At its most recent meeting, the executive committee of the Board of Trustees named Duke’s three representatives to the board of Duke Kunshan University and approved the University’s documentation for the new campus for submission to the Chinese Ministry of Education.
The committee has selected James Roberts, executive vice provost for finance and administration; Thomas Gorrie, a member of the Board of Trustees; and Provost Peter Lange to sit on the board of Duke Kunshan University. The committee officially revealed its decision to the new appointees at its April 8 meeting.
“I’m very grateful to [the DKU board members],” President Richard Brodhead said in an interview Monday. “They will give the strongest possible representation for Duke’s interests.”
Board of Trustees Chair Dan Blue called the representatives “naturals” for the positions because of the variety of skills they will bring to the DKU board, which will have oversight of the new campus’s policies and operations while still reporting back to Duke’s administration. He highlighted Lange’s expertise in academic programming, Roberts’ involvement in Kunshan financial planning and Gorrie’s position as chair of the Duke University Health System’s Board of Directors, as well as his previous affiliation with the National Committee for U.S.-China Relations.
Gorrie, Lange and Roberts will fill three the seven total seats on the DKU board. Wuhan University, DKU’s Chinese legal partner, and the city of Kunshan will each select two members to fill the remaining four seats, according to the Duke-Kunshan Planning Guide, a document produced by the Office of the Provost and the Office of Global Strategy and Programs and released last month. Kunshan and Wuhan have not yet appointed their representatives, Brodhead said.
According to the document, any decisions made by the DKU board will have a five-vote requirement, which will ensure at least one Duke vote on each decision. Lange said he anticipates the entity will meet at least once per year. He also expects that the Duke members will use teleconferencing to meet from the United States with the Wuhan and Kunshan representatives.
The Board of Trustees chose not to include a representative from the Fuqua School of Business, even though it was the “driving force that introduced us to Kunshan” and will be a major component of DKU, said Blue, Law ’73 and a Democratic state senator.
“We’re looking at a much broader role and presence,” Blue said. “There could have been someone from Fuqua, but we think the representation selected by the Board best represents Duke at this time.”
Lange said each member will bring a variety of skills that will be a “very good compliment to the Board,” noting that his own immersion in the Kunshan project and commitment to Duke academics will be strong assets to his role as a board member.
“I’m very pleased since I’ve been well involved with the project all along,” Lange said.
Additionally, the executive committee of the Board of Trustees approved Duke’s legal proposal to the Chinese Ministry of Education, an application required by the Chinese government in order to officially establish DKU as a legal and educational entity. Duke plans to submit the proposal by mid-May, and administrators expect that the submission will be approved within three to six months.
The contents of the document—a 47-page agreement between Duke, Kunshan and Wuhan University—are summarized in the planning guide, Lange said. Some of the agreement’s details, which are not included in the planning guide, have yet to be finalized.
The three partners are still negotiating “various topics related to leasing” contained in the document, Brodhead said. He added that these issues are highly technical and unrelated to much of the faculty’s discussion about topics such as questions about academic freedom in China. He also noted that the Board of Trustees will be able to see changes to the document as they are finalized.
“There have been so many detailed documents to work through—something was going to fall to the later part of the process,” Brodhead said.
Blue said the Board of Trustees was comfortable approving the submission despite some ambiguity because members have been extensively involved in the project’s planning process up to this point. He noted that the remaining uncertainties are not “deal-busting problems.”
“There may be a few things unresolved, but we have confidence in the administration to take care of them,” Blue said.
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