Your monthly update from the Office for Institutional Equity (OIE)
about inclusive work across Duke

January 2024

Duke Celebrates 100 Years of Excellence

As we kick off Duke’s Centennial celebration, we look forward to the ongoing journey of learning and understanding across the different identities and lived experiences of our community members.

This edition of Equity In Action highlights some of the leadership and service
that continue to advance our efforts.

Be sure to note the latest updates from OIE and upcoming
campus events you won't want to miss!

Echoing the date of Duke University’s founding in 1924, Duke launched more than a year of events on January 9 – 1.9.24.

The celebration of this Centennial brings about a historic opportunity to recognize Duke’s extraordinary past, highlight the impact of the present and look toward the potential of Duke’s future.

Visit Duke's Centennial webpage to learn more

Pediatric cardiologist Brenda Armstrong said she came back to Duke for residency in 1975 to address "unfinished business."

For Armstrong, that unfinished business was about “making Duke live up to the greatness that I knew it had the potential to have,” she said.

When she first arrived at Duke in 1966, Armstrong’s class was only the third to include African Americans.

A student activist, she helped organize the 1969 Allen Building Takeover, when roughly 60 Black students barricaded themselves inside the building to protest the racial climate on campus.

Decades later she would become dean of admissions for Duke's School of Medicine where she helped recruit some of the best students of color in the country.

Read Armstrong's story and other Centennial Spotlights

Read more

Purchase 2024 Cook Award tickets/tables by Feb. 9.

At Duke’s commemoration of the spirit and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on January 14 in Duke Chapel, basketball legend and Duke trustee Grant Hill called upon the community to tackle division – locally, nationally and across the world.

Hill recalled being three years old and feeling the “intense passion” of sports fans as he waited with his mother outside of the locker room at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium for his father, NFL great Calvin Hill.

“What is that passion?” Hill asked. “It’s something we often see in sports, but also in every walk of life. It’s a natural outlet for a most basic need: to belong. To connect. To find our people.”

A Day of Service on Monday, January 15, included a meal packaging effort organized by the Office of Durham and Community Affairs that aimed to distribute more than 150,000 meals in Durham, Orange, Wake, and Johnston Counties through the Interfaith Food Shuttle. 

Read the story here

Watch the livestream here

More than 300 Duke faculty, staff and leaders from units across campus and Duke University Health System gathered on January 8 at the Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club for this retreat ahead of the launch of the 2024 Campus Culture Survey.

The event highlighted the excellent equity work campus wide and created opportunities for learning and collaboration across units. Each unit had an opportunity to share innovations and highlights of their progress in equity work since the first Duke climate survey in 2021. 

African Americans are five times more likely to develop chronic kidney disease (CKD) than European Americans. One of the most common forms of CKD is focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), which causes scar tissue to develop in the small parts of the kidney that filter waste from the blood. It can lead to kidney failure, which can only be treated with dialysis or transplant.  

Researchers have discovered that a genetic variant in the APOL1 gene may provide protection against developing CKD in some Black Americans.  

Read the story here

Legendary civil rights icon Benjamin Chavis, Jr. and rocket-scientist-turned Duke Provost Alec Gallimore sat down recently for a fireside chat on Duke's West Campus.

What emerged during the near-hour long conversation: education is the key to moving past the deeply unsettling tribalism and anti-intellectualism that has gripped America and much of the rest of the world.

Education, Chavis said, “is so important.”

“Carter G. Woodson wrote this book, ‘The Miseducation of the Negro,’ It could have been expanded to ‘The Miseducation of Americans,’” Chavis said. “And institutions like Duke are trying to overcome that miseducation and overcome those prejudices.”

Read the story here

The prestigious Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award was established for Southern colleges and universities to honor service-oriented college students as well as university faculty and staff members with a demonstrated record of community involvement. The annual award is presented by 68 colleges and universities across the American South.

Awards will be presented to a graduating senior, a graduate/professional student and a Duke University or Duke Health faculty member or staff person who have demonstrated generosity of character and acted as humble community members, placing service to others before self-interest. 

Nominations are due by March 4 at 5:00 p.m.

The Duke Climate Commitment addresses the climate challenge by creating sustainable and equitable solutions that place society on the path toward a resilient, flourishing, carbon-neutral world. Environmental and climate justice is one of the four research priority areas identified in this university-wide, impact-oriented initiative.

Thanks to generous funding from The Duke Endowment, we are now accepting research proposals from Duke faculty to engage with “Environmental and Climate Justice in the Carolinas.” We anticipate issuing three to four awards ranging up to $150,000 with start dates as early as July 1, 2024. Duke full-time regular rank faculty can serve as PIs. Please see the full RFP for more information.

Deadline for submissions: March 17, 2024

A new bilingual history exhibit documenting Latinx student life at Duke opened recently  as part of the Duke Centennial celebrations.

Curated by students in Cecilia Márquez’s Latinx Social Movements class, "Our History, Our Voice: Latiné at Duke" is a collaboration of current and former cohorts of Márquez’s students from the past four years, each class building on the work of their predecessors’ research and insights.

“I think the intergenerational aspect of this exhibit makes the project interesting — it’s creating Latino history, even as it displays it,” said Márquez, Hunt Family Assistant Professor of History.

Read the full story here

Join the Office for Research & Innovation for a week of exciting events, panels, and showcases to celebrate the past, present, and future of research and innovation at Duke.

Duke Centennial Research & Innovation Week 2024 is part of the Duke Centennial Celebration and is open to all Duke faculty, staff, students, and alumni, as well as the greater research and innovation community. 

View the calendar here
Register

Do you have any resources or events centered around Black History Month?

The Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture is creating a BHM 2024 calendar to promote and highlight them during the month of February!

Submit BHM resources and events here

Office for Institutional Equity

Advancing Racial Equity at Duke

OIE Education

Sexual Misconduct & Title IX

Duke University Institutional Statement of Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Duke aspires to create a community built on collaboration, innovation, creativity, and belonging. Our collective success depends on the robust exchange of ideas—an exchange that is best when the rich diversity of our perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences flourishes. To achieve this exchange, it is essential that all members of the community feel secure and welcome, that the contributions of all individuals are respected, and that all voices are heard. All members of our community have a responsibility to uphold these values.