than they were when they first arrived at their campuses.

Many projects contemplated and started during the real-estate boom are never completed, as prices are bid up, and owners run out of capital. Such is the case for many attending college, as over 45 percent of those who enroll as freshmen ultimately give up, realizing they lack the disciplinary and mental capital, and do not graduate.

Similar to the government push for increased homeownership, government is foursquare behind having more young people attend universities. One of President Obama's top goals is to increase the number of Americans attending college.

But why? "Among the members of the class of 2010, just 56 percent had held at least one job by this spring, when the survey was conducted," reported the Times recently. "That compares with 90 percent of graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007."

And because they can't find jobs, 85 percent of college grads move back in with their parents after they graduate. According to a poll by Twentysomething Inc., a marketing and research firm based in Philadelphia, that rate has steadily risen from 67 percent in 2006.

Perversely, while the market tries to clear away malinvestments in finance and real estate, plus the jobs that supported them, colleges continue to turn out more business majors than any other discipline. In 2007 and 2008 there were more than 335,000 business degrees granted — 100,000 more than a decade before, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

As other industries close offices and downsize plants, the manufacturing base behind the doctor of jurisprudence keeps growing. Fordham Law School in New York recently broke ground on a $250 million, 22-story building. The University of Baltimore School of Law and the University of Michigan Law School are both working on buildings that cost more than $100 million. Marquette University Law School in Wisconsin has just finished its own $85 million project. A bunch of other schools have built multimillion dollar additions.

And while law grads can't find work, law schools are enrolling more students than ever before at tuition rates of $40,000+ a year. Segal explains that law-school tuition has increased at 4 times the rate of undergraduate education, which itself has increased 4 times the CPI. "From 1989 to 2009, when college tuition rose by 71 percent, law school tuition shot up 317 percent."

Students and their parents are investing in the higher-order good of a college degree, in the mistaken belief that plenty of jobs await college graduates at the end of four or six or seven years. However, time preferences haven't changed. The demand for consumer goods remains, and that's where the jobs are. The boom in demand for bankers, barristers, and bureaucrats is over.

Durham police statistics: Overall, crime dropped in the first six months of 2011. But check the fine print. Violent crime rose again.

2011-08-15T23:19:00.009-04:00

Scroll down to next story too. Late Monday night update on the basketball trip

✔✔ If you see a headline in other media about crime in Durham dropping 3.5 percent in the first since months of 2011, stand up and shout: "I read Fact Checker and you are not fooling me!!"

Like the story, the official news release does indeed brag in its first paragraph. But read down.

Violent crime –- homicides, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults -– rose by 1.9 percent. That is atop the 2010 rise for the full year of 1.6 percent.

Durham did see a dip of 4.2 percent in its property crimes, enough to skew the overall statistics. Quite frankly, given the options of stopping shoplifting and the resale of stolen metal -- which the police chief is focusing on -- FC would rather devote resources to homicides and rapes.

In the past the FBI has counseled about statistics like these, controlled by local police chiefs. And it has particularly cautioned about comparing city to city.

Ironically Durham's statistics about how good it is were revealed just as the city was inducting 35 new members of the Durham Youth Commission, part of an on-going effort to combat gang related and teen-on-teen violence. The young Commissioners will advise city leaders.

Jet with BB team now between Anchorage and Shanghai. But schedule of events in Kunshan is screwed.

2011-08-15T22:32:00.018-04:00

UPDATED at 12:10 AM Tuesday
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✔✔ The website flightaware.com, which is very cool, shows the charter jet carrying the Duke basketball team and supporters on a promotional junket to China and Dubai finally left Raleigh Durham at 1:34 PM Monday. That's almost 24 hours behind the original timetable, and a little more than an hour and a half behind the rescheduled plans.

Second leg Anchorage to Shanghai
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/NAO70/history/20110816/0300Z/PANC/RJCC

First leg Raleigh Durham to Anchorage
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/NAO70/history/20110814/2030Z/KRDU/PANC

If you need further help in finding this flight, the tail numbers on the jet are NAO 70.

The initial hop was to Anchorage, Alaska, and it took seven hours and 26 minutes. And if you want more statistics, the distance is 3,476 miles, but the plane actually flew 3,691.

After two hours and 27 minutes for a refueling stop, the jet is now en route to Shanghai. This is actually a shorter segment (some reports have it listed as a bit longer, but not FC) and should take 6 hours and 46 minutes.

✔ In original promotional materials, the jet for this trip was listed as a Boeing 757-200 (twin-jet). It is also known as a B752/Q. Then some weeks ago the plane was upgraded to a newer, and more comfortable 767.

That plane had mechanical problems early Sunday in Miami, but came into Raleigh Durham anyway. For reasons still not clear, it was not allowed to take off again.

So the charter operator, North American Airlines, had to find a substitute, and Duke got a 757.

Luckily this plane has 20 business class seats up front -- not a lot -- for the team, because there's no way some of the guys nudging seven feet would fit into coach seats. Several of the airline's 767's -- but not the original one assigned to Duke -- are all coach class, and it was possible one of these would have been substituted.

The bad news is that fans who paid through the nose for the privilege of being on board are stuck in a two-engine, narrow body plane that has a seating configuration of 3 and 3. In other words, for this arduous journey, you have a one in three chance of a middle seat. That sucks.

✔✔✔✔ The delay is going to really scrunch the team's schedule. After landing in an airport on the sea in eastern Shanghai, the team and hangers-on must make their way on charter buses through the teeming city of 20 million, to a hotel in the lake vacation district east of Kunshan. FC estimates this will consume three hours, and therefore, it will be 25 hours from the time everyone reported to the airport in Raleigh Durham on Monday. Try it sometime. Ugh.

Now more bad news. Tuesday will be over in this part of the world, so the rest and light practice scheduled for Tuesday is gone. The only sightseeing in Kunshan -- a visit to the Duke Kunshan University -- is being rammed into Wednesday morning, and then there will be a game Wednesday, time uncertain. The composition of the other team is also uncertain; originally listed as China's national Olympic team, it turns out all the good players are in a London tournament.

More bad news. After the game Wednesday, it's back to the buses for a transfer to a hotel in Shanghai. And on Thursday, a 2nd game. Too much.

Some notes and quotes from the long delay at Raleigh Durham Airport.

Coach K : “It’ll be tougher because we’ll just get there and play two games. But we’re not playing for the NCAA Tournament.”

Miles Plumlee: “It’s kind of a blessing in disguise — a pretty good disguise... It’s pretty horrible to sit around all day. Two hours waiting in the locker room, two hours at the apartment, come back, come back and wait (at the airport) I don’t know how many hours. But everybody is getting to hang out and it's fun.”

Thank you for allowing FC to be your travel agent.

Update on basketball trip to China and Dubai: Now boarding

2011-08-15T14:05:00.005-04:00

Please remember to scroll down after reading this update, and also the update from Seattle where a doctor who left Duke in June admits he stabbed a man and child found dead in his apartment. AND FC has two Monday posts before that: an essay on alumni giving and a compelling article about 13 professors from American Universities whose thoughts collided with the Chinese government.

Update at 1:30 PM

Duke sports information says the team, coaches and supporters are now boarding a chartered jet at Raleigh Durham airport. It's believed the charter company flew in a second plane.

See below for details about this fiasco.

With stopover in Alaska for fuel, the team will fly to Shanghai. Then it's a bus trip from the airport, which is on the eastern coast, to a hotel west of Kunshan. FC estimate 3 hours for this. Total travel: 25 hours.

It means the team will be arriving after midnight Tuesday, with a slam-bam tour of Duke Kushan University Wednesday morning and a game later in the day.

Seattle court papers: former Duke doc said "I did it" when cop asked him who stabbed dead man in his apartment

2011-08-15T13:37:00.015-04:00

✔✔✔✔✔ There are chilling details emerging in Seattle, where a doctor who had just left Duke for a new job is facing the possibility of two murder charges.

In a formal hearing early Monday morning that replaced an emergency telephone proceeding this weekend, a judge reviewed documents from police and prosecutors, and found probable cause to hold Dr. Louis Chao Chen, a 39-year-old endocrinologist who had just finished a three year residency at Duke. Under procedural rules, he must be formally charged by Tuesday.

According to one document, a human resources manager (who is also a nurse) from Chen's new employer -- a group practice of 600 doctors at several locations plus a hospital -- went to his apartment when he failed to show for an orientation session.

Chen is said to have answered the door in his high rise apartment when the manager knocked -- staggering out nude and covered with blood. Earlier police said there were two 911 calls -- one asking merely for police to check out the apartment, the second asking for help. We have no explanation of the timing of the calls.

The first cop on the scene found Chen slumped in the doorway, his long-time gay partner, 29 year old Eric Cooper dead in the living room, and a bit later their adopted 2 year old son dead in the bathroom. The two dead had been stabbed. It's not clear how Chen got bloody -- in a fight or if he turned the knife on himself.

According to court papers, an officer administering first aid to Chen -- not knowing yet a child was dead in the bathroom -- asked, "Who stabbed you and your partner?" Chen replied, "I did," court records state. He then fell unconscious. His wounds are not considered life-threatening. Earlier, there was information he may have swallowed some pills.

Prosecutors succeed in having Chen held without bail, noting he has few ties to Seattle and relatives overseas, and thus is at risk to flee.

✔✔✔ Washington State still has the death penalty for certain degrees of murder. In fact the local papers this past week were filled with a debate whether to abolish it -- the arguments not being moral but financial, since it costs the government so much to prosecute a capital case. The defendant often has a court appointed attorney and is entitled to several stages of appeal.

Chen remained hospitalized Monday morning at Harborview Medical Center.

✔ Some Loyal Readers -- and people posting online on other websites -- have questioned how old Cooper was when he first started living with Chen. They point out that Cooper was 29 at his death -- and the two were living together in 2000 -- and possibly earlier -- when Chen was a medical student at the University of Chicago. FC has no answers.

