Environmental Hall can wait

In December 2003, Peter and Ginny Nicholas made a pledge to donate $72 million to the University. Eight years later, that pledge remains unsatisfied. Of the total donation, $70 million was promised for the construction of Nicholas Hall, a space that would house all faculty of the Nicholas School. In an attempt to realize a similar version of this project—Environmental Hall—the University recently elected to spend $30 to $35 million from the central administrative fund originally meant to supplement the Nicholas’ donation.

The University’s proposed contribution is on hold until February, when the Board of Trustees will vote on the project. Barring a strong public justification for this project, we encourage the Trustees to vote against it in their February meeting and to delay the project until Duke’s upcoming major fundraising campaign.

As more and more federal higher education programs end up on the chopping block, the University must guard its financial resources with increasing jealousy. Duke found itself on the wrong end of federal belt tightening earlier this year, when it lost more than $4 million in funding to cultural studies and foreign language programs following cuts to Title XI of the Higher Education Act. And the failure of the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to reach an agreement last year has initiated $1.2 trillion dollars of automatic budget cuts over the next 10 years. These cuts will bite into federal grants across the board, from scientific research to financial aid, and could take a mean chunk out of the almost $1 billion that Duke receives in federal funding every year.

Things stand to get worse, not better. Financial turmoil in the troubled eurozone may compound the United States’ economic troubles. Amid this deep financial uncertainty, the necessity of spending $30 to $35 million of precious funds on Environmental Hall is questionable, at best.

That is not to say that plans for Environmental Hall should be permanently abandoned. Instead of funding Environmental Hall from the central administrative fund, the University should give this project pride of place in a major financial campaign. In an January 11 email to the editorial board, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask confirmed that the University is “in the planning stages” of such a major fundraising campaign. The Environmental Hall is an exciting project, but not a vital one. There is no reason we shouldn’t wait for donors to foot the bill once this campaign gets off the ground.

Duke’s last major fundraising campaign, the Campaign for Duke was a stunning success, bringing in $2.36 billion in pledges between 1996 and 2003. The University has collected $2.2 billion of these pledges.

New buildings and programs projects fared well in this campaign. The Campaign for Duke provided the funds for the Nasher Museum of Art, a suite of athletics facilities and high profile programs like the B.N. Duke Scholarship. Flashy programming and buildings—along with nameplates that go on top of them—are easy for donors to connect to. Harder to connect with, for instance, are faculty positions for under-taught languages—positions that do not attract the superstar academics who get endowed professorships, but which are nonetheless vital to the core of Duke’s academic offerings.

Fundraising should build the former, and general funds preserve the latter.