What kind of student should Duke graduate?
Former President Terry Sanford thought a Duke grad ought to be "a Renaissance man with a purpose." Speaking at his inauguration in 1970, Sanford told the assembled crowd, "It will be the creative leader's ability to influence, his will to initiate, his determination to seek the right and his moral concern for all people, that will help to give constructive shape to our society's future." The words might ring hollow or seem overly idealistic except that the speaker himself was their physical embodiment.
With half a century of service to the state, Terry Sanford looms large in North Carolina history, but with every passing year, his legacy retreats further and further from the memory of new Duke students. This year marks the 20th anniversary of his election to the U.S. Senate, the last office in a distinguished series that included the North Carolina State Senate, the governorship and the presidency of Duke University.
The Duke presidency was anomalous, in more ways than one-Sanford was a born-and-bred North Carolinian, the state's favorite son, but he entered a university that had its sights set nationally. He was a politician in an academic world. He commanded a distinguished faculty despite not having a doctoral degree. He was a Tar Heel in Blue Devil territory.
My favorite picture of Terry Sanford comes from his Duke days. In it, he stands on the Chapel Quad amid a throng of Vietnam protesters, sticking out like a sore thumb in his familiar gray suit. It is Sanford populism at its finest-"Uncle Terry" surrounded by students, hearing their concerns first-hand, avoiding the comforts of his Allen Building office.
It speaks also to Sanford's brand of leadership. The University had, until this point, prepared for student protests like other universities of the time: pulling its administrators together in "war rooms," holing up outside Main West. Sanford would have no such thing; he abolished the room and forced his deputies to move among the crowd. It was both a courageous and foolish move for the newly minted President, but he believed that in this crisis, as in so many others he faced, a mix of courage, compassion and genuine concern could heal the tense student-administrative divide.
He refused to call police or the National Guard on the protesters, but he also refused student demands to shut down classes. Instead he moved the conversation into the Chapel, a kind of de-facto classroom, and spent hours answering questions and laying out his position. In the midst of tension, Sanford sought and found common ground.
This first success foreshadowed many to come. Sanford cured Duke's financial crisis, established the University Archives, built the Institute of Policy Studies and Public Affairs, and pushed the university to soaring heights-all while inviting student opinion and encouraging student self-governance. On top of this illustrious list, he ran two campaigns for U.S. President during his time at Duke.
If he were alive today, I think Terry Sanford would find inspiration in where Duke has come since his time. I think he would praise our efforts in civic engagement. He was, after all, a civic giant. I imagine it would be a great source of pride for him that Duke sends more of its finest to Teach for America than to any other employer.
He would revel in the on-going campus construction; in his time, he shepherded the business school, the Bryan Center, a communications building, an aquatic center, an eye center, new campus apartments, additions to the nursing school, a music building and a marine lab to completion.
Sanford would no doubt applaud the appointment of Richard Brodhead to the University presidency. Both are, in their own way, populist leaders: Sanford the traditional, political populist, Brodhead the closest one can get to an academic populist.
For all the progress, I'm not sure his appetite for change would allow him to overlook places for improvement. My guess is that he would recoil at Duke's racial disharmony. It was his governorship, more than any other, which helped bridge the gap between North Carolina's black and white populations. He fought for desegregation, at a time when North Carolina's Klan membership was the largest in the South. Taking physical and political risk, Sanford even sent his son to a desegregated school.
Sanford would likely lament Duke's estrangement from Durham and North Carolina. His vision for Duke-and indeed, his successes-were built on and supported by North Carolina's most prominent leaders in business and civic life. His Duke had its eye on the world but its heart in North Carolina.
In Sanford's creative ability to influence, his will to initiate, his determination to seek the right and his moral concern for all people-especially students-he reminds us of so much that is essentially Duke. And though his successes clearly remain, so too does his challenge: Duke must provide constructive shape for society's future.
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