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

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

✔ 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

✔ 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

✔✔✔ 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

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.

✔✔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.

✔✔✔ 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

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

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

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.