Basketball trip to China and Dubai stuck on ground at Raleigh Durham Airport. Deputy FC learns charter jet had mechanical problems earlier in Miami

2011-08-15T02:27:00.017-04:00

There are three posts for Monday. Please scroll down for a very important story from Bloomberg News about 13 US professors barred from entering China because they dared to express themselves. We also have an essay about alumni giving. Plus, if you did not check in with FC on Sunday, there is an update on the doctor who left Duke in July, now facing murder charges in Seattle. Please scroll down.

Updated 3 AM Monday

✔✔✔✔✔ After delay after frustrating delay -- a process that went on for eight hours on Sunday -- the men's basketball team and its supporters did not take off on their charter flight to China. Instead, they went to hotel rooms.

What went wrong? There's no answer for the players and approximately 100 fans scheduled to fly, only murk. The weather did play havoc with flights in the region -- but whatever problem there is with the charter jet existed quite apart from the weather.

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At 3 AM Monday, a Deputy Fact Checker learned that the jet -- chartered from North American Airlines -- had mechanical problems earlier in Miami. It flew to Raleigh-Durham nonetheless, but an inspection grounded the plane. We do not know who did the inspecting.

One source told the Deputy FC the problem cannot be fixed at the local airport, and a special crew has to fly it to a major repair facility.

|||||||||||||||||||||

It's believed the airline is trying to arrange for a substitute plane. But that may be tricky, since the airline has only nine planes total, five of them of the same type as the plane stuck at the local airport. There may be an issue with crew qualifications that would prevent the airline from using four of its planes.

And it may be even trickier for a basketball team with players soaring toward seven feet; most of the charter company's planes are configured with coach seats only. Sometimes planes can be reconfigured with first and business class. We'll see.

Check in with FC for updates!!

✔✔✔✔ Apparently -- amid the frustration of being stuck in an airport, never boarding or even seeing the jet -- someone raised the possibility of the team and coaches flying on commercial planes, forgetting the charter.

But at 11 PM, Coach K turned thumbs down on that.

The Chronicle's Taylor Doherty -- traveling with the team on the uber-expensive charter -- had this quote from Coach K during the last of several meetings he called at the airport for everyone on the trip: “We’re all going on this trip together, and I can’t tell you when yet, but we ain’t leaving unless you’re leaving,” Krzyzewski told those traveling with the team.

“We’re not flying commercially. We’re going to do this with the charter. We’re going to do it with all of you, and whenever they come out and present some options, then let’s figure out what all we’re going to do. Whether we leave at four this morning or four in the afternoon or whatever it is, we’re all going to do that together.”

The charter operator has provided overnight hotel rooms. The team and its supporters are now told to be at the airport at 10 AM for a noon-time departure. That's more than 20 hours late, as the original schedule was for 3 PM Sunday.

In earlier reporting on this trip, FC noted that Anthony Travel, a big outfit that handles sports travel for many large universities, had subcontracted with an airline we never heard of for an inferior plane. Our information from an agent at Anthony Travel was that the plane would need to stop in Alaska for fuel (many jets fly nonstop from NY to China) and that the plane was a narrow body, with coach seating 3 and 3, meaning you had a 33 percent chance of a middle seat for the grueling ride.

Some of that information is inconsistent with on-line information available from the charter airline. So we'll leave the issue of what kind of plane takes off -- if any -- up in the air, so to speak.

✔✔✔✔ At the airport, Coach K apparently did not address the obvious issue: after a grueling flight from the US, the team is losing a full day in China, a day to rest and catch up on sleep, and also have a light practice. On its revamped schedule -- as it stands right now -- the plane will likely arrive very late on Tuesday and then there is a bus ride, estimated at three hours, from Shanghai to a hotel west of Kunshan in the lake region. A tour of the new Duke Kunshan University is being slammed into Wednesday morning, and then the first game is scheduled for later Wednesday in Kunshan.

We still have no confirmation who will be playing Duke. Originally touted as a series of contests with the China national team, almost all its players are in London for a tournament at the site of the 2012 Olympics.

The Fact Checker scoop on alumni giving

2011-08-14T23:39:00.015-04:00

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

After reading this essay, please scroll down for a very important story from Bloomberg News about 13 US professors barred from entering China because they dared to express themselves. Plus the important Sunday update on the doctor who left Duke in July, now facing murder charges in Seattle. Please scroll down.

The Top Ten Myths of alumni giving

1) It's called the Annual Fund, but that's a misnomer. Surprisingly few people contribute year after year. The Brodhead Administration keeps tight control on these statistics, but we do have some snippets.

In the Class of 1963, as of its 45th reunion in 2008, only six people had contributed every year for 30 years or more. And of these, only two had possibly contributed as much as $1,000 annually; one of them is a member of the Duke family, Mary Trent Jones.

In the Class of 1968, as of its 40th reunion, only ten had contributed every year for more than 30 years; no more than five of them were down for at least $1,000 annually. Trustees like John Mack and Marguerite Weaver Kondracke had very irregular giving patterns; Judy Woodruff had given for at least ten consecutive years.

2) Now assume FC told Loyal Readers that the Annual Fund was once called the Alumni Loyalty Fund. Correct. And assume you heard alumni make the biggest contributions. False. By far the biggest contributions come from parents of currently enrolled students; with so many living in the wealthy suburbs of Dallas and Chicago, the suspicion has always been that this is how these people pay up when they buy their kids admission to Duke.

While Duke has admitted admissions are for sale, two years ago the Brodhead Administration stopped publishing in Duke Magazine the list of parent contributions to the Annual Fund. The PR department specifically rejected FC requests to post the lists on a website or provide a computer file.

During the past year, a Loyal Reader told us the list was on line, but it was promptly taken down. The Alumni Department did not respond to repeated Fact Checker requests to have access to the list.

More numbers. In a recent tally, there were 137,749 alums. Only 13,617 paid their dues for the year, and 151 signed up for expensive life-time memberships paid up front.

3) Alumni vote on setting the goals for the Annual Fund. False. The Alumni Department sets the goals -- and apparently low-balls them. Thus, year after year the Department can declare itself a success.

This reminds FC of the way Joseph Stalin used to run elections in the Soviet Union; the dictator was fond of saying that it did not matter who ran, so long as he counted the ballots.

4) Gifts for class reunions, held every five years, count toward the Annual Fund. Correct. And there is great generosity. False.

Once again, the Alumni Department did not respond to our repeated requests for information. The following statistics are posted for 2011 reunions, with the explanation that they are updated every two weeks. Thus, we assume they are final for the fiscal year that ended June 30th.

Only two of ten reunion classes went significantly over their dollar goals. The Class of 1981, celebrating its 30th reunion, had a goal of $3 million and wound up with $4.7 million. The Class of 1986, celebrating 25 years, went 20 percent over its goal of $2 million but drew only 525 of an anticipated 762 gifts.

Similarly, the 20th reunion of the Class of 1991 edged above its goal of $1.2 million, but drew only 418 and not the anticipated 534 gifts. The Class of 2001 came in on target for money, but drew only 395 of 450 anticipated gifts.

The worst dollar performer was the Class of 1966, which at $587,000 hit only 72 percent of its goal.

The Class of 1976 had a double bomb, missing both its low-balled goal of $1 million by ten percent, and its goal of 444 contributions by a similar amount. Remember, please that the goal of 444 represents less than half the total number of people in the class.

Loyal Readers, please do not think we point out these numbers to be negative. Rather, until this university gets honest in its discussion of itself, there will never be any improvement.

5) A significant number of alumni come to Reunion Weekends in April. Wrong. The Alumni Department stretches the count by including family members and friends. Thus, nearly 4,000 people came to the reunion, a far smaller percentage than was the case when reunions were held in conjunction with Homecoming in the fall.

6) The Annual Fund has had an increasing impact upon Duke. Wrong. The opposite is true.

The Annual Fund used to contribute a significantly larger percentage of Duke's annual budget.

And look at it another way: if you consider inflation, and consider the increased size of the graduating classes, the Annual Fund has actually lost ground.

7) All these numbers. All these numbers. They are very malleable. You bet.

Let's return to John Mack, a Trustee of the University. A football player at Duke, sidelined by injury, three years after graduation he joined Morgan Stanley on Wall Street as a municipal bond salesman. In 21 years he rose to the top, acquiring the name "Mack the Knife" for the way he slashed costs -- and disrupted thousands of careers. In 2006, he earned $41,399,010 -- so he could well afford the gift in the "$1 million plus" category he gave Duke 40 years after graduation.

But not a cent of it counted toward his class gift or the Annual Fund. The reason: Mack had been massaged by other development officers and their programs got the credit.

This opens a tug of war in the development office: the solicitors of major gifts want credit, the people running the Annual Fund want credit. It's very tempting if the Annual Fund is behind to shift money into its column, and voila, another successful year of meeting targets. Does that occur or is this only theoretically possible. The Brodhead Administration is hiding the cards.

Here's another example. Reunion gifts for the Class of 2003 were languishing. So the class agent put the squeeze on Nick Arison, scion of the family that started Carnival Cruise Lines and has since swallowed Cunard Line, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn Cruise Line, P&O Cruises, Ocean Village, AIDA, Costa Cruises and Iberocruceros. Nick has recently been in the news, becoming chief executive officer of the family's toy, the Miami Heat basketball team.

So Arison wrote a check, one dollar for every three that all the other members of his class had contributed.

Thus the Class of 2003 met the goal set for it by the Alumni Department, and Loyal Readers have an illustration of how statistics need careful analysis.

We point out also that the alumni giving totals come out so soon after the end of the fiscal year, they apparently are not audited. Why? Why? Questions we asked the Alumni Department and got no answer.

8) It's the same at other schools. False. The schools that Duke likes to snuggle with do far better. Princeton, for example, had 83 percent of the class celebrating its fifth anniversary contribute to its annual fund. Duke had 414 donors -- out of approximately 2,000 who received undergraduate degrees. 21 percent. Again, if the Alumni Department has other numbers, it should answer its damned e-mail.

That's the Annual Fund. An additional 74 donations were received outside the Annual Fund, toward what is called the "comprehensive goal."

In the most recent year that we have statistics for, four out of ten classes missed their dollar amounts for comprehensive goals.

9) The numbers are just as bad for the graduate and professional schools. Right, we recall former Law School Dean Pamela Gann saying repeatedly that Duke graduates had not picked up on the tradition of supporting their school to the same extent as graduates of other schools. FC is developing more on this: there are law firms that have literally taken more than 100 Duke graduates over the years -- and contributed squat.

