Confronting Racism at Duke University, 2017-24: The Clash of Expression and Protection in an Elite University
is my story of serving in two university leadership posts that required me to pay attention to campus issues that I had avoided during my first two decades as a professor. Doing so helped me understand two interconnected realities: that race is the most persistent idea that has shaped my life, from growing up in rural eastern North Carolina to being a leader at an elite university, and that racist incidents disrupt the normal intellectual debate and dialogue of a university campus like nothing else. The word confronting in the title signifies a double meaning. This is a memoir of my coming to understand the power of race in my life, including realizing how incomplete was the version of U.S. history I learned in and out of school. The second meaning acknowledges the repetitive nature of high-profile racist events that disrupted the Duke community during the seven-year period recounted, and our efforts to combat them. The book spans a time when addressing racism in a variety of forms was a central focus of most campus discourse, from the 2017 Unite the Right protests in Charlottesville, Va., to the Black Lives Matter marches in 2020, to the Spring, 2024 protests and counter protests of the Hamas attack on Southern Israel in October, 2023 and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza. Race is not necessarily the most important thing, but most important things are influenced by race. I would trade all the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training for an honest conversation about our past and shared future as we continue to pursue the beautiful American idea of equality, as espoused in the
Declaration of Independence
.