The clouds literally parted as President Nan Keohane exited the Allen Building on the last day it was still her domain. And despite the persistent drizzle, the sun broke through the leaves of the trees on the quad as her husband Bob took her hand and they walked up past the library and on toward the Chapel steps to hear the bells chiming out "Dear Old Duke."
Keohane lingered at the heart of Duke's campus before her early exit Friday, before she cuts off her e-mail and is a letter's journey away, before she rolls out of bed July 1 and President-elect Richard Brodhead strolls into her office.
"I'm going to wake up in the morning, and I'm going to look out at the sunshine--or the fog more likely," she imagined, "and I'm going to say, 'Wow! This is really beautiful, and it feels like this great load has been lifted off my shoulders.'"
Keohane and her husband, a professor of political science, are spending the last days of her tenure as president at their summer home in Maine before they take a year's sabbatical at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences near Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.
In four short months, Keohane will be deep in the throes of academia again, plowing through Aristotle and Mill and Rousseau as she thinks about morality, evil and the way people make judgments about inequality.
She will also dabble in reflections on higher education as she compiles a collection of the speeches she has made during her 11 years as Duke's president. She said the book will likely be the only material she will write about her time at the University.
The coming year will be a chance for her to abandon the little blue index card where she keeps her daily schedule and to "take some more deep breaths and get used to living life at a normal pace."
"I'm sure that transition may be a little harder than I think," Keohane said, "but I'm actually looking forward to it."
But on the final day she spent on Duke's campus, Keohane still had her mind on the business of the University. She worked--or at least fiddled with her e-mail--until just before the Chapel bells rang.
Her usually cluttered tabletops were clear, except for some odds and ends and a vase of farewell flowers. The wall of white bookshelves that have overflowed with works of political science were vacant, ready for Brodhead to fill with tales of Huck Finn and the Pequot.
For most of the afternoon, workers tromped in and out of the president's corner office, filling boxes with stuff and at last, wrapping the mahogany desk in packing blankets to be refinished for Brodhead.
"I feel like I've been slowly getting pushed across the room," Keohane said from her computer desk in the far corner. "First they took the books and now the desk. I'm sort of retreating to the corner and the table where I'm going to stay until about 5 o'clock."
Just before five, Keohane signed off her computer for the last time and knocked twice on the mouse pad. Without a word she handed a vase of flowers to Bob Keohane, who had come to escort her out. The two exchanged some logistical murmurs as the soon-to-be former president grabbed her keys and glasses from the conference table and left.
"It's just about as empty as it's going to get," she said, surveying the room where she has spent countless hours over the last 11 years. "And they can start all over again on Monday."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.