In the 2008-09 academic year, the last available totals, only 61 graduates of professional and graduate schools went to Reunion Weekend; and 61 registered for Homecoming. Ouch

10) These numbers are better kept secret. There is no need for public discussion of the wobbly state of alumni giving. If you said right, you are reading the wrong blog. Have a good day.

China bars 13 U-S scholars who spoke against the regime. Princeton. Columbia. Georgetown. MIT. Dartmouth. A horror story about academic freedom

2011-08-14T21:56:00.009-04:00

Bloomberg News, August 10, 2011
Text posted with permission

They call themselves the “Xinjiang 13.” They have been denied permission to enter China, prohibited from flying on a Chinese airline and pressured to adopt China- friendly views. To return to China, two wrote statements disavowing support for the independence movement in Xinjiang province.

They aren’t exiled Chinese dissidents. They are American scholars from universities, such as Georgetown and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who have suffered a backlash from China unprecedented in academia since diplomatic relations resumed in 1979. Their offense was co-writing “Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland,” a 484-page paperback published in 2004.

“I wound up doing the stupidest thing, bringing all of the experts in the field into one room and having the Chinese take us all out,” said Justin Rudelson, a college friend of U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and former senior lecturer at Dartmouth College, who helped enlist contributors to the book and co-wrote one chapter.

The sanctions, which the scholars say were imposed by China’s security services, have hampered careers, personal relationships and American understanding of a large, mineral- rich province where China has suppressed separatist stirrings. Riots and attacks in Xinjiang in July left about 40 people dead.

“People who are engaged in perfectly legitimate scholarly pursuits can have their careers stymied if not destroyed,” said Tim Rieser, foreign policy adviser to Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who chairs the Senate subcommittee that funds the U.S. State Department and who took up the cause of the Xinjiang experts.
‘Lack of Sympathy’

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Xi Yanchun, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, didn’t respond to written questions about the treatment of the authors.

Colleges employing the Xinjiang scholars took no collective action, and most were reluctant to press Chinese authorities about individual cases. Dartmouth almost fired Rudelson because he couldn’t go to China, he and Rieser said.

“As a group, most of us have been very disappointed in the colleges’ and universities’ lack of sympathy and support,” said Dru Gladney, an anthropology professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California, who described himself and his American co-authors as the “Xinjiang 13.” Colleges are “so eager to jump on the China bandwagon, they put financial interests ahead of academic freedom.”

Almost 40,000 undergraduates from China study at U.S. universities, the most from any foreign country, according to the Institute of International Education, a New York-based nonprofit group. Chinese students typically pay double or triple the in-state tuition at public universities.

Campuses in China

Restrictions on academic freedom may become an increasing pitfall as U.S. colleges expand their ties with China, according to administrators involved in joint programs. (( FC doesn't know what administrators at Duke said this; President Brodhead thinks everything is just fine ))

Duke University and New York University plan campuses in China. The University of Chicago opened a research center in Beijing in 2010, and Stanford University expects to follow next year. Excluding those initiatives, 18 foreign universities, including nine from the U.S., have branch campuses in China and Hong Kong, up from 14 in 2009 and zero in 2002, according to the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, a U.K. research group. The Chinese government, along with philanthropy and tuition, will pay for the New York University campus slated to open in Shanghai in 2013, the school’s president, John Sexton, said.

More than 60 U.S. colleges since 2004 have accepted tens of millions of dollars from the Office of Chinese Language Council International, a government-affiliated body known as the Hanban, to establish Confucius Institutes for the study of Chinese language and culture.

Uighur Muslims

Along with Tibet, which also has an independence movement, Xinjiang is one of China’s most sensitive issues, Rudelson said. Nicknamed the “Pivot of Asia,” it borders Tibet and seven countries, five of which are Muslim, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. About half of its residents are Uighurs, who are Muslims.

The Chinese government has threatened the Uighurs’ way of life by encouraging ethnic Chinese to settle in Xinjiang, Gladney said. Uighurs have responded with bombings of buses and movie theaters, and attacks such as a July 18 assault on a police station in which 18 people were killed, according to official Chinese media. A group of Uighurs in exile said police fired on peaceful protesters. About 20 more deaths occurred on July 30-31 from a truck hijacking and a restaurant shoot-out, for which Chinese authorities blamed Uighur terrorists trained in Pakistan.

Blacklisted

Some of America’s most prominent China scholars who explore hot-button issues are banned in Beijing. Perry Link, a professor emeritus at Princeton University who teaches at the University of California, Riverside, hasn’t been able to enter China since 1995, he said. Link smuggled a dissident astrophysicist into the U.S. embassy in Beijing during the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising and helped edit the “Tiananmen Papers,” a 2002 collection of leaked internal documents.

Link’s co-editor on the “Tiananmen Papers,” Columbia University Professor Andrew Nathan, said he is also blacklisted. Robert Barnett, who directs Columbia’s Modern Tibetan Studies Program, ignored two warnings from Chinese officials that he should “lean more in China’s direction,” he said. He then encountered roadblocks from Chinese authorities dealing with Tibet when he applied for visas in 2008 and 2009, he said. He didn’t feel a need in his case to ask Columbia administrators for help and hasn’t sought a visa since, he said.

U.S. universities should fight for professors blacklisted by China, said Columbia President Lee Bollinger. He’s discussed Nathan’s situation with Chinese officials, who promised to “think about it,” he said.

$330,000 Grant

Xinjiang had attracted little academic attention until the New York-based Henry Luce Foundation approved a $330,000 grant to the School of Advanced International Studies, or SAIS, at Johns Hopkins in 2000, said former foundation Vice President Terry Lautz.
“We expected that the project would fill a gap,” said Lautz, who described the book as “very scholarly, very thorough, very carefully written and researched.”
S. Frederick Starr, the volume’s editor, chairs the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at SAIS, which is based in Washington. Not a Sinologist himself, Starr advised Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush on Soviet affairs. With Rudelson, deputy director of the institute from 1999-2001, Starr recruited the book’s 15 co-authors: 13 Americans, one Israeli, and one Uighur.

‘Pleasant Conversations’

Contributors were paid $3,000 apiece, Rudelson said. Each tackled a different aspect of Xinjiang history and society, from the province’s economy, ecology, education and public health to Islamic identity and the Chinese military presence. Starr and 11 authors were interviewed by phone for this article.

“I remember people saying at the beginning, ‘Do you think China will ban us?’” Rudelson said.

Starr decided against having Chinese co-authors because he didn’t want to cause them trouble with their government. He also informed the Chinese embassy at the outset about the book, giving assurances that the tone would be objective.

In response, the embassy “sent senior scholars who were obviously on a fact-finding mission,” Starr said. “We sat and had very pleasant conversations.”

On the eve of publication, Chinese authorities put out their own Xinjiang book, which was 70 pages and “obviously thrown together hastily,” Starr said. In a show of good faith, Starr distributed copies of the Chinese book at the publication party for the SAIS volume, he said.

Scholarly Hodgepodge

Then the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences prepared a translation of the Johns Hopkins book for Chinese officials and scholars. In an introduction to the Chinese translation, Pan Zhiping, a researcher at the academy, portrayed “Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland” as a U.S. government mouthpiece.

Featuring “a hodgepodge of scholars, scholars in preparation, phony scholars, and shameless fabricators of political rumor,” the book by the Xinjiang 13 “provides a theoretical basis for” America “one day taking action to dismember China and separate Xinjiang,” Pan wrote.

Pan said in a telephone interview that he sent his introduction to Wang Lequan, the Communist Party chief of Xinjiang Province from 1994 to 2010, and a member of the Politburo. Wang, who conducted “strike hard” campaigns against separatists and introduced Mandarin into Uighur-language primary schools, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“I don’t really want to say” why the authors were barred, Pan said. “Maybe because they wrote the book, our government thinks they are not people that should be welcomed.”
No-Fly List

Some of the authors are legitimate scholars, Pan said. “I’ll say to our leaders that they are our good friends, it will be useful to sit down and chat with them,” he said.

Sichuan Airlines, a government-owned regional airline, put six of the authors on a no-fly list in 2006, according to a document provided to Bloomberg News. In the “urgent” communication, the airline’s Beijing management office instructed sales representatives to inspect the scholars’ documents and prevent them from boarding. Cai Chao, an officer with the airline’s department of corporate culture, declined to comment on whether the authors were prohibited and said the document can’t be verified because it lacks “our company’s formal document number and stamp.”
As the co-authors began applying to return to China, their visas were denied without explanation. Their editor, Starr, failed to advocate for them, they said.
‘Coordinated Response’

“If I had pulled together a book like this that got an entire generation of scholars on a certain topic banned from the country they research, I’d like to think I would step forward to organize a coordinated response,” said James Millward, a professor in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service who co-wrote two chapters on Xinjiang’s political history. Starr “just wanted nothing to do with it.”

The Luce Foundation’s Lautz said he urged Starr to “at least raise the issue” with China. “That didn’t really happen,” Lautz said.

Because he didn’t try to go to China, and because he was inundated with invitations from high-level officials there, Starr took longer than the authors to recognize the blacklisting, Starr said. Still, he wrote to the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., emphasizing that the book wasn’t political and seeking assurances that the visa denials were unrelated to it, he said.

Starr now realizes that Chinese diplomats and intellectuals who admired the book couldn’t control “the completely murky world of the security folks,” he said.
Weak Case

The School of Advanced International Studies had bigger priorities than academic freedom, he said.
“My sense is that SAIS itself, let alone Hopkins, was not prepared to go to the mat on this issue,” said Starr. “There are a lot of other interests besides this one in China.”

Johns Hopkins, based in Baltimore, and SAIS “stand for the free exchange of ideas and are proud of their record in general and in this case in particular,” spokeswoman Felisa Klubes said in an e-mail.

