Category: Academics
University 102 Gallery Walk
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IN Academics
University 102 Gallery Walk
Students in ‘Let’s Talk About Climate Change‘ course show off semester projects
Students participate in “Climate Change Musical Chairs,” a climate conversation starter featuring original student-created music that layered climate disaster reporting soundbytes over electronic beats.
This semester, students enrolled in UNIV”>https://ucourses.duke.edu/univ102/”>UNIV 102: Let’s Talk About Climate Change had the opportunity to engage in robust and far-ranging discussions about climate change—and potential solutions to it—with 14 faculty scholars representing fields from geology to linguistics and environmental justice to global health. Students capped off their semester with an interactive Gallery Walk, where each student presented a “conversation starter,” an effort to engage the public in the climate conversation. Projects included climate change musical chairs, a handmade baby quilt, vintage postcard designs, climate quizzes, and more.
Emily Bernhardt and Norman Wirzba engage a student on their “Climate Conversation Starter” Univ102 class project on the Bryan Center Plaza.
Bernhardt, is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Biology and chair of the department. Norman Wirzba, is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at the Divinity School.
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Norman Wirzba engages students on their class project and aspects of climate work.
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Dr. Richard Larrick discusses project work with a group of students during the gallery walk of the UNIV 102 Climate class.
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Students compare thoughts and ideas on climate fundamentals as part of the Monday night class project gallery walk.
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The Chapel presents a nice backdrop for students to discuss ideas related to climate work.
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Hosting the Gallery Walk on the BC Plaza allowed passersby to stop and engage with the students’ climate conversation starters.
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Launched in Fall 2021, university”>https://ucourses.duke.edu/”>university courses at Duke offer gateway experiences to help undergraduates make sense of complex societal issues, while featuring the breadth of extraordinary scholarship and teachers we enjoy at Duke. The course is part of Duke‘s Climate”>https://climate.duke.edu/”>Climate Commitment, which seeks to address climate change issues through research and teaching and includes the goal off making students fluent in sustainability and climate issues.
Beverly McIver: Celebrating a Career in the Arts
Beverly McIver: Celebrating a Career in the Arts
Duke art professor Beverly McIver is the subject of a retrospective opening at a Winston-Salem art museum this month
Beverly McIver’s first art gallery exhibition wasn’t exactly a glitzy affair.
“They had a hallway where they’d exhibit emerging artists,” the Duke art professor recalled with a smile recently. “It was on the way to the bathroom. But it was a good show.”
That was in 1998, when McIver was a young art professor at Arizona State University while also trying to get a foothold as a professional painter.
Decades later, and with thousands of paintings under her belt, McIver has come Full Circle – the apt name of a new retrospective shining a light on her career work. It opened”>https://smoca.org/exhibition/beverly-mciver-full-circle/”>opened earlier this year at that same Arizona museum – the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art – and will move to the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem in”>https://secca.org/calendar-detail.php?EventOccId=420860787″>in December, where it will run for four months. Its last stop, later in 2023, will be the”>https://www.gibbesmuseum.org/”>the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina.
IF YOU GO
Beverly McIver: Full Circle opens December 8 at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem and runs through March 26, 2023. In April it moves to the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC. In Durham, the Craven Allen Gallery on Broad Street is currently featuring a collection of McIver’s work in an exhibition called “Passage.” It runs through March 4.
A retrospective is a big deal. While regular exhibitions generally display an artist’s work on a particular theme or time period, a retrospective is a comprehensive examination of an entire body of work.
“Hardly any artist gets a retrospective, period,” said Paul Jaskot, chair of Duke’s department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, where McIver has been a faculty member since 2014. “There are many artists that go their whole careers – famous artists – who never get a retrospective. An actual retrospective that comes out with a catalog, that shows your impact, and the impact of your life on art, that is rare.”
They’re rare in part because they require so much planning, coordination, money, time and goodwill. Someone has to organize it all – choose and find the paintings to display, convince museums or private owners to loan them to the project, and then actually curate it.
But Kim Boganey figured it was worth it. Boganey was, until recently, the director of public art for the city of Scottsdale, but three decades ago she, like McIver, was an up-and-comer in the Arizona art world. The two connected when McIver had that first exhibition, and they’ve been close friends since.
