Inaugural festivities will occur all weekend, leading up to the official installation of Duke's ninth president Saturday afternoon.
Bright and early Wednesday morning, J. W. Walton, Trinity ’81—who heads a local catering company—began working tirelessly with the rest of his crew to transform Cameron Indoor Stadium from a cozy athletic facility to a lavish ballroom. An enormous tent, hung with golden valences and gilt carvings, engulfs the entire court. The makeover is nearing completion for tomorrow’s all-school dance, which resembles high society more than high school. And everyone’s invited.
“It’s like the prom on steroids,” Walton said.
The dance comes at the culmination of a week full of panels, parties and processions celebrating President Richard Brodhead’s inauguration. The events began with an ice cream social and a community service project and will kick into high gear this weekend with forums on globalization, a lecture by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka and Brodhead’s official inauguration. The calendar is even too packed for the guest of honor himself to attend each event from beginning to end.
“If I had nothing else to do, I would attend every one of them,” Brodhead said. “I can see that it’s a bit of a problem to be the person being inaugurated.”
The theme of the inaugural week has been Duke as a global institution, and many of the panels will address this topic. The talks begin tomorrow afternoon with two discussions about global health and global culture, moderated by Chancellor for Health Affairs Dr. Victor Dzau and Anne Allison, chair of the Department of Cultural Anthropology, respectively. The global theme continues with a lecture by Soyinka, a Nigerian playwright who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, at 3:30 p.m. today. Saturday morning, Sanford Institute of Public Policy Director Bruce Jentleson will lead a panel discussion entitled “Global Challenges.”
Despite its international theme, the week-long celebration of Brodhead’s installment also has a local focus. The week began with “Into the City,” a community service project connecting Duke and Durham. Saturday will include a panel on Duke’s history and its current direction including luminaries ranging from men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski to Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe professor of Theological Ethics.
Saturday’s inauguration at 3 p.m. is the centerpiece of the week’s events. Brodhead will address the community in the Chapel, and his speech will be broadcast simultaneously to audiences in Reynolds and Griffith Theaters and Page Auditorium. Brodhead’s speech will outline his vision for the University.
“In the speech I try to describe my sense of this place and just to briefly mention some of the places where we will want to be working,” Brodhead said.
The week-long festivities conclude with the Cameron soiree at 9 p.m. and a Chapel service Sunday morning. With a weekend full of possibilities, members of the Duke community plan to go to at least some of the events.
“I’m going to some things because my grandparents are coming up. They’re big Iron Dukes,” said junior Lolly Chadwick. “I know we’re going to the [“Duke University Past, Present and Future”] panel because my grandma loves Coach K.”
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