When two of the book’s authors sought assistance in 2006 from Professor David Lampton, director of SAIS’s China Studies Program and dean of the faculty, he persuaded the Chinese embassy to grant a visa to one of them, Klubes said. He didn’t help the other “because that person made what he felt was a weak case that the reason for the visa denial had to do with the book,” she said. She declined to name the two scholars.
Appeals to Colleges
Some co-authors looked to their own colleges. Stanley Toops, an associate professor of geography at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, whose chapters covered Xinjiang’s demography and water supply, applied for visas at the Chinese embassy in Washington and three of the five consulates in the U.S., to no avail, he said.

When he appealed to Jeffrey Herbst, then Miami’s provost, Herbst advised Toops to call his congressman, Toops said. “We have a lot of contacts with China,” Toops said. “We don’t want to mess this connection up.”

“I wasn’t able to offer much assistance” to Toops, Herbst said. “The Chinese government isn’t that accessible.”

While Herbst -- now president of Colgate University in Hamilton, New York -- promoted the study of China at Miami, he said he wasn’t worried that advocating for Toops would hurt the university’s burgeoning China connections.

Confucius Institute

Miami established a Confucius Institute in 2007. The Hanban supplied $100,000 in start-up funds, 3,000 volumes of books, audio-visual and multimedia materials, and one or two language instructors for whom it pays salaries and expenses, according to a contract obtained by Bloomberg News through a public records request. The Hanban has provided a total of $924,785 for the institute through April 2011, according to Robin Parker, the university’s general counsel.

Chinese undergraduate enrollment at Miami soared to 434 in August 2010 from 16 in August 2006, said David Keitges, director of international education. Non-Ohio residents pay $38,917 a year in tuition, fees, and room and board, versus $23,745 for residents, according to Miami’s website.

Rudelson, a graduate of Hanover, New Hampshire-based Dartmouth -- where he and Geithner studied Chinese and traveled to Beijing together -- had visited Xinjiang regularly since 1985. When he became a senior lecturer in Chinese at the college in 2005, one of his duties was to lead Dartmouth’s annual summer language-study program in China. Because he couldn’t get a visa, his department colleagues at Dartmouth warned him that he might be fired, said Rudelson and Rieser, Leahy’s foreign policy aide.

“At the end of the day, Dartmouth’s priority was that the summer program go forward,” Rieser said.

No Xinjiang Entry

Rudelson appealed to Geithner. Then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner alerted his father, Peter Geithner, Rudelson said. Peter Geithner sits on the board of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, a New York- based non-profit group chaired by former U.S. chief trade negotiator Carla Hills. She raised Rudelson’s case with Chinese authorities, Rudelson said.

At the same time, Dartmouth “was working as hard as we could to get Justin back into China,” then-provost Barry Scherr said in an interview. Scherr arranged a meeting for himself and Rudelson with Zhou Wenzhong, who was China’s ambassador to the U.S., when Zhou spoke at Dartmouth’s business school in October 2008. The ambassador advised Rudelson to write to the Chinese embassy, explaining his role in the Xinjiang project, Rudelson said. He complied.

“I said, ‘I don’t support Uighur terrorism, I don’t support that Xinjiang should be an independent country,’” Rudelson said. Those are his real views, he said.
Brief Respite

Two months later, Rudelson was granted a one-week visa to Beijing. He returned in 2009 with the language-study program. He reported his movements daily to the Ministry of State Security, and wasn’t allowed into Xinjiang, which the program had toured in prior years. He left Dartmouth July 1 to teach Chinese at the Dallas-based Hockaday School for girls from pre-kindergarten through high school.

Like Rudelson, Millward submitted an account of the issues surrounding the Xinjiang book to the Chinese embassy, including a statement that he didn’t favor independence for Xinjiang. He didn’t compromise his views, he said. The Georgetown professor was then granted a visa.

It proved only a temporary respite. In 2008, Millward and a colleague at Fudan University in Shanghai planned to collaborate on a course about the Silk Road. They would lecture in each other’s classrooms, share material on a computer bulletin board, and oversee joint student projects.

‘Very Best’

Millward applied for his visa, and didn’t hear back. Then came a terse e-mail from his Fudan colleague saying that, “due to circumstances,” Millward wouldn’t be able to teach there.

Instead of pushing back, Georgetown officials told Millward they would support his next visa application, he said.

“Georgetown didn’t see the problem letting this precedent stand, and they wouldn’t put anything on the line to help me,” Millward said.

Georgetown has done its “very best” for Millward and regrets his visa problems, said Samuel Robfogel, director of international initiatives in the provost’s office.
The ice is thawing for some of the Xinjiang 13. After extra screening procedures, Millward returned to China in July and August 2010 and July 2011, he said.

Shift to Taiwan

Former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Peter Perdue had to shift his research from Beijing to Taiwan in 2007 for a Fulbright fellowship awarded by the State Department because Chinese officials blocked his entry. The State Department doesn’t comment on individual cases, said spokeswoman Sharon Witherell. Now a professor at Yale, Perdue attended an August 2010 conference in Beijing, he said.
Others see no easing. Gladney’s invitation to speak at a conference in Tianjin, China in April was rescinded after a Communist party official vetoed his participation, he said.

A professor of Chinese history at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, Linda Benson contributed the chapter on minority education in Xinjiang. After writing a 2008 book about British women missionaries to China’s Muslim regions, she was invited to a May 2010 Christian-history conference in Gansu Province in northwest China. She was denied a visa.

The chapter written by Gardner Bovingdon, an associate professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, compared Uighur and official Chinese histories of Xinjiang. When Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s board met in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, in 2006, it asked Bovingdon to speak. He couldn’t get a visa. Goldman spokesman Stephen Cohen declined to comment on Bovingdon.

Bovingdon again sought a visa for a March 2011 excursion to Shanghai organized by an Indiana colleague and was rejected.

Unlike co-authors who disowned Xinjiang separatism, Bovingdon wouldn’t make such concessions, he said.

“My understanding of what they’ve done is essentially self- criticism, which is the order of the day in China for years: ‘Yes, I regret what I did,’” he said. “I would not have considered that a palatable way to go back.”

Seattle: Former Duke doc now facing aggravated murder charges in deaths of his gay partner and their adopted 2 year old son

2011-08-14T03:20:00.005-04:00

Please scroll down for a second Sunday post: basketball team departs for China, Dubai. Whoopie.

The following was updated at 10 30 PM Saturday

✔✔✔✔ A judge in Seattle has determined there is probable cause to hold Dr. Louis C. Chen -- who left Duke in July for a new job in Washington State -- for aggravated murder in the deaths of his longtime gay partner and their two year old adopted son.

Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, said documents in the case would be released Monday.

Chen, under police guard in a hospital, now has his family from Taiwan at his side. They are arranging for a lawyer.

Updated at 8 AM Saturday

✔✔✔ A Duke doctor who moved to Seattle in July has been found stabbed and seriously wounded in the living room of his 17th floor apartment in the expensive First Hill neighborhood. The doctor's long-time gay partner, who apparently moved out shortly after arriving in Seattle and returned to Durham, was found stabbed to death. And in the bathroom, police found the couple's adopted two year old son, who also had been stabbed to death.

Seattle Police -- after initially withholding names -- on Saturday identified the doctor as Dr. Louis C. Chen, 39. His long-time partner was identified as Eric Cooper, 29. Seattle Police -- saying they are not looking for suspects at the moment -- will have no further information until Monday.

The doctor is in the Intensive Care Unit at Harborview Medical Center, a hospital spokesman said. Police said his injuries do not appear life-threatening.

The Seattle Times says the boy had been adopted "out of some pretty bad circumstances" in SouthEast Asia.

✔ The crime was discovered after a representative of Virginia Mason Medical Center, a group practice of 400 doctors, several regional offices and a hospital, went to Dr. Chen's home when he failed to show up for a two day orientation prior to joining the medical staff on Monday. The initial 911 call asked police to check inside the apartment; moments later another call reported the stabbings.

The Seattle Times says one of the men -- doctor or partner -- talked to the officers before falling unconscious. We do not know which one.

✔ Here's what we know about the Duke doctor: graduated from the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine in 2000, where he and his companion, 10 years younger, also shared a home. It's unclear if the doctor was a resident at Duke, or if he had a post doc fellowship.

Dr. Mark Feinglos, the Duke chief of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Nutrition, told the Seattle Times newspaper he oversaw the doctor for three years, a period that ended this spring.

"He was here and he was just outstanding. A really good guy," Feinglos said. "I'm shocked by this news, really. It's just appalling."

The doctor recently got a grant to study diabetes patients with gastric problems.

Rick Jones, who lives down the hall from the men, said he didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"We didn't have a lot of interaction; just a few conversations in the elevator was the extent of it," Jones said. "But nothing seemed weird."

WTVD television in Durham is reporting police went to the home the doctor and his partner shared on July 6, 2010 because of a disturbance call, but no report was written by the responding officers.

Basketball team departs today (Sunday) for meaningless trip to China and Dubai. The more we learn, the sillier it gets

2011-08-12T23:37:00.015-04:00

RAH RAH GO DUKE. The men's basketball team departs this afternoon on a charter flight to China and Dubai with big spending fans.

First stop -- refueling in Alaska. Then Shanghai, and even though it will be almost midnight with 20 hours of travel already, there will be a bus trip which FC estimates at three hours to a hotel on the other side of Kunshan.

Fact one: though the first game is said to be on the new would-be Duke campus in Kunshan, that is not so. There is no facility there. The game will be held in a 6,000 seat arena in the city.

Fact two: though touted as a series of three contests against the Chinese national team -- the last on August 22nd -- the best Chinese players are all in London through August 21. They are playing in the London International Basketball Invitational in the arena that will be used for the 2012 Olympics. It's anyone's guess who our opponents may be.

Fact three: though touted as a team-building mission, the China courts and rules are significantly different than in NCAA play. A 24-second shot clock instead of 35. The three point line moved back 9 plus inches. And the lane widened by almost eight full feet. While knowing nothing about creating basketball teams, it would seem that practice in Durham would do just as nicely.

The Athletics Dept has refused FC inquiries about the cost of this trip -- and where the money is coming from.

Kunshan notes: FC notes that even though the Brodhead Administration insists Kunshan is not a backwater, the team is staying at the Fairmont Hotel in the lake vacation district, not near the city at all. The only Kunshan sightseeing that the team has planned is a visit to the Duke campus, which is an admission there is simply nothing in this dreary locale to do or see. And even though we are told it is "right next" to Shanghai and there is a nine minute train, the team is moving for its Shanghai game into that teeming city.