In 2018, Boganey reached out to the museum in Scottsdale, proposing a retrospective and volunteering to lead it. The museum quickly agreed.
On Renee
In 2011, McIver was spotlighted in an HBO film “Raising”>https://www.amazon.com/Raising-Renee-Beverly-McIver/dp/B06XWZFRBV/ref=s… Renee” which examined her promise to her now-deceased mother to care for her intellectually and developmentally disabled older sister, Renee.
She did so, though Renee eventually was able to move into independent housing. McIver’s next project will honor her sister while providing for artists: It will be called “Renny’s Place,” – McIver’s nickname for her sister – and will be an artist-in-residence program housed on McIver’s property in Chapel Hill.
It will be designed as an artist’s retreat primarily for women and people of color, where an artist can stay for a couple of weeks or months, receive food and a financial stipend, and work on their art.
“It will house four to five people a year,” McIver said. “I would teach them the business of being an artist. How to write a grant, how to negotiate, how to market your work. All the things an artist has to do.”
“Everyone should be able to see what I have been able to see over the years,” Boganey said. “To see how she has essentially put her life out there through art. Her career has really been about telling her story in her paintings. That’s what resonates with people. She is a master at painting. This allows people to see what I have been so fortunate to see over all these years.”
McIver’s work is compelling at least in part because it’s ruthlessly, unabashedly personal. She has painted herself hundreds of times – sometimes semi-nude or vulnerable poses. Her work has tackled depression, the ill health of family members, and all manner of challenges facing an African-American woman in America.
That first show in Scottsdale – at the time an almost exclusively white enclave – pushed some boundaries. And she has been pushing since, though not to be provocative or put herself on display.
McIver views her experiences as examples of relatable broader challenges and struggles. Her life resonates.
“I’m really hoping universally you’ll connect with all the human things I’m talking about, like depression for example,” she said. “Which in that sense isn’t personal as much as it is universal for humans.”
Clowns
McIver’s early career was notable for her use of blackface in her depictions of herself and others.
There’s a story behind that.
Growing up in a Greensboro housing project during desegregation, McIver rode a bus across town to a white high school. There, she and her sister joined a clown club and painted their faces white. (Black and blackface clowns weren’t exactly mainstream) They wore blonde wigs and pajamas and took part in the local Christmas parade and entertained kids at the hospital.
“I thought it was fabulous. I thought it was the best liberation,” she recalls, laughing. “You’re judged when you’re from the projects. You’re judged when you’re poor, when you receive food stamps. I felt like I had all those labels on me. When I was a clown, nobody even knew I was Black. I could erase the Blackness, erase the poverty, take all of those things away, and people who liked clowns were accepting of me without judgment.”
She continued clowning, always in whiteface, until she went off to college at N.C. Central University in Durham and attended an American Dance Festival performance where, for the first time, she saw performers in blackface.
“I couldn’t sleep that night,” she said. “I kept thinking ‘I’m going to get some black paint and an afro wig and be a Black clown.’
So she did. She leaned all the way into the stereotypes — painting herself in blackface eating watermelon and fried chicken – things she enjoyed.
But when she put the artwork in a show, African-Americans told her she was perpetuating myths – even though it all rang true to her.
“I did a whole series of paintings about my mother because she was a domestic worker in Greensboro, working for white people,” McIver said. “And Black people told me I was part of the problem. But I thought I was being my authentic self.”
Sharing the Spotlight
McIver taught at Arizona State University for 12 years and held numerous residencies before coming to Duke to work in 2014. Her work has been displayed at more than a dozen museums; her portrait of the artist Bill T. Jones hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., though if you attend the retrospective in Winston-Salem or later in Charleston, you can see it there as well.
In this retrospective and the full-color, hard-bound catalog that accompanies it, you’ll also find artwork by a handful of McIver’s students and mentors over the years. This too is unusual, and speaks to McIver’s dedication to her arts community, said Damian Stamer, an artist and Durham native who, in one of life’s odd little coincidences, first met McIver while a student at Arizona State. He took her art class and has remained friends; Stamer now lives back in north Durham and is a professional artist, focusing largely on paintings of barns and other structures he runs across in the rural northern stretch of the county.
One, called “New Sharon Church Road 49,” is included in McIver’s retrospective.
