A Surprising Relocation

Standing in Sunday sunlight with a colleague who asked how I was adjusting to life in Durham and at Duke, I smiled and said North Carolina can be a surprising place. I came to Duke as a visiting professor of English in 1998. My home and place of employment at the time were Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. The Duke English department was under severe scrutiny by the media. Many of its star faculty had departed for points North and West. Morale among students and colleagues in the department was not at its best. But Professor Marianna Torgovnick, the chair of the department, was upbeat. She proclaimed there was going to be a splendid new formation of the English department, and that I was going to be a part of it. "Hah!" I thought, "When my visit is over, I am headed home to Philadelphia, to cheese steaks, the Liberty Bell and my old job!" Man makes plans. Duke laughs. In the spring of 1999, my wife Charlotte Pierce-Baker and I signed on for permanent faculty posts at Duke. It was a surprising move for us. We had been in Pennsylvania for a quarter century. Why did we relocate?

Well, certainly, the climate (meteorological, intellectual, interpersonal and quotidian) had much to do with our decision. Sunshine, new friendships, stellar colleagues in our departments and the ease of day-to-day life were promising stress-busters for decades of urban angst. Two years have now sailed by. Contentment, friendship, intellectual challenges and wonderful, wonderful interaction with our graduate and undergraduate students make us smile. There is, indeed, a new formation in the Duke English department constituted by a brilliant younger faculty, a finely cooperative spirit and an energetic chair. My wife and I routinely congratulate each other on our relocation.

But, let us not forget the "surprises." Oh, I don't mean anything dramatically arresting, or permanently disabling. I only mean to indicate that certain geographical and institutional divides have foregrounded themselves during the past two years with mild shocks to my system. For example, I am struck by the refined protocols, village values and seeming obliviousness of Chapel Hill to the gritty, diverse, vibrant existence of its neighbor, Durham. I sometimes feel like I should "rehearse" before crossing the line into Chapel Hill. For me, the "border" between Durham and Chapel Hill is like one of those cleverly-installed underground systems for keeping domestic pets in place. I rehearse in order to avoid disciplinary shock. Duke's West Campus has something of the same "village aura" as Chapel Hill. At least it does when I see and hear about it through the eyes and ears of my black students. It is a bit of a jolt to survey the gothic majesty of West Campus and realize it is currently predicated upon white male-exclusivity. The black architect Julian Abele who designed West might feel profoundly uncomfortable on a fraternity-party Friday night. Like many in Durham and at Duke, I felt a small lightning bolt pop when I read the a-historical and anti-black advertisement by David Horowitz that was published by The Chronicle in the spring of 2001. For me, it was a surprise and a shock that the public, daily, circulating, Duke campus newspaper--a domain without prior restraint--published a racialized, fact-challenged diatribe for a fee. How much farther can a campus newspaper go in "fencing off" a minority?

But there have been the good surprises as well. At the moment of what I consider The Chronicle's spring infamy, black and white and Hispanic and Asian-American and South-Asian students came together to denounce the paper's insensitivity. "The Movement" was born. During the dreaded fall semester marked by September 11, 2001, the Duke community rallied to support students, faculty, staff and laborers against psychological despair and community dissolution. When I walk across West Campus on a fabulous fall day, I see a group of white students energetically engaged in conversation approaching me. At just the moment when they could easily ignore me, shock me with a glance or roll on by, they pause almost in unison. "Hello, Sir," they smile. It is a pleasant surprise.