Next.

Basketball team departs Sunday on promo tour. Backwater of Kunshan has no facilities allowing TV coverage of game on Aug 17

2011-08-10T22:27:00.003-04:00

Three of the four basketball games that Duke will play during its promotional tour of China and Dubai, departing on Sunday, will be televised. So FC, of course, wondered about the fourth.

The games on TV: August 18 in Shanghai, August 22 in Beijing and August 25 in Dubai.
The stations: ESPNU, ESPN3.

The missing game is the first on August 17 in Kunshan. Why? It's a backwater and there is no possible TV link according to ESPN. FC confirmed that with the satellite desk at CBS News.

GoDuke.com will make video of all the games and make a condensed versions available on line; we do not know precisely when these videos will be edited and available.

The team departs Sunday.

Duke hires its first Hindu chaplain

2011-08-10T15:52:00.003-04:00

We've considered a slogan for Fact Checker: "Never a press release." But since we have not adopted it yet, we will give you the university announcement. Word for word just like some newspapers. No Fact Checker analysis.

Duke University has hired its first Hindu chaplain. Usha Rajagopalan, who began her part-time role at Duke Aug. 1, will provide guidance for the Hindu Students Association and represent the group on Duke's Faith Council and in the university's Religious Life program.

Rajagopalan is fluent in Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam, and comes to Duke with degrees from Annamalai University in India and the University of Maryland. She has been leading Hindu worship services in the Triangle area and received the 2009 Kathryn H. Wallace Award in Community Service from the Triangle Community Foundation.

"Hinduism, or Sanathana Dharma, is not a religion but a practice, a way of life," Rajagopalan said. "Deepening understanding of their inner world as they pursue their academic goals allows Hindu students at Duke to receive a holistic education and to practice their Dharma or way of life."

Duke Chapel Dean Samuel Wells said he welcomes Rajagopalanâ€™s perspective in campus conversations among different faiths.

"I am proud to be part of a campus culture that builds up diverse faiths by bringing them into healthy dialogue and common enterprises with one another," Wells said. "This is a flowering of our university's longstanding aspiration to 'eruditio et religio' -- academic learning and embodied faith."

Founded in 1998, the Hindu Student Association at Duke organizes scripture studies, Hindu festivals and Hinduism Awareness Week.

The Religious Life program at Duke comprises more than two dozen campus ministries that operate under the oversight of the chapel.

Mole reveals Fuqua running amok, with secret deal to provide all faculty for new B-school in Kazakhstan

2011-08-09T23:43:00.015-04:00

Posted at 1:24 AM Wednesday

✔✔✔✔✔
✔✔✔✔✔ Fact Checker here. Probative, provocative, pro-Duke. Good day!

A mole has told FC that the Fuqua Business School has signed an agreement with a new university in Kazakhstan to provide all faculty for its B-school, starting July 6, 2012. With this depth of involvement, Fuqua will essentially be running another campus, but unlike proposals for the Duke Kunshan University, the degrees will not carry the Duke name.

The secret agreement represents a new dimension in Fuqua's continuing thrust into every corner of the globe. And it raises very profound if not disturbing questions.

✔ A) FC can find no announcement -- not by Fuqua, not by Duke University -- of the agreement, which was developed as early as April, 2010. The Fuqua website lists international cities where the school either has or is developing programs -- but there is no mention of Kazakhstan.

Elizabeth Hogan, Fuqua's PR officer, and Michael Schoenfeld, principal spokesman for the Brodhead Administration, both refused to discuss this secrecy or the substance of Fuqua's agreement. Fact Checker suggested in past essays that Duke has deliberately dropped the profile of many of its international agreements as the debate over the new Duke Kunshan University heated up, to counter many people who feel Duke is going too many places too fast.

In our post last week on President Brodhead, we listed many instances where Duke has deliberately kept its stakeholders in the dark about Kunshan.

✔ B) A reading of the transcripts of the Academic Council indicates no part of this deal has been considered. On the one hand, there's the argument that unlike Kunshan, which must get approval, there are no Duke degrees. On the other, the unprecedented degree of involvement would seem to establish a need for oversight, a great responsibility to maintain quality and rigor, and a necessity of protecting Duke's reputation. One possible pitfall: MBA sections will have as many as 100 students, far larger than in Durham.

The Council has authority under university by-laws:

"The University Faculty shall be responsible for the conduct of instruction and research in the various colleges and schools in the University. It may also consider and make recommendations to the President regarding any and all phases of education at the University.

"The University Faculty shall approve and recommend to the Board of Trustees the persons it deems fit to receive degrees or other marks of distinction, and the establishment of any new degree or diploma."

While some may argue that the Kazakhstan deal slips through the cracks -- education "at the university" for example, meaning in Durham -- the non-Duke degree programs that have by-passed the council so far were far less encompassing.

✔ C) The information available to FC does not make clear -- indeed it does not even hint -- how this move has strategic value for Duke. As FC has noted, we seem to be opportunistic, with the motto "You show cash, we're there in a flash." Nor is there any indication how this will benefit Duke/Durham.

In fact there is no strategic plan that mentions the explosion of international adventures that we are seeing. The last plan -- developed after extensive and careful consideration among stakeholders at all levels a decade ago -- focused on Central Campus in Durham. But that's been shelved, the money for it swallowed by the financial meltdown in 2008.

President Brodhead did address the faculty in 2007 on "Duke's international aspirations," but certainly there was no hint of campuses in China nor Kazakhstan or anywhere else.

✔ D) The plan is for Fuqua faculty to rotate into and out of Kazakhstan, staying in the country slightly under one month. It is not known how many Duke faculty are interested in this, nor what incentives they are being offered, nor how it would mesh with responsibilities on the mother campus. At a June 1 Fuqua faculty meeting where two degree programs proposed for Kunshan were shot down, few faculty members expressed interest in a similar rotation in China. Former Dean Blair Sheppard had tried to make Kunshan attractive, telling faculty members that in six weeks time, they would be able to meet half of their annual teaching commitment.

✔ E) This deal was inherited by Dean Bill Boulding, now in his 10th day after the sudden curious departure of Dean Blair Sheppard. It will be interesting to see how he handles this early test, a deal replete with many unanswered questions. Sheppard had become known for thrusts in all directions -- and running a financial disaster. In his four years, he ran four deficits. And his money-making pet project, Duke Corporation Education, lost millions.

Corporate Education was key to Sheppard's support -- the general faculty rebuked his leadership on June 1 -- and when the financial tide turned, he had to can employees and force giant salary cuts on others.

✔✔ The new university is in the former capital of Astana, the country's largest city and its cultural center. The aim: to offer world class education to 20,000 students a year, instead of the government's helping the best to go abroad to study.

A careful Loyal Reader will already have discerned a problem for Duke: if Duke provides education in other countries -- and those countries are going to channel their best students to these schools -- Duke in Durham will lose those very students and thus be deprived of an international flavor.

Indeed, the Kazakhstan government has already announced a goal of making this an "international and world class university," bringing an end to its unique and progressive “Bolashak” (Future) program, which paid for undergraduate educations abroad in return for a commitment to work for five years in Kazakhstan.

The Bolashak director for the US and Canada has been brought home. FC could not learn if any Bolashak students have attended Duke. The program was started in 1993 and has involved 6,000 students.

✔✔ The school is named Nazarbayev University, modestly carrying the family name of the Kazakhstan president. It also goes under the title "New University." Classes will be taught only in English, with all of its professors from abroad. Most people in the nation speak the Kazakh language or Russian, owing to that country's long sufferance as part of the Soviet Union.

As part of its discussion of Kunshan, where classes will also be in English, the Fuqua faculty learned that Chinese candidates for advanced degrees may not be proficient enough in English to grasp complicated concepts. Or they may need them explained slowly, step by step. We can only wonder if this factor plays out in Kazakhstan.

✔ Already, Nazarbayev University is embroiled in a language controversy.

Luckily, this by-passes Duke, which will apparently not play any role in admissions (adding to the quality problem, we might add). Similarly, undergraduate students, with classes scheduled to begin this fall, will not be selected by University College of London, which is providing faculty on the baccalaureate level in a deal similar to Duke's.

Controversy already: With a small number of undergraduates about to begin class, the list of accepted students posted on the school's website consists almost exclusively of ethnic Kazakhs. Non-Kazakhs make up just over a third of the population -- and while they do not speak the Kazakh language, it should make no difference since courses will be in English. A spokesman for Nazarbayev University just shrugged when asked about this by a journalist.

✔✔✔ On the graduate level, one division, the B-School, will be staffed by Duke. From information provided by a Loyal Reader, Fact Checker has learned the names of some senior Fuqua faculty who have made hush-hush visits to Kazakhstan:

✔ -- Richard Staelin, the Edward and Rose Donnell Professor of Business Administration. In addition to his degree-oriented teaching, he has been very active in packaging corporate education programs (at a very fancy price) for corporations around the world. Examples: Norway, Israel, Australia. His biography states that he was "deeply involved in setting up the Duke Goethe and Duke Seoul University alliances," whoops, both of which collapsed. FC expects that in a short time, the thriving petroleum and gas industries will be prime targets.

✔-- Thomas Keller, the R. J. Reynolds Professor Emeritus and a former Dean of Fuqua. He has been involved in discussions of whether a full-time MBA or part-time Executive MBA program is better. There seems to be sentiment in favor of the full-time MBA, because managers in Kazakhstan feel they are worked to the bone, with little free time to allocate to education.

✔-- Daniel Nagy, an associate dean who has been Regional Director for Fuqua in Russia, CIS, and Europe. Our source says when he called the timetable "aggressive." Staelin chimed in: the timetable may be "fast," but the academic courses will still be "high quality."

✔✔✔ Competition: Kazakhstan already has an MBA program taught in English by professors many of whom are foreign. It’s the Bang School of Business at Kazakh Institute of Management, Economics, and Strategic Research. The MBA program there advertises itself as one that “trains leaders who can manage effectively and transform successfully organizations in Kazakhstan and internationally.”