“She just cares so deeply about her students,” Stamer said. “If someone gave me a retrospective, I’d probably want all the wall space. She’s constantly thinking about what will help her students and what will give them a platform for their work. It’s just part of who she is.”
Including her students and mentors was a way of paying something back to people who have helped her in her work, McIver said.
“I believe in reaching back and bringing people to the table,” she said. “I wanted to include my students because they’re part of me and my development.”
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Duke Senior Awarded George J. Mitchell Scholarship To Study In Ireland
DURHAM, N.C. — Duke University senior Alexandra Bennion of Tampa, Florida, is one of 12 Americans selected this weekend to receive the George J. Mitchell Scholarship for a year of graduate study in Ireland.
This year, 306 students applied for the scholarship, named in honor of Sen. George Mitchell’s contributions to the Northern Ireland peace process. Recipients are chosen on the basis of academic distinction, leadership, and service.
A Nakayama Public Service Scholar, Bennion is a prolific researcher in the field of cancer biology. As a SPIRE Fellow, which supports underrepresented students pursuing degrees in the STEM fields, Bennion will graduate this spring with a degree in biology.
She studies inflammatory breast cancer — a rare and aggressive cancer — in the Devi Lab in the Duke School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery. She is working on her senior thesis, which investigates ways to enhance immune responses to chemotherapeutics.
“I am delighted to congratulate Alexandra Bennion on receiving the Mitchell Scholarship, the culmination of her extraordinary accomplishments as an undergraduate,” said Duke University President Vincent E. Price. “I wish her well as she pursues a master’s degree in translational oncology at Trinity College Dublin, and I am excited about what lies ahead for her very bright future.”
Bennion has supported research projects at an impressive nine different labs and clinics, and has co-authored papers and presented at numerous professional conferences alongside leaders in the field.
She has conducted research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as a 2020 American Physician Scientists Association Summer Scholar, and was selected as a 2020 Scholar in Marine Medicine. Bennion has participated in Bass Connections and DukeEngage, and is a co-founder of Duke Clever Endeavor, a mentorship program for fourth- and fifth-grade students in Durham and Chapel Hill.
She will pursue a master’s degree in translational oncology at Trinity College of Dublin. Bennion then plans to earn an MD/Ph.D. and embark on a career as a physician-scientist, conducting cancer research.
“I am so honored and humbled to have been chosen for the Mitchell Scholarship, and I look forward to taking this next step in studying global cancer research and care,” she said. “This opportunity would not have been possible without the support of the Duke community. I am incredibly thankful to all of my professors, mentors, peers and all who have guided me throughout my college years.”
Bennion will begin her studies in Ireland in September 2023.
For more information, visit the George J. Mitchell Scholarship Program website.
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Nobel Laureate in Literature Visits Duke Thursday
Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish author and Nobel laureate who has spent a long literary career making the political personal, brings his perspective to Duke Thursday for a reading from his latest novel.
Pamuk will discuss Nights of Plague with Erdağ Göknar, an associate professor of Turkish in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke. The event takes place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday at White Lecture Hall on East Campus. Registration is required.
Göknar translated Pamuk’s 2001 novel, My Name Is Red, into English and teaches a class about his work.
“Pamuk is one of the foremost practitioners of the global novel writing today and as such his visit is significant to Duke’s vision of international education,” Göknar said. “As an author-intellectual, he’s able to provide important comparative insights into our present moment; for example, the ways in which an epidemic can transform our political reality.”
In this Q&A, Göknar discusses the work of Pamuk, who won a Nobel Prize for literature in 2006, and his impending visit to Duke.
What makes Pamuk such an important figure?
Pamuk’s importance as a writer is that he makes issues of present-day concern such as a military coup or an epidemic the basis of literary form. He is one of the few writers able to comment on issues of historical and political import through characters who live what might be termed an intimate geopolitics that transforms them and enlightens the reader about their daily lives. His novels provide readers with comparative contexts for understanding characters in crisis – and themselves.
How important has his writing been to your work?
Pamuk’s work is one of the foci of my research and scholarship. I first met him when I was in graduate school and we’ve been friends for the last twenty years. I translated one of his well-known novels, My Name is Red, and have written a book on the cultural politics of his fiction. At Duke, I teach a seminar on his novels, which are insightful windows onto Turkey, its culture, history, and politics.
