Former Duke Provost and Chancellor John Blackburn, Trinity ’51, passed away Jan. 16 at his home in Durham. He was 81.
Blackburn worked to enhance the quality of both the University and the economics department, beginning when he joined the Duke faculty as an assistant professor of economics in 1959, according to a Duke news release.
“It was Blackburn who saw the [economics] department, and then the University, through its demographic transition, and put it on track for ‘excellence,’” Roy Weintraub, professor of economics, said in a Duke news release. “It was quite an accomplishment.”
Blackburn was an important campus figure during the 1969 student protest crisis, when 50 to 75 black students took over the Allen Building and issued several demands relating to black needs and problems and students and Durham police clashed on the Main West Quadrangle. Blackburn was also selected to be provost in 1970 by then-President Terry Sanford.
From 1971-1976, Blackburn also served as chancellor, during which Central Campus was created in response to a lack of student residence space. The addition of Central, at that time, ultimately restructured Duke’s undergraduate tuition finances and promoted a marketing plan, according to the release.
“Blackburn kept tuition and fees below [other] institutions for a period, so that at such later time we were positioned to make major faculty recruitments,” Weintraub said. “While in the meantime our lower tuition meant that our applicant pool was getting larger and larger and larger.”
Blackburn was born Sept. 13, 1929 and graduated from Duke in 1951. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 1959 and returned to Duke as a faculty member the same year. After Blackburn retired in 1980, he moved to Florida to study energy economics, the release stated. He returned to Durham in 2005 and completed studies on the practicality and viability of alternative energy for North Carolina in May 2010.
Throughout his life, Blackburn served as treasurer for both the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra and his church, according to the (Raleigh) News & Observer. He was also active on the board of the U.S. Foundation for the University of the Valley in Guatemala.
“Jack Blackburn was a loyal and devoted member of the Duke community,” said Craufurd Goodwin, a Duke economics professor. “He was a delightful person with a marvelous sense of humor. Through his work as an applied economist he made us aware of the dangers that we face in our environment.”
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