President Nazarbayev told the opening ceremony, the university "will become a national brand of Kazakhstan that will combine the advantages of the national education system and the best of international research and education practice."

Academic freedom? Democracy. No mention.

The new university has its critics: “It's educational segregation: the level of education in Kazakhstan has fallen catastrophically over the last 20 years,” said Dosym Satpaev, a political analyst in Almaty. “But we have this ambitious project to build one very good university in Astana. Some lucky people will get access to a very good education, but what about everyone else? They will get a bad education and won't be able to find jobs.”

As in Kunshan, construction is underway. The centerpiece -- a massive atrium that connects all the buildings -- is done. Soaring roof. Fountains and pools. Palm trees. Thanks to luck of nature, a booming oil and gas-fueled economy is set to launch a school that hopefully will upgrade and insure its future.

Thank you for reading Fact Checker and loving Duke!

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Appendix to Fact Checker, from the Duke Graduate School Guide. Kazakhstan is the ninth largest nation in the world and the second most populated country in Central Asia. It is a bilingual country with Kazakh being the state language and Russian
the official language used routinely in business.

During the years of Soviet power, Kazakhstan acquired an education system that had a vertical structure and was fully financed by the government. The duration of each phase of schooling is fixed, and when each is completed, a certificate or degree is awarded. Students are paid a stipend depending on their success, and teachers’ earnings are related to their duties, experience and qualifications. Kazakhstan lags behind the developed countries in the level of investment in education. The republic spends 12 times less per student than the

Duke Law takes modest step to spruce up international flavor

2011-08-09T23:35:00.003-04:00

This is a little more like it, what our international thirst should yield. A benefit to Duke in Durham.

Duke Law has announced the endowment of a second scholarship for a Chinese student to come to the US to study on the graduate level.

Second? Yes, former President Richard Nixon, the Cold War Warrior who opened new relations with China, established one at his alma mater decades ago.

Dining at Duke Med Center: a chicken wrap with 1554 mg of salt. Roasted veggies with 2381 mg. Ugh! For many people, daily intake should total 1500

2011-08-09T00:06:00.012-04:00

Posted at 12:10 AM Tuesday

✔ Fact Checker here. Probative, provocative, pro-Duke. Good day!

FC gets a continuing flow of tips from Loyal Readers, and one who eats regularly in the Medical Center's restaurants for ambulatory patients, visitors and employees is responsible for this post. He told us about salt, salt and more salt in the food, and a Deputy Fact Checker found the statistics to confirm his taste buds.

Please note: this essay does not cover food served to patients admitted to Duke Hospital. And we did not compare the Medical Center's restaurants with others off campus, which may be just as bad.

We will get to why salt is bad for you in a moment. Let's first look at the recommended daily intake:

American Heart Association recommends for healthy adults less than 2,300 milligrams. 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."

OK fellow Dukies, let's look at some of the food that is being dished up right in the middle of the campus facilities dedicated to preserving and restoring health.

This food is prepared and served in the Atrium Cafe under a contract with Aramark, which we thought had been banished after a revolt in 2007 -- everything short of a food riot -- against the most awful gruel and mystery meat which was served in a monopoly of East and West Campus student dining. It turns out Aramark survives in the Medical Center.

The information about salt is provided by Aramark itself.

The appetizers on Sunday -- you missed it -- included chili-cheese potato soup, which, not surprisingly, contains 1285 mg of salt. (Remember, a total of 2300 mg a day if you are healthy, 1500 if you are over 51, or black, or have health problems.) Next week's crabby Swiss soup (which apparently the restaurants in Switzerland were sold out of since FC did not encounter this on three visits) is 829 but that's for an 8 ounce cup.

The vegetables on Wednesday include diced roasted vegetables, which sounds pretty healthy until you find out a portion contains 2381 mg of salt. No typo. Figures from Aramark. 2381 mg. Even aloo gobi (which turns out to be potatoes and cauliflower mashed together, for those not familiar with Indian and Pakistani food) available on Thursday contains 565 mg. (It must be the cauliflower, for mashed potatoes are only 157.)

You are better off with the french fries, which have 435 mg before you add ketchup or your own salt. Even the Mediterranean salad which sounds so healthy with its crisp greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, onions and olives, and feta cheese, comes in at 621.

The meats on Monday included something called a hot dog expo, with 1,063 mg of salt, but at least the words hot dog, unlike the words diced roasted vegetables, should set off an alarm. Other entrees later this week -- Jamaican smoked pork chop and smoked St. Louis ribs -- contain 742 and 751 mg.

Perhaps you'd like to risk a grilled Angus burger, available every day, good for 1083 mg. The garden burger is not much better, 912.

Ah hah you may say, hot dogs, beef, you know they are bad for you. Go for the grilled chicken sandwich. Alas, 1401 mg. Yes, 1401. Even lemon roasted chicken has 799 mg. Next week's chicken cordon bleu on a hot ciabatta (spelled wrong on the menu) has 1041.

A slice of pizza has 935, the pepperoni pizza is good for 1130. There are no current values available for manicotti, ravioli or lasagna, but previous recipes, which may have been changed, made them disasters. Sample: manicotti 1068.

And to cap it all off, next week the featured honey ham sandwich has 1538 mg; the corned beef Reuben has 1948 mg, including a side of German potato salad. Yummy.

It's no better in other Aramack facilities. The Commons: yesterday "creative corn relish avocado soup" 900 mg. Chicken wrap 1554 mg.

To eat healthy in any of these facilities, you have to be keenly alert. That should not be the case.

✔ So Loyal Readers, you undoubtedly have this figured out. One meal as a guest of Aramark, and you are very likely to go over your entire quota for salt in a day. Yes, this is in the same Medical Center that looks out for you, properly, by prohibiting smoking everywhere, even on its sidewalks and in its parking decks.

This is also the same Medical Center that harbors Dr. Larry Goldstein, professor of neurology and head of Duke's Stroke Policy Program. In case you think salt is benign, or leads only to high blood pressure, listen: "The data behind sodium consumption (leading to strokes) are pretty strong and persuasive... People need to read the labels (or read Fact Checker) of the food they are eating and see what their salt consumption is and at least try to reduce it toward the levels that are currently being recommended."

Data? The risk of stroke increased 16% for every 500 mg/day of sodium consumed after adjustment for age, sex, race and ethnicity, education, alcohol use, exercise, daily caloric intake, smoking, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure, and previous heart disease.

And listen, please, to Michael Jacobson, executive director for Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington: Salt “is the single most harmful element in the food supply, even worse than saturated fat and trans fat, or food additives and pesticides.”

✔ Duke's relationship with Aramark has always been curious. After all, the student food was so bad, it was so expensive, and the corporation was draining profits away from its Duke operations instead of reinvesting them as promised. All this despite a heavy presence of Dukies in the top leadership. These included John R. Donovan, Jr. '80, the president, and Executive Vice President and Group Executive L. Frederick Sutherland '73. Duke Trustee emeritus Karl VonDer Hayden '63 (of Perkins Pavilion fame) was on the board of directors, and the question has always been whether he was the rabbi who kept Aramark's grip on Duke alive.

Typical lunch experience, recounted in the 2006 Chronicle: Sophomore Tom Engquist said his request for a burrito with half-chicken and half-carnitas was rejected even though both items cost the same amount.

"Not only can she not do it, but she rolls her eyes at me," he recalled.

Engquist opted for a regular carnitas burrito, and said he found it bland and flavorless. "And I'm Mexican, so I know good carnitas," he said, adding that the only acceptable part of his meal was his bottled water.

Aramark is not only a food company, it is a service company, with total employment of 225,000 world wide.

In 2004, an employee of the Automatic Elevator Company did routine maintenance on elevators in many Duke facilities. He drained dirty, used hydraulic fluid and put into recycled containers labeled detergent.

Cardinal Medical Services was supposed to cart the containers away -- but somehow they got re-delivered to Duke facilities. Aramark -- not its food division, obviously -- was under contract to provide maintenance and other services for the Duke Health System's surgical instrument washing system.

Surgeons kept on complaining of greasy, slippery instruments -- but still they operated on 3,648 patients at Durham Regional Hospital and Duke Health Raleigh Hospital; the main Duke Hospital was not involved.

Whoops, the dirty hydraulic fluid was used instead of detergent. For months. Aramark inspected and re-inspected, or so it claimed, and found nothing wrong. Some inspection: the proper detergent was milky white, the used hydraulic fluid looked like maple syrup.

Numerous patients said they suffered injury and sued for malpractice.

In a statement, Duke was as cold as could be. Look at the first sentence: "We appreciate and understand that some of the plaintiffs may have physical problems for any number of reasons, including the fact that they had adverse health conditions necessitating surgical procedures to begin with."

Duke kept the lid on the scandal by reaching secret private settlements with the plaintiffs, and went to private arbitration with Aramark to recoup.

FC would like to start a regular dining column. To cover how it tastes, how much it costs, how good it is for you, on campus and off. When we get our new website in the next month or so, the column may run as a contribution by a Deputy Fact Checker, or perhaps a signed essay. No, we won't pay for your food. Interested? Write Duke.Fact.Checker@gmail.com

Brodhead skips NCAA summit

2011-08-08T15:03:00.006-04:00

The presidents of more than 50 schools with big-time athletic programs have gathered for a NCAA summit in Indianapolis. President Brodhead is not there. Vice President and Athletic Director Kevin White is one of four AD's attending as substitutes.

The Division 1 summit is going to consider crucial issues, many involving integrity.

Brodhead Administration clings to fantasy that Kunshan will open with degree granting programs next August

2011-08-07T23:04:00.012-04:00

Posted at 11 PM Sunday evening

Fact Checker is far more than oversight and commentary on the Kunshan Initiative. Even so, we are impelled to begin this week as we ended last, with an essay on the folly of trying in one grand swoop to create a full research university serving Chinese students in the backwater of Kunshan, the first of a chain of similar universities world-wide.

✔✔✔ Welcome to Fact Checker. Probative. Provocative.

The silence must end. It is time -- no, it is past time -- for President Brodhead and his administrators to speak out honestly on the Kunshan Initiative.

