Duke’s presidents past and present reflected on their time at the University’s helm and the future of higher education at a Thursday afternoon panel kicking off the Centennial Founders’ Day and Homecoming Celebration Weekend
President Vincent Price, former President Richard Brodhead and former President Nannerl Keohane took the stage in Reynolds Industries Theater at 4:30 p.m. for a conversation moderated by acclaimed broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff, Woman’s College ‘68 and DHL ‘98.
Keohane served as Duke’s first female president from 1993 to 2004 and was succeeded by Brodhead, who served from 2004 to 2017. Price took up the helm in 2017, serving the University in its Centennial year.
“I think that I am the luckiest president in the nation because I came to Duke, and I succeeded fabulous presidents and extraordinary decision makers,” Price said.
Reflecting on tenures, challenges and accomplishments
All three presidents, each of whom came to Duke from other institutions, opened the panel by sharing their first impressions of the University.
Brodhead said that he was not initially “pre-sold” on becoming the University’s president. Though, during his visit to Duke, he shared how he became captivated by its strategic plan, which proved to him that the University was “serious about [its] future.”
“Most universities were making strategic plans, but they [were] the same as everybody else's, so what’s strategic about that?” he said. “... What was interesting to me about Duke was [that its] plan had very particular things in it, and funds had been put aside to accomplish [those] things.”
Keohane spoke of the prideful campus community and “fascinating people” she encountered, specifically noting the amount of Blue Devil posters she saw hanging on office walls across campus.
Woodruff then asked about the biggest challenges the three had faced throughout their tenure.
Keohane shared that the first challenge she faced was her decision to make East Campus exclusively for first-years. She noted that she was met with fierce opposition from students who set up signs around campus saying that she was “ruining Duke” and that “nobody was going to ever want to come [to the University].”
However, she noted that by the time she left Duke, The Chronicle had published an article noting that East Campus “has always been one of the greatest things about Duke.”
During her tenure, she also allowed for same sex marriages to take place in the Duke Chapel — making Duke the first institution in North Carolina to take the step. She shared that while this was not a difficult decision “in principle,” the University’s ties with the Methodist Church posed challenges that she was forced to navigate.
Keohane further talked about her support for the Students Against Sweatshops movement, which mobilized after word spread that Duke apparel was allegedly manufactured in sweatshops. She recounted how she argued with presidents of other universities who claimed that the issue “had nothing to do” with research, education or the University” — which she recalled fervently disagreeing with.
Brodhead spoke about his accomplishments at Duke, particularly bolstering students’ access to the University by launching the Financial Aid Initiative. He noted that only “15% of the hundreds of millions of dollars of budget was backed by the endowment,” compared to other institutions like Princeton University with 79% backed at the time.
“University is America's great luxury, but it's the one thing that shouldn't just be available to people who can pay the price tag,” he said. “It should be available to everybody who has a hunger for it, everybody who wants to expand their mind and use the expanded mind to build a better world.”
He also highlighted the driven nature of Duke students who didn’t just think of education as “fixed assignments,” but rather as “learning to use [one’s] mind in lots of different ways and work[ing] with lots of different people on emerging tasks.” This passion inspired the creation of DukeEngage and Bass Connections during Brodhead’s tenure.
Price touched on more recent challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, dealing with racial equity and global conflicts, particularly in the Middle East.
“No campus is perfect, but we have a community that is willing to take the time, that is willing to slow down and engage in dialogue,” he said.
Challenges facing higher education
The presidents drew insights from their experiences serving in Duke’s highest position of leadership to grapple with a number of contemporary issues facing institutions of higher education.
Woodruff identified a trend of “decreasing respect for our legacy institution[s],” including governmental bodies and colleges and universities.
“You hear critics say, ‘well, colleges are elite, many of them [have] lost contact, connection [and] a sense of what the real world is like,” she said. “They’re not in touch with ordinary people.”
She asked the panelists how universities can “stay in touch” with the everyday lives of Americans.
All three presidents pointed to initiatives Duke has implemented to engage with the larger community, including the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership and DukeEngage.
But while they maintained that Duke has made strides toward engaging with community members and outside partners in a more supportive and equitable manner, they acknowledged that there is still room for improvement.
“I think we are perceived as being out of touch,” Keohane said. “I don’t think we actually are, but perhaps we need to do a better job of raising the visibility of ways in which we are engaged and interwoven with the world and not in an ivory tower.”
Brodhead spoke about the problem of the “bubble” of higher education, which he noted “can last decades” after graduation. He referenced the first DukeEngage cohort as an example of an intentional effort by the University to encourage students to leave that bubble and invest in the well-being of communities outside of campus. Many of the participating students visited New Orleans in 2007 to aid in the clean-up and rebuilding effort after Hurricane Katrina decimated much of the city in 2005.
“These people who majored in public policy and majored in statistics, they knew just how to do this kind of thing, but [they would] come back and realize that doing a problem set isn’t the same thing as solving a problem,” Brodhead said.
Price also emphasized the importance of attracting a diverse student body. He pointed to the Initiative for the Students from the Carolinas, which began in fall 2023 and provides full tuition grants to undergraduate students from North and South Carolina with annual family incomes of $150,000 or less, as well as Duke’s efforts to enroll more Pell Grant-eligible students.
Woodruff asked the panelists to explain their view of the University’s role in facilitating free speech on campus.
Brodhead defined freedom of expression as “the foundation of all the other freedoms that we take for granted in liberal democracy,” though he emphasized that universities have “a commitment to it that isn’t the same as the legal commitment.”
“Universities are about the proposition [of] ‘we don’t yet know all about anything,’” Brodhead said. “… If you allow a climate where people can take the position, ‘I already know everything there is to know about this subject, and you apparently don’t — that’s the end of that,’ you have actually stopped the process of education.”
Keohane pointed to a growing tension across higher education between protecting freedom of expression and wanting to avoid undue harm by limiting offensive language. While she acknowledged that people should not feel “oppressed and threatened while they’re educated,” she maintained that “education was never designed to be comfortable” and that “often what makes it work is that it jolts you out of what you think is the truth.”
Brodhead advocated for promoting a “culture of respect,” a notion Price agreed with.
“We are also places of real change, and it’s embedded in our liberal educational [and] artistic traditions that we [are] this way,” Price said. “That requires a cultivation of a kind of culture that can disagree vehemently but in a way that’s not necessarily civil, but is respectful and open-minded.”
Minutes before the panel began, Provost Alec Gallimore announced a new initiative designed to promote “free inquiry, pluralism and belonging,” the second such initiative centered around civil discourse this year.
“Universities will continue to struggle with this. They have to, if we’re worthy of being universities,” Price said.
Woodruff ended the discussion with a commentary on Duke’s Centennial by asking the panelists what their greatest fears are for the University’s next century. However, all three presidents expressed views in line with Keohane’s response that she “do[esn’t] think first of fear for Duke’s future.”
“We are an ambitious institution,” Price said. “That phrase is a gift to the University because it’s understood not as just ambition but the desire to do things in a Duke way.”
After the panel drew to its close, Brodhead interjected to share one final thought with the audience:
“To have been asked to be the president of this University is our honor,” he said.
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Zoe Kolenovsky is a Trinity junior and news editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.
Abby Spiller is a Trinity junior and editor-in-chief of The Chronicle's 120th volume.