Bruce Jentleson, who brought public policy to the forefrontt of Duke and the academy, will step down as director of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy June 30, he announced in a memo to colleagues Monday
Bruce Jentleson, who brought public policy studies to the forefront of Duke and the academy, will step down as director of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy June 30, he announced in a memo to colleagues Monday.
Stretched by the demands of administrating, teaching and advising on global and national policy, Jentleson will turn his focus to a new two-book deal and two high-profile think tanks while remaining on the faculty as a full-time professor.
“You have this push and the pull: you really want to help build institutions, but you’ve got a real opportunity,” said Jentleson, who also serves as professor of public policy and political science. “And as someone who’s also been involved in the policy debate, I feel we’re at one of those critical junctures as a country.”
As a culminating move following five-plus years as director, Jentleson also announced the creation of a task force to examine a potential upgrade from an institute to a School of Public Policy.
“We’ve been thinking about that for several months, and that task force will be put in place relatively soon,” Provost Peter Lange said, adding that the task force should report back to him and President Richard Brodhead by the end of the summer on the prospects of a full-fledged school that is a “serious possibility.”
The potential reassessment of the Sanford Institute would cap off the success Jentleson has had in reaching the four goals he laid out upon his appointment in 1999—maintaining high-caliber undergraduate teaching, strengthening the graduate programs, committing to interdisciplinarity inside and outside of Duke and pushing the Institute’s “international dimension.”
In just 66 months, Jentleson will have weathered a rough review of the undergraduate major with a second change in requirements to be announced shortly, initiated a Ph.D. program slated to begin in the 2006-07 school year and provided the institute with a presence both at home in the business, law and medical schools and abroad in Geneva, South Africa and China.
Add to that Jentleson’s fundraising efforts for Rubenstein Hall, the Institute’s $12 million second building that is currently under construction, and he has proven to be one of the University’s most potent leaders in one of its blossoming departments.
But after extending his contract an additional six months to ease the transition to other major leaders joining Duke this year, Jentleson—a student favorite for his course on globalization—was ready to return to teaching and policy engagement.
“When you’re a professor and an administrator you always have this balancing act to do,” Jentleson said. “I think in the five-plus years I’ve been director, we’ve accomplished an enormous amount.”
With his definitive work, American Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st Century, ready for a third edition and a deal for both an academic and commercial release in the works, Jentleson plans to return to research and writing as he continues his appointment with the University.
He will also be travelling to Mexico, India and South Africa as he steps up efforts with the Washington-based foreign policy think tank The Brookings Institute. Jentleson is also involved with a top group of “intellectual internationalists” and former foreign policy officials in the Democratic Party working together to strengthen the party’s suddenly tenuous situation.
In addition to leading Sanford from 19th to 10th place in the most recent U.S. News and World Report ranking of public affairs programs, Jentleson served as a senior foreign policy advisor for Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. He also served as an advisor to the director of the State Department Policy Planning staff in 1993-94 and as director of the University of California at Davis’ Washington Center before arriving at Duke.
“We asked him to continue [as Sanford director], but we’re fully understanding why he’s chosen not too. His full-time participation in the faculty will be a great asset,” said Lange, whose office is consulting within the Sanford Institute regarding a replacement. Lange said a replacement would probably come from inside the University, at least in the short term.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.