What would you recommend as an entry point to his work?
Pamuk’s a multifaceted writer who likes to mix genres, so there are a few good first reads depending on interest. For example, for readers interested in travelogues and memoir, Istanbul is a good introduction into late Ottoman and Turkish modernity, and the writer’s place in that history. Art history buffs would like My Name is Red, which addresses Islamic miniatures and book arts. Readers interested in Middle East politics would enjoy Snow, a novel that exposes coups and conspiracies – even shedding some light on what we have experienced in this country recently (the term “deep state”, a favorite of President Trump’s, first emerged in Turkish politics).
What can you tell us about Pamuk’s new book?
Nights of Plague develops a number of Pamuk themes like modernity, revolution, and state power in Middle East contexts. It’s a story about the end of the Ottoman Empire and national self-determination told through the allegory of a plague epidemic. While it relies in part on contagion as a political allegory, it also dramatizes the experience of identity formation in the Middle East in an ironic mode. In this regard, it’s a classic Pamuk novel at the intersection of Islamism, secularism and state power.
Two Duke Seniors Win Rhodes Scholarships
DURHAM, N.C. – Two Duke University seniors were among the recipients selected this weekend for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.
Qi Xuan Khoo and Shreyas Hallur were chosen from among many applicants from colleges and universities. Hallur received one of the 32 scholarships available to students from the United States, while Khoo won the only scholarship available to Malaysian citizens. The scholarships provide all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England.
Recipients are selected based on high academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership potential and a commitment to service, among other attributes.
“I am thrilled to congratulate Qi Xuan Khoo and Shreyas Hallur on this extraordinary honor, a reflection of their commitment to academic and research excellence and leadership,” said Duke University President Vincent Price. “We can all be tremendously proud to call them fellow members of the Duke community, and I look forward to following their careers in the years ahead.”
Originally from Phoenix, Hallur is both an A.B. Duke scholar and a Nakayama Public Service Scholar. He will graduate with degrees in statistics and public policy. Hallur is interested in Medicaid policy and in improving care for autistic people who have intense care needs through shared decision-making.
He serves on the board of directors of a private school that has designed a novel, hands-on STEM curriculum to meet the educational interests of its autistic students. And at the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center, Hallur initiated a program to create inclusive science learning opportunities for autistic children that has won a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
At Duke, Hallur is a Bass Connections researcher and a Margolis Scholar in health policy and management. Through the Duke Disability Alliance, Duke Student Government and Neurodiversity Connections, he has also advocated for greater accessibility on campus. He has done extensive research into Medicaid reform in Massachusetts, Arizona and with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Hallur is also a student researcher at the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development.
He plans to pursue degrees in Medical Anthropology and Evidence Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation at Oxford.
A Karsh International Scholar from Malaysia, Khoo is a senior pursuing a double major in economics and computer science with a minor in mathematics. While at Duke, Khoo has been actively involved in academic research at the nexus between economics and computer science. He has assisted professors in investigating U.S. Medicare fraud, analyzing county level COVID-19 policy and building a data pipeline for domestic violence shelters in North Carolina. As a Bass Connections researcher, Khoo co-authored a paper on developing machine learning predictive models for COVID infection based on wearables data. He is also a Woodman Scholar at the Duke Economic Analytics Lab and an Arete Effective Altruism fellow.
Outside of academia, Khoo co-founded and leads Technify, an initiative that connects tech talents at U.S. colleges with nonprofits and social enterprises across developing countries through pro bono tech projects. With seed funding from the U.S. Department of State’s Mission to Southeast Asia, Khoo and his team have launched 20 projects matching more than 80 volunteers with nonprofits from Malaysia, Panama, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia.
He has also performed as a pianist through the chamber music program at Duke.
Inspired by various experiences working on digital transformations in the frontline, Khoo aspires to further explore the opportunities and challenges faced by developing countries at the intersection between technology and economic development. At Oxford, he plans to pursue a master’s degree in Social Data Science followed by a master’s degree in Economics for Development.
The Rhodes Scholarship was created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes.
The value of the Rhodes Scholarship varies depending on the academic field, and the degree (bachelor’s, master's or doctoral) chosen. The Rhodes Trust pays all college and university fees, provides a stipend to cover necessary expenses while in residence in Oxford and during vacations, and transportation to and from England.
