To the Class of 2012: Welcome to DUKE! We're so glad you're here.
Our column is unique in The Chronicle because both of its writers are Duke alumni. Kristin finished last May while Ed graduated from Trinity College of Arts and Sciences in 1963 and from Duke Law School in 1966. Bridging that 45-year gap is our enduring love for this university, which we hope will grow in your hearts as well.
We believe that your years wandering East and West Campuses will be among the most glorious of your life-if you let the magic of this place do its work and if you engage (to use the catchword of the hour on campus) with its spirit.
In particular, we hope you will recognize immediately the grandeur that surrounds you-the accomplishments of generations of people who have embraced this university and devoted their lives to it.
At the Nasher Museum of Art-itself a testimonial to an alumnus who came to campus broke and emerged as a principal developer of Dallas-there is the splendor of "El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III." Imagine the Prado in Madrid, one of the greatest museums of Western civilization, lending Duke five precious paintings, part of more than 100 objects of art amassed from the National Gallery of London and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, just to begin the list.
This did not just happen. It's a tribute to the resourcefulness and research of Sarah Schroth, who had an inkling that a period in Spanish history that produced significant literature and leadership must surely have provoked great expression through art as well. Painstakingly, she discovered missing links, and her work as the Nasher's Nancy Hanks Senior Curator is now on display, for which we all cheer her.
We heard an awful lot about a Duke surgeon this summer, when Dr. Allan Friedman of our Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center was selected to perform a risky brain cancer operation.
The patient, of course, was the scion of a family linked to Harvard, a Harvard alumnus himself who in a few days was going to receive a Harvard honorary degree. Senator Ted Kennedy checked out of the hospital run by Harvard in Boston to come to Duke. As Dr. Lawrence Altan noted in The New York Times, that school up north was "embarrassed."
The health system is Duke's crown jewel and you don't need to be pre-med to join its vital work. Crossing the lines of academic disciplines, Duke is forging important public policies so that medical care and medicines can be shared throughout the world by all people regardless of ability to pay. Of course there is intense scientific research into diseases, such as AIDS, where a massive infusion of federal dollars makes us central to the worldwide effort.
There are significant investments in the Duke University Health System by the private sector too. David Murdock, the man who gave us all those cans and jars with the Dole brand, has contributed tens of millions of dollars to track the health of everyone in and around Kannapolis, N.C., once a dingy proprietary corporate town for workers in the Cannon cotton mills. This effort to tie genetics to a community's health may well prove to be the most important, continuing investigation since the famous Framingham heart study began in Massachusetts in 1948.
But let's also remember that there's some tarnish that needs polishing. For example, Kristin has documented the Duke University Health System's habit of charging poor people without insurance far more than better-off, insured people for the same treatment.
As you read our weekly column, we'll often bring contradictions like this to your attention, hopeful that you'll add your voices-and your outrage-to ours.
In fact, you'll see that we make special effort each Monday to confront dichotomy and hypocrisy at the University.
In the brief time since you've arrived here, we're sure you've encountered the same question over and over: Where are you from? The answers are diverse-virtually every state and many other countries are given in reply.
But very soon, each of you will have the same answer that we do: "Duke!" Your identity-like ours-is now with this university. You are a Dukie, this is where you are from forever, and it's a hell of a place to call home. We hope you exploit your days on this campus, that you emerge with new knowledge and wisdom, sensitivity and judgment and that Duke implants in you a lifelong thirst to learn and to apply your abilities and values to the common weal.
During this journey, we are confident you will grow to love Duke with all your heart, as we do. Godspeed.
Kristin Butler, Trinity '08, and Ed Rickards, Trinity '63 and Law '66, are both Duke alumni. Their column runs every Monday.
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