Duke shouldn't forget the Big Easy

I read the article "Service Interest in N.O. Declines" (Feb. 2) with great interest, as it asks us to consider the limits of compassion. However, Duke has not lost interest in New Orleans. Consider the following work of the Duke-New Orleans Post-Katrina Partnership: organizing discussions like the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day panel on sympathy and the imperatives of reform, partnering with Gulf Coast clients through consulting projects and internships, and sponsoring other initiatives such as bringing a 2008 Presidential Debate to New Orleans.

Duke has engaged in an unprecedented partnership with the relief, recovery and reform of New Orleans. Other schools have raised money or volunteered. Our university-particularly the Sanford Institute-has committed to incorporating post-Katrina issues into life at Duke. As I quoted Reverend William Coffin on MLK Day: "Many of us are eager to respond to injustice, as long as we can do so without having to confront the causes of it. There's the great pitfall of charity. Handouts to needy individuals are genuine, necessary responses to injustice, but they do not necessarily face the reason for injustice."

Our leaders called for charity, and our nation responded abundantly. Yet to give a donation is an inherently passive act and we have a higher calling. We must devote ourselves to reforming the systems that allowed for the inescapable poverty, unthinkable mismanagement and murderous engineering negligence evinced by Katrina and its aftermath. This is in many ways the civil rights issue of our generation. We cannot stand idly by.

Donations often serve as a balm to our own sorrow, a solace merely allaying the immediate trauma Katrina victims experienced first-hand and we felt second-hand. That's why we gave then, but that's why we've forgotten now. Yet their tragedy continues. So our commitment must continue. It is a shame our nation has abdicated its duty to New Orleans' renaissance; but Duke must not fail New Orleans. In order to serve our nation, we must confront the causes of injustice. In so doing, we must first confront ourselves.

Robert Tice Lalka

Sanford Institute of Public Policy, M.P.P.,'08