A complete list of this year's recipients is online at http://www.rhodesscholar.org.
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Duke experts on a variety of topics can be found here.
Follow Duke News on Twitter: @DukeNews
'Some Places Will Not Be Livable'
Climate change is already forcing people to leave their homes, and millions more will follow in the years to come.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found 3.3 to 3.6 billion people are highly vulnerable to climate change because of their location and circumstances.
Duke University is responding. Reflecting the Duke Climate Commitment, scholars have launched a new Program on Climate-Related Migration, working on transdisciplinary research to better understand the complex links between climate change and human mobility, and to inform policies that can help.
The co-directors of the new program, Sarah Bermeo and Kerilyn Schewel, joined fellow Duke scholars scholars Erika Weinthal and Drew Shindell in a conversation moderated by immigration reporter Dara Lind.
Here are excerpts:
WHY CLIMATE-RELATED MIGRATION RESEARCH IS IMPORTANT
Sarah Bermeo: “With the amount of climate change we are experiencing, some places will not be livable. Lives will be affected. Often the poor and disadvantaged will be affected most. We have to define the problem of climate-related migration and then get to solutions.”
Keriyn Schewel: “We need to get over the question of whether migration is good or bad, but rather how we deal with it.”
FACTORS INFLUENCING CLIMATE-RELATED MIGRATION
Erika Weinthal: “It is easy to fall into the narrative and assume that only climate-related events drive people to move, but it is important to understand how they interact with political economy considerations, such as in Syria.”
Schewel: “It can be hard to decipher slow climate risk onsets and ways to assist migrants in those settings. In cases of natural disaster, it’s more clear how to respond. We need to think of all of the legal pathways to facilitate people on the move and holistic strategies to respond to changing migration systems.”
Bermeo: “People leave their homes because of climate, but that is not why they leave their countries. There is external migration (outside of a country) when affected persons cannot find internal solutions (inside a country). One of the big problems is we don’t know how to quantify this migration. We don’t have data on climate-related migration. How do you build systems, then? We need to bring in natural sciences combined with social sciences and demographers; an interdisciplinary approach is the only pathway forward.”
TOOLS THAT CAN ADDRESS CLIMATE-RELATED MIGRATION
Drew Shindell: “We need to use a combination of earth systems observations and model projections to quantify areas that are more vulnerable. There are systems to look at polar ice sheets that can be used to look at climate-related migration. Through projections, we can also see that some areas are increasingly becoming too hot for people to live. We can use projections and data on current trends for policy and economic analysis.”
Weinthal: “There have been consistent warning trends and prediction from climate data for decades. But we are not quantifying how many people are on the move. Depending on politics at the time in a place, numbers can shift at any time. There are more variables that come into play with climate-related migration data. We should analyze climate data alongside information about economic resources and policies.”
Schewel: “Qualitative data is important to understand the decision criteria for migrants to support adaptation strategies. This means gathering information about how populations affected perceive climate change and how they decide where to stay or go.”
POLICY SOLUTIONS FOR CLIMATE-RELATED MIGRATION
Schewel: “Participatory approaches involving local communities are important to learn about effective adaptation strategies. Partnerships with local think tanks who have knowledge of countries can craft more practical policies.”
Bermeo: “We need to think about long-term solutions as well as policy quick wins. For example in Central America, invest in rural farmers and climate-smart agriculture to reduce the need to migrate from that region. Investing in adaptation in fragile regions could have short-term impacts for those who do not want to leave but are forced to go.”
Panelists:
Sarah Bermeo
Sarah Bermeo is a political economist and associate professor of public policy and political science in the Sanford School at Duke University, director of Graduate Studies (DGS) in the Master of International Development Policy (MIDP) program and co-director of PCRM. Her research lies at the intersection of international relations and development.
Kerilyn Schewel
Kerilyn Schewel is co-director of PCRM, a lecturing fellow at the Duke Center for International Development and senior researcher at the International Migration Institute. Her research examines how processes of development reshape patterns of human migration.
Erika Weinthal
Erika Weinthal is professor of environmental policy and public policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment and professor of environmental policy at Duke Kunshan University. Weinthal specializes in global environmental politics and environmental security with a particular emphasis on water and energy.
