Who trusts a tobacco-stained university in a pandemic?
(07/03/20 4:00am)
Duke is grappling with how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. President Vincent Price has called it a “public health emergency.” But considering the university’s long, profitable history of entanglement with the tobacco industry, why should we see Duke’s leaders as trustworthy defenders of public health? Duke becoming a tobacco-free campus on July 1 presents an opportunity for the Duke community to reckon with our tobacco-stained history. Instead, Duke’s leaders are obscuring that history.