Mr. President, we feel you are obligated:

✔A) To tell stakeholders who do not read Fact Checker -- to tell them for the first time -- that on June 1 the faculty in the Fuqua Business School shot down the two proposals for degree programs that were to launch the Duke Kunshan University.

✔B) To communicate to stakeholders, Duke's partners in China and prospective students that we will not meet the August, 2012 opening date.

✔C) To change your approach to planning for Kunshan in a very fundamental way, to include the faculty in particular as well as other stakeholders for the first time. Up until now, your Administration has not involved the faculty -- only briefed them from time to time about what has been decided. And they were cursory briefings. The faculty must have a seat at the table, to be included in discussion of course, but also to see its ideas incorporated.

✔D) To create a strategic plan for Duke University in Durham, to replace the relic that you pull out every once in a while for worship. The latest plan focuses on construction of Central Campus, a project every bit as big as the original construction of West Campus. This is dead because the financial meltdown cost us the money we intended to spend on this project. Despite this focus on Duke in Durham, you have represented that the plan supports Kunshan. In fact it does not say one damn thing about going into other nations and starting universities for indigenous peoples. Mr. President, neither does your major 2007 address to the faculty on Duke's international aspirations. We need a road map, not an opportunistic leap from one pot of money being waived at us to the next.

✔ E) And, Mr. President, you and your minions have a deep obligation to inform and enable the continuing debate over Kunshan -- not try to stifle it. FC believes administrators can properly be strong advocates for their beliefs: to lead us, to make proposals, to drive them to fruition. But there is a parallel responsibility that is being terribly, deliberately neglected: to provide data so that other people can make up their minds independently, so that opponents are empowered to intelligently and responsibly participate in discussion and debate. Mr. President, you earn a F- on this. An important part of today's essay is a list of relevant documents and financial projects that are currently withheld. We demand their immediate release.

✔✔✔ THE ROLE OF THE ACADEMIC COUNCIL

We call upon the Academic Council -- the faculty's elected senate representing all sectors of the university -- to stake out its ground at an early meeting in the new semester, to view in an expansive way the authority conferred by the University's by-laws to approve academic programs. The Council needs time, a staff and a budget to develop a meticulous, independent appraisal of Kunshan and other international adventures before voting on degree programs. The administration's frenzy over Kunshan must not be allowed to railroad a proposal through.

The Council must not tolerate another statement from Brodhead that he spent "almost an hour" discussing Kunshan with the Council's leadership. That is insufficient, a kiss-off for an Initiative that Brodhead himself says will transform Duke in as big a way as James B. Duke transformed Trinity College.

We should note that in re-reading the transcripts of all Academic Council meetings for the past two years, we were quite encouraged. We found an admirable degree of involvement, with increasingly pointed questions. FC salutes the Council for its due diligence.

✔✔✔ THE ADMINISTRATION IS KEEPING STAKEHOLDERS
IN THE DARK OVER RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Fellow Dukies, assume for a moment that you do not read Fact Checker. Would you know that the Fuqua faculty, expressing the most serious concerns about finances and quality, rebuked former Dean Sheppard, Peter the Provost and President Brodhead?

The answer is no.

✔ Was this covered in Duke Today, the on-line newspaper aimed at employees? No.

✔ Was there a news release? No. We found only a few words in response to one reporter from Vice President Schoenfeld, a pathetic bluster that the rebuke (he certainly did not use that word) is good, because now we can make the proposed programs better.

✔ Was this covered in the new issue of Duke Magazine, the principal conduit to alumni, just sent out? No. (While the June 1 rejection of degree proposals by the Fuqua faculty might be considered late breaking news for a magazine, we note that the resignation of Global Vice President Rev. Greg Jones and interim appointment of Dr. Michael Merson, which occurred almost three weeks later, are covered.)

✔ And how about the Chronicle? No. There was a Kunshan story the day after the Fuqua faculty meeting -- but it was stale, stale background. The first mention of the June 1 rejection came in an oblique one sentence, nine word reference in the 7th paragraph of a June 22nd editorial. There has never been a substantial story.

THE CURRENT TIMETABLE TO OPEN AUGUST, 2012, JUST WON"T HAPPEN

Brodhead must recognize that the current timetable -- actually the second or third, depending on how you count -- is not realistic. Not at all.

Look at what is supposed to happen in the next 11 months:

✔ The new leadership -- Dean Boulding of Fuqua for the next two years and interim global Vice President Merson -- must involve faculty representatives. Not just brief them periodically as erstwhile Dean Blair Shepperd did, but have time-consuming brainstorming sessions. Not days, not weeks, but months of them.

✔ Then Fuqua's tenured professors, tenure track professors, and professors of the practice, about 95 in all, must schedule a meeting to discuss proposals that may emerge. And then, as the timetable from last June suggests, three weeks later take a formal vote.

✔ Assuming there is approval -- and not a return to the drawing board -- the proposal moves to the Academic Council which must also assent, a power derived from the by-laws of the University, our fundamental governing document.

✔ Assuming there is Academic Council approval, faculty must be found. It would seem that most already have their plans set for the academic year -- and are not just waiting for the opportunity of Kunshan to dawn. In fact, few want to go, as the June 1 meeting showed.

✔ after assignment to Kunshan, faculty must prepare courses worthy of a higher degree from Duke, coordinating with each other. (The Duke Kunshan University will award Duke degrees as if the students had been in Durham.)

✔ And then there is accreditation; we are not familiar with this process and only recently has a Deputy Fact Checker been assigned.

✔ Now, please, also consider the time-line from the standpoint of a student in China who might want to enroll at Kunshan. How can they possibly rely on classes beginning on schedule next August? How much will this cost? Who will be teaching? What is their strength?

In getting realistic about the Kunshan timetable, we assume Brodhead will want to avoid the charged word "moratorium," for that's been employed by faculty who have a very realistic and responsible view of Kunshan. But a two year pause seems appropriate, for all the steps mentioned above.

✔✔✔✔ SPECIFIC INFORMATION WE NEED

For a start, to inform and enable the debate on this campus as our president must, we call upon Brodhead to release the following information.

✔Mr. President, tell us the status of Duke's application to the local and national Ministries of Education to operate in China. And in particular, tell us what tuition you projected in the application. Has China answered? It is past due. As FC reported in May, there is a huge gulf, with Duke anticipating tuition of $41,000 for Fuqua programs and $46,000 for a masters offered by the Duke Global Health Institute. Duke's consultants have found Chinese families might pay up to $15,000 for degrees -- while the Chinese government has typically approved tuition of only $5,000.

✔Mr. President, give us an update on projected operating losses. It's been a year since your calculations, and surely some numbers have changed. In fact we know they have.

✔Mr. President, allow Executive Vice President Trask -- Duke's chief financial offer -- to speak on Kunshan; the muzzling of his comments, amid indications he questions the financial viability, is no longer acceptable.

✔Mr. President, release to us all documents you have negotiated with the Chinese about academic freedom. We are particularly concerned about your weak response to questions relating to access to the internet. Months ago, Peter the Provost told the Chronicle a final agreement was at hand.

✔Mr. President, assure us that people of faith will be able to practice their religion on campus. And that Duke is making space available: a chapel, a prayer room, a meditation room.

✔Mr. President, you must do a far better job of showing how Kunshan will benefit the home campus. Your latter-day thought that faculty going to Kunshan will bring home new context for their teaching in Durham is rather weak, particularly given the small numbers of faculty involved.

✔Mr. President, outline for us the escape clause, that would allow us politely to tell the Chinese that opening the Kunshan campus is an impossibility.

✔Mr. President, it is curious that Duke's other international moves have all dropped out of the news. Coincidentally while you are being charged with going in too many directions at once. City by city, nation by nation, give us an update.

Dick, last week we wrote a very personal essay about your tenure, lurching from crisis to crisis, and questioning how you would survive the turmoil. This week we further advise you that we see a virulent cancer eating into your Presidency. With apologies to John Dean and Richard Nixon.

Thank you for reading Fact Checker and loving Duke.

Autopsy: Crystal Gail Mangum's boyfriend died from one stab that punctured lung, diaphragm, stomach, colon, left kidney and spleen

2011-08-05T23:31:00.009-04:00

✔✔ The autopsy on the man Crystal Gail Mangum is accused of killing has just been released. And it is chilling.

Mangum -- for those of you new to Duke -- was the North Carolina Central honor student, go-go girl and prostitute who falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players with rape at a 2006 team party where she was paid to strip. After a special investigation, State Attorney General Roy Cooper declared the Dukies "innocent" and said Mangum would not be prosecuted because she is a loon.

There can be no doubt that she was a danger to the community. What we did not know was when or how or why she might explode.

Early this year there was a fire set in her apartment. Arson.

And in April, in a dispute over rent, Mangum is alleged to have turned on a new boyfriend (or customer?) who let her move in with at least two -- and possibly all three -- of her kids. Some reports indicate Mangum did not have her share of the rent; others indicate she stole his.

At the time, it was thought that Mangum stabbed 46 year old Reginald Daye multiple times, so bad were his injuries. But the autopsy turned up only one "gaping" wound -- with the knife puncturing his left lung, diaphragm, stomach, colon, left kidney and spleen in one deep plunge. He also had several cuts and bruises on his left arm, which might be from self-defense attempts, said the report.

Mangum, age 32, is where she belongs. In jail. Awaiting trial.

Sheppard. What happened? FC probes the sudden departure of the Dean

2011-08-04T00:50:00.005-04:00

Please read our essay on Dean Sheppard, and then scroll down for another important story: White female freshman. Black man from Durham. Duke faces litigation over racially charged rape.

Posted at 10 PM Wednesday

✔✔✔✔ Did he really quit? Or did something happen in seven weeks time that cost Blair Sheppard his job as dean of the Fuqua Business School? Seven weeks: from the start of June when he looked confident and secure to a press release in late July announcing his imminent departure.

And if he got canned, who instigated it? Peter the Provost? President Brodhead? Or did orders came from the Trustees?

Did Rick Wagoner, Trustee chair since July 1, come to a quick decision? Was the elusive David Rubenstein, chair of the China Committee, involved? The Wagoner or Rubenstein scenario would be very ominous for Peter or Brodhead, supplanting their judgment on Duke's greatest expansion since James B. Duke got Trinity College to change its name to his.