Drew Shindell
Drew Shindell is Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Earth Science at the Nicholas School of the Environment. He studies climate change, air quality, and links between science and policy.
The Duke Program on Climate-related Migration is coordinated through the Duke Center for International Development (DCID) with support from the Duke Office of Global Affairs.
Where Christianity Blends with Native American Culture
There are no hard wooden pews at the Underground Theology discussions.
Hosted by Duke Chapel’s Rev. Racquel Gill, minister for intercultural engagement, the series creates a space to explore faith and underrepresented cultures. Students sit on oversized purple couches while young children play in the background.
Rev. Alex Stayer-Brewington of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Durham featured in the first discussion of Native theology in the series. Stayer-Brewington is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and received his master’s in divinity at Duke.
“My conviction is that the Christian tradition is much wider and wilder and weirder than the present presentation of it allows for,” Stayer-Brewington said. “And that if we give ourselves and one another permission to express our faith in that way, then I think there can be extremely beautiful results.”
Here are some excerpts from the discussion. The next event in the series takes place Nov. 15 at 6:30 p.m. at the same location: the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity on the top level of the Bryan Center.
Visit the Underground Theology website for a full list of events.
Rev. Racquel Gill: Who are you? Who are your people? And how does your identity inform your relationship with the divine?
Rev. Alex Stayer-Brewington
“I'm a citizen of the Lumbee nation. We are a community, a tribe that was formed at contact with the Europeans when we were forced away from the coast into the swamps of what is now Robeson County, North Carolina, presently the poorest county in the state. Not a lot of tillable land, and it's all cut up with swamps, creeks, and a really beautiful river from which we take our name.”
“We have lost our language. We've lost many aspects of our traditional culture. But in the last 500 years, we've developed an extremely robust, beautiful network of traditions, our own way of talking and eating and worshiping.”
“I've lived all my life – but for a year and a half – in or very near my ancestral territory. The older I get, I realize how special that is. I get to be in a relationship with the animals and interact with the same plants and set out under the same sky that my ancestors have.”
“Going into this conversation, I want to say it's important to come in with a spirit of humility. I don't speak for all the people, I certainly don't speak for all Native nations.”
“My community taught me to be a good relative – showing up and saying, ‘What can I bring? What can I do?’ And then also being the relative who accepts help and assistance.”
“The other big lesson is building a relationship with whatever land you're occupying presently…. Be a little curious about where you are and how you got there.”
Rev. Racquel Gill: One place of critique in a lot of Christian traditions has been around the conversation of ancestral veneration, ancestral connection and community. Why do these connections matter for Indigenous people?
Rev. Alex Stayer-Brewington:
“To have spent almost all of my life near my ancestral homeland is to be aware that the dirt is, literally, the bones of my ancestors. This is where, for 15,000 years, my people have been. I think that connection and deep awareness, for me, there's a lot of competence that comes from that. There's a feeling of being in the right place.”
“We talk a lot about the post-apocalypse or what it's going to look like on the other side of a climate collapse. But I come from the people who have already experienced the apocalypse. We've already lost everything: life as we knew it, our language, the way we relate to one another. All that is gone. And yet, we are still here.”
“If you look at Jesus's ministry, and you look at the story of Ruth, those are Jesus's ancestors. You look at the hospitality in that story, you look at the history and you think, ‘Oh, clearly, Jesus is shaped by the stories that were told to him about these women and his family.’”
“I think once you open up your scriptural imagination, which I think is sometimes difficult for us in the West, you begin to see more creatively when you look at some of these things.”
Rev. Racquel Gill: I'm going to read a quote, “American Indian cultures tend to understand the world in terms of the infusion of the sacred through all of life and all of creation.” Growing up, did you experience that infusion of the sacred in all of life and all of creation? Can you share any examples?
Rev. Alex Stayer-Brewington:
“No, I did not experience that. As a child, I grew up a citizen of an occupied nation. I grew up under white supremacy and capitalism.”
“The only time I really approached this was completely outside of an Indigenous context when I learned how to surf when I was in the ninth grade. And here was this sort of like, organized play, where you're just spending time and paying attention to the ocean, you're so you're learning the rhythm and where you need to position yourself in front of a wave, so that it'll carry you and you can stand up to experience maybe 30 seconds of pleasure and then fall into the water again.”
