Richard H. Brodhead was the president of Duke University from 2004 to 2017 and served as the William Preston Few Professor of English. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He previously served as the dean of Yale College from 1993 to 2004 and as the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English at Yale University. He is the recipient of several awards, including four honorary degrees. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004, he cochaired its national Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. A scholar of nineteenth-century American literature, Brodhead is the author of several books, including The Good of This Place: Values and Challenges in College Education and Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America, and the editor of many others, including The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt and The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales, both also published by Duke University Press.
Preface ix
2003
Remarks on Being Named President of Duke University 1
2004
Freshman Convocation: Authoring a Community 5
Graduate and Professional Convocation: The Virtues and Limits of Specialization 12
Inaugural Address: More Day to Dawn 19
Remarks at the Induction Ceremony of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Literature as Life 29
2005
Baccalaureate: On Education and Empowerment 32
Founders' Day Address: On Founding as a Continuous Labor 37
Faculty Address: Financial Aid, the Problem-centric University 44
2006
Preface to the University Strategic Plan, Making A Difference: Duke and the Changing Landscape: A Planning Prologue 53
2007
Commencement Address at Fisk University 60
Fresman Convocation: The Ethic of Engagement 64
Lessons of Lacrosse 71
2008
Baccalaureate: Frolics and Detours 75
2009
Baccalaureate: Advancing in a Recession 80
In Memoriam: John Hope Franklin 85
2010
Faculty Address: The University and the Financial Downturn 88
Baccalaureate: Walk Ten Thousand Miles, Read Ten Thousand Books 98
2011
Faculty Address: Budgets, International Opportunities, the Humanities 103
In Memoriam: Reynolds Price 113
Freshman Convocation: On the Use of New Freedoms 115
John Tyler Caldwell Lecture on the Humanities: The Fire That Never Goes Out 119
2012
In Memoriam: Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans 127
Faculty Address: Duke and Race 130
Baccalaureate: Repairing the Broken World 139
2013
Baccalaureate: Connecting and Disconnecting 144
Interview with Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report 148
Freshman Convocation: Receive, Connect, Engage 153
Remarks at the Opening of the Center on Sexual and Gender Diversity 157
Presidential Address, The College Board Forum: The Value Debate in Higher Education 161
2014
Lecture at Tsinghua University, Beijing: Interconnected Knowledge and the Twenty-First-Century University 172
Faculty Address; Leadership Transitions, Rebuilding the Campus, the Role of Philanthropy 183
Commencement Address at Miami Dade College: Opportunity Changes Everything 194
Freshman Convocation: On Comfort True and False 201
2015
Faculty Address: Chocies That Made Duke—Medicine, Athletics, Durham 205
Remarks at a Community Forum on a Racial Incident 216
Freshman Convocation: Constructing Duke 220
Keynote Address, Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the National Endowment for the Humanties: On the Fate and Fortunes of Public Goods 225
2016
Baccalaureate: I Learn by Going Where I Have to Go 237
Freshman Convocation: Citizens of Duke 242
Index 247