And was there any special factor that dictated Sheppard had to leave forthwith. Only seven days notice.

✔ Early in June, there was no signal at all that he would be gone. One Loyal Reader has written to us about a meeting where Sheppard and other administrators talked confidentially, confidently, specifically about the Kunshan timetable, still "on track" for classes for degree programs to begin in August, 2012, despite the Fuqua faculty's June 1 meeting rejecting all proposals.

Shortly before that, Sheppard sat with President Brodhead at an alumni meeting in San Francisco -- one of the structured "Duke Idea" presentations designed to channel the evening away from any alum's asking pesky questions. The President and the Dean cooed over each other, though part of Brodhead's introduction was just plain inaccurate.

Brodhead lavishly praised Shep for forming Duke Corporate Education (DCE) in July, 2000, a wholly owned subsidiary of Fuqua which produces tailor-made non-degree learning experiences for corporations at hefty prices. Prices enhanced by its standing as the #1 packager of these events in the world.

Why Sheppard, Brodhead noted, even had given up tenure as a Fuqua professor to start this enterprise! (We have no information as to whether he regained tenure when he left full-time work at DCE to become Fuqua's dean in July, 2007; Sheppard remained chair of DCE's board of directors while dean.)

Brodhead cited Shep's success with DCE -- a profit-making venture -- never mind this news was quite out of date.

For two years, DCE has been in the red, the bleeding going from $2 million to $5.8 million in the last available annual reports --- statistics that Brodhead damn well knew about. And in case you want to dismiss this as a product of the economic misery, the down-trend was evident earlier than the depression.

Brodhead also skipped over the turmoil for the staff at DCE. For the lucky ones who remained, there were steep salary cuts. Of course salaries had been out of whack, with Greg Marchi, the chief salesman, earning $672,500 in one year but only $509,405 the next. (His background is in advertising, most notably hawking for Philip Morris, Kellogg's and Sprint.) The executive director after musical chairs, Robert Reinheimer, had a similar battle to change his style of living from $529,084 a year to $425,895. Duke's Arts and Sciences professors should have such problems!

Then there was Brodhead's three continent summer-time spree. Despite repeated requests, Brodhead personally and his PR staff have refused to tell us who accompanied him to Europe, Asia and Africa. Yes, only at Duke in the Brodhead years, could a good will trip be done in secret.

But a Deputy Fact Checker confirms Sheppard was in Kunshan, standing near Brodhead and Cynthia in the obligatory picture, yellow construction hats and big smiles. And even though the trip failed to bring home any accomplishment (the last news release was three days before Brodhead left) there was no hint of danger that the ax would fall.

During the past few weeks Sheppard, as usual, was playing the role of robust leader, big promises, never missing a step despite the June 1 rebuke shared with Brodhead and Peter the Provost.

He learned nothing from the rebuke, for there was no new consultation, no collegiality with the faculty; in fact our sources said Sheppard spoke to very few as he faced the task of trying to recast the degree proposals to win approval. Some suggest Sheppard was scheming to score an end-run around the faculty, having Duke Corporate Education run some programs so they would not need approval, thus saving face if Kunshan needed yet another deadline. Significantly, when Sheppard and the interim dean Bill Boulding ventured out after announcement that the King was dead, they went to the offices of DCE.

✔ As Loyal Readers realize, this discussion does not answer the initial questions: quit or canned? It leaves a mystery, whatever occurred in seven weeks time to cause this proud man to say -- at least according to the press release, which may or may not have been his words -- that he was "not the person" to carry Fuqua forward. Epiphany? Not likely.

And what happened that caused Sheppard to say -- at least in the press release -- that now there must be "consolidation" of the expansion that he himself wrought, a word that everyone interprets to mean trimming of the sails, calming down after letting international winds blow Duke around the globe. Sheppard was after all the turbine behind grandiose expansion plans in no less than ten cities simultaneously -- led by Kunshan, the first full research university in a chain that Duke would plant, like McDonalds, around the world.

✔ As FC recently outlined, the press release announcing Sheppard's decision not to accept a second term as Dean is even more unbelievable when you consider:

A) Shep's first term still had a year to run.

B) He participated in the process for evaluation for a second term.

C) Last April 19th, Peter the Provost announced Shep had been reappointed to five more years starting July 1, 2012. Who knew, as the departure press release now claimed, that this was merely extending an offer to Sheppard, that he was going to think it over.

✔The only certainty here is that Sheppard leaves behind a mound of mess.

Dean Boulding must formulate new proposals for degrees in Kunshan, even though a faculty report seems to make this an impossibility. The finances simply do not add up:

-- where Sheppard once said there was great demand for the biggest degree program planned for Kunshan -- master of management studies -- three outside consultants said no.

-- where the dean once said employers would help pay the freight, the consultants found differently. In fact, not one company would pay a cent.

-- where the idea of Duke in China teaching Chinese students in English was the big lure, the consultants found Chinese would rather go abroad.

-- and someone pointed out that the highest tuition the Chinese regime had ever approved (this is under state control, no supply and demand calculations) was only a fraction of what Sheppard was counting on.

-- and someone pointed out that Sheppard's plans called for only 25 percent of the instruction to be by Fuqua faculty from Durham, a cheap reliance on adjuncts (freelancers) that endangered quality.

-- and after Brodhead -- his back to the wall -- identified the big benefit to Duke-Durham would be the numbers of faculty gaining exposure to China and returning to enliven the campus, the faculty pointed out that the numbers involved were not great -- and virtually no one wanted to go to China anyway.

✔ And so Dean Boulding inherits all this and more. In this essay FC has not gotten into problems with the premier offering at Fuqua -- the Cross Continent MBA. This $140,000 plus degree requires only 70 days of instruction total, plus "distance learning" which my late dear father called homework. The gimmick is shipping degree candidates to move between five global cities (plus Durham) and somehow absorb the business culture in a week at each location. Shep had to concede that students -- and their employers paying the big bucks -- were totally dissatisfied, and that on more than one occasion Boulding -- the point man -- had gotten lambasted. Some corrective steps have been taken.

So FC is sure Boulding realizes he needs to have extensive time-consuming consultation with his faculty before any strategic moves, yet so far as Kunshan is concerned, he is still bound by an August, 2012 start of classes.

Will Brodhead bail him out on the date? Don't count on it; our President has his own sinking boat. The last thing Dick needs to acknowledge is another failure in Kunshan, moving the date again.

✔ Apart from Kunshan and apart from DCE, Fuqua's financial situation will deteriorate this year. While numbers are not available and given the paranoia that abounds in the Brodhead years probably won't be, faculty reports reveal a closely held secret: that in all of Fuqua's offerings, enrollment will be down this fall.

So Sheppard -- again according to the news release -- begins fund-raising and development duties for Kunshan. There was never any indication such a position was available. And most notably, the news release gave the job no title.

At least Brodhead could have added him to the roster of his "special advisers," giving Sheppard a crutch as the door slammed shut.

White female freshman, black man from Durham. Duke in middle of racially charged rape lawsuit

2011-08-03T19:15:00.020-04:00

Posted at 2 AM Thursday

✔✔✔ We've just found out that Duke University -- defendant in a racially charged civil case where a white female freshman alleges a black male from Durham raped her at a fraternity party -- has succeeded in getting the litigation moved from state to federal court.

The stated reason for the transfer: the plaintiff is now making federal claims under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. There may also be undisclosed reasons for the move in Duke's defense strategy.

February 11, 2007. A duplex in the Bentwood apartment complex at 405 Gattis Street. We have conflicting information on whether this is on Central Campus or not. An historically black fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma, was holding a party. Advertised on Facebook, it drew an estimated 100 people, including a black man from Durham with no university affiliation.

The black man, 22 year old Michael Jermaine Burch, who some say used the name "Chris" at the party, was charged with rape. He copped a plea and will be in state prison until 2013. The plea not only involved the Duke case -- but another forcible sexual incident that occurred while he was out on bail for the Duke rape. In both cases, he pleaded guilty to attempted rape.

✔✔✔✔ A prosecutor said if the Duke case had gone to trial, the state would have presented evidence showing the 18-year-old Duke freshman dancing with and making out with Burch. Both were said to be intoxicated from a punch served at the party.

The freshmen went to the bathroom. Burch followed her in. The two kissed again, and according to the freshman, she told him she did not want intercourse but he would not stop. A search warrant indicates that others at the party -- wanting to use the bathroom -- could not get in for perhaps an hour, and that they heard "thumping" from inside.

After Burch went to jail, the freshman outed herself in an interview with her hometown paper on Long Island, Newsday. Her name: Katharine Rouse.

✔ So what are the allegations against Duke?

While Duke officials said they offered Rouse support, the lawsuit says Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta went on Raleigh TV to say the rape was "part of the reality of college life and of experimentation and some of the consequences of students not necessarily always being in the right place at the right time." This, the lawsuit contends, created a "hostile environment" on campus that violated federal law.

There's more. After leaving Duke, Rouse battled the university over doing school work at home. And she battled again when she returned to Durham for a semester and then wanted a second leave. Rouse contends that at this point Duke tricked her into leaving permanently, but Duke contends it was clear that she would be withdrawing from the university and "not be eligible for automatic re-enrollment." Rouse claims that during this period, she was entitled to Disability Act protection because of psychological problems stemming from "a white woman who accused an African-American of rape."

Rouse seeks compensatory and punitive damages, the total not specified. Duke answered the complaint June 19. One of Duke's defenses: the statute of limitation had tolled, and Rouse, represented by Durham trial lawyer Bob Eckstrand, waited too long to file suit. Duke also denies the substance of the charges.

✔✔ FC has heard from several Loyal Readers who draw parallels with another sexually charged rape allegation -- the lacrosse hoax where a black woman falsely charged three white Duke students. "The response by Duke University was very different this time around. There were no prayers, marches, or candlelight vigils for Katie Rouse."

After being charged with raping Rouse, Burch got out on $40,000 bail. The lacrosse players bond was initially $400,000, reduced months later to $100,000. And in the house where Rouse was raped, the cops found a gun and narcotics.

F