“But looking back now, when I go back to that beach, I realize I can look out at the water and see the exact same thing as my dad's great-great-great-great-great grandfather.”
“Now that's changing, right? It's getting hotter. Some of the animals are dying. I don't know that my daughter will have that experience in the same way that I did. But certainly not my granddaughter.”
“What I do know is when the Europeans came here, they destroyed a lot of things. And they used Christianity as a tool of destruction. But then we took it, and we crafted it into medicine. And we crafted it into a shelter. And we made a form of a home for it.”
Duke Experts Offer Takeaways from the Midterm Elections
It may take weeks before the country knows which party will control the U.S. Senate, but the 2022 midterms elections already provided Duke political science, policy science and history scholars with a lot to think about.
The faculty spoke at a special briefing open to media and the public at the Sanford School of Public Policy Wednesday, covering topics from Republican party leadership to the role abortion and other hot-button issues played in the election results.
Panelists included: Kerry Haynie, professor of political science at Trinity College of Arts and Sciences; Asher Hildebrand, associate professor of the practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy; Adriane Lentz-Smith, professor in the department of history; and Pope “Mac” McCorkle, professor of the practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy. Watch the briefing here.
Here are excerpts:
ON THE LACK OF A TRUE “RED WAVE”
Asher Hildebrand
“There have been few, if any surprises breaking in the direction of Republicans, whereas there have been many surprises breaking in the direction of Democrats. This outcome flies in the face of two rather fundamental laws of American politics – first that voters tend to punish the party in power in the midterm elections and second that when economic concerns predominate voters’ minds, that’s bad for incumbents. “
Kerry Haynie
“The results of the election show this was not a typical midterm election. The results last night didn’t bear out what the historic patterns would suggest. One of the reasons is the issue of abortion seems to have mattered in terms of who turned out and for whom they voted once they turned out. Another issue that showed up in this election is one of democracy being at risk. There appears to be some evidence that voters made their choices with some of those issues in mind. Those issues made this election somewhat different.”
CONCERNS ABOUT DEMOCRACY
Adriane Lentz-Smith
“One of the things that has been interesting to me, in looking back at the rhetoric of the last four years, is the revivification of the kind of rhetoric and tactics in the 20-teens that had been used in the 1890s to justify disfranchisement. The language of election fraud, stolen democracies, of needing to defend the integrity of the ballot with violence, if necessary, is the language of white paramilitary groups in a changing South fighting back against an expansion of multiracial democracy in the 19th Century, taking on a new life in the 21st [century]. Things are never exact duplicates of the past, but there is a borrowing of that language, a learning of that strategy to do similar work.”
“We are reminded that democracy isn’t just something that happens. There is this sense that it’s just innate, that of course we are always going to have democracy because look at us, we are awesome, as opposed to our democracy is very, very new. We have only had democracy for everyone starting in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act. The question is whether people will be able to maintain the energy to protect it and the reasonable knowledge to figure out strategies for protecting it.”
ON THE ROLE THE DOBBS DECISION HAD IN THIS ELECTION
Adriane Lentz-Smith
“The Dobbs decision was another moment where people had to stop and think about how much they embraced narratives of progress in terms of rights and people’s control over their personhood. I think Dobbs scared a lot of voters who had stopped thinking their votes mattered.”
Kerry Haynie
“Voters were responding to extremism. Abortion rights is one thing, but it was the extreme position that Republicans have taken on abortion since Dobbs and some state legislatures have extreme models they have enacted. I think that will carry over to 2024.”
NORTH CAROLINA IN THE NEXT TWO YEARS
Pope “Mac” McCorkle
“There are going to be a lot of Democratic legislators getting lavish attention from Republicans to overturn Gov. Cooper on the veto. It was another disappointing night for North Carolina Democrats. Democrats did hold on in the legislature in the House in the sense that Republicans are one short of a super-majority, that’s perilous for Democrats – just one vote.”
“The judicial gains are everything the Republicans wanted. The judiciary is now a Republican institution clearly in North Carolina. In terms of the legislature, the Republicans fell short, the problem for the is that the Democrats are on the defensive in the legislature. There was no real talk of expanding and getting its own majority. Democrats are reduced to trying to stop a super majority from happening again. It’s a good night for Republicans, they got most of what they wanted. They will be looking for that one vote in the state House and they might find it.”
WHAT THE MID-TERMS MEAN FOR DONALD TRUMP
Asher Hildebrand
“There’s no question this was a bad election for Donald Trump. With the possible exception of Kari Lake in the governor’s race in Arizona, and possibly Herschel Walker in the senate race in Georgia, every governor and senate candidate he (Trump) endorsed in the main presidential battleground states lost or it appears they lost. There were other cases where he (Trump) endorsed candidates in the primary where those candidates tanked. On the other hand, it appears he (Trump) was a motivating factor among Democratic voters and his presence looming over the election prevented at least some independent and even some Republican voters who voted democratic in 2018 and 2020 from coming back into the Republican fold.”
Adriane Lentz-Smith
“There may be an end of Trump but there won’t be an end of Trumpism.”
Pope “Mac” McCorkle
“The dilemma for Republicans now is what to do about Trump. The dilemma for Democrats is what to do if there is no Trump. If Democrats have Trump around there is a formula for that. Democrats better consider what happens if there is no Trump in Florida.”
ON RON DESANTIS WIN IN FLORIDA
Asher Hildebrand
“Florida has been shifting red over the last few election cycles and DeSantis was riding that wave, he did not cause that wave. On the other hand, if the state of play nationally within the Republican party is in part a question of whether there are viable alternatives to Donald Trump who could appeal to some of the voters who supported Trump, while also coalescing other parts of the Republican coalition, there is no question that DeSantis is the first among equals in terms of alternatives to Donald Trump and this result last night only strengthened his case.”
Faculty Participants
Kerry Haynie
Kerry Haynie is a professor of political science, African & African American studies and dean of the Social Sciences. Haynie researches race and ethnic politics, women of color in politics, state and Southern politics and comparative urban politics.
Asher Hildebrand
Asher Hildebrand is an associate professor of the practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy. Hildebrand served for nearly 15 years in congressional offices and on campaigns. He was formerly chief of staff to U.S. Representative David Price (D-NC).
Adriane Lentz-Smith
Adriane Lentz-Smith is associate professor and associate chair in Duke's Department of History, where she teaches courses on the civil rights movement, Black lives and modern America.
Pope “Mac” McCorkle
Mac McCorkle is a professor of the practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke. McCorkle was an issues consultant to political candidates, state governments and others for more than 25 years.
Young Voters are Motivated, But Still Face Obstacles
The Supreme Court’s overturning of the landmark Roe vs. Wade abortion decision could motivate more students than usual to cast ballots in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
But there are challenges younger voters face this year, says Sunshine Hillygus, a Duke professor of political science who studies youth voting patterns.
“Patterns of voter registration among young people point to the importance of abortion in motivating youth turnout,” says Hillygus, who wrote a book on the topic in 2020 (“Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action.”)
“Young women have outpaced young men in new registrations since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.”
Starting Thursday, Duke students, faculty and staff can register and vote early on the same day through Nov. 5 at Karsh Alumni and Visitors Center on West Campus. (Read more here.)
Young people care about politics and intend to vote, but too often fail to follow through on those intentions because of personal and institutional distractions, according to Hillygus’ book.
She says recent laws across the country could make it even more difficult for young voters.
“In the last two years, state legislatures have enacted a flurry of laws making it harder to vote — laws that will disproportionately impact new and young voters,” says Hillygus. “Such efforts should motivate and mobilize young people to vote for elected officials who will not restrict voting access.”
In addition to polling sites on campus, a campus-wide Democracy Day takes place Friday, Oct. 28. The event will feature voter registration, organized walks to early-voting sites, educational programming and other activities related to civic engagement.
Also on Democracy Day at the Nasher Museum of Art, students can use colored pencils and crayons to activate voting-themed posters designed and screen-printed by Duke professor Bill Fick. Duke Arts and Duke Create will lead a printmaking workshop at the Rubenstein Arts Center while inside the Nasher, students are invited to help activate the “Democracy Wall,” a collage of with screen-printed posters.
“We’re excited to find the intersection of art and democracy, freedom of speech and activism,” says Duke sophomore Jack Fuchs.
Organizers of Democracy Day include the Nasher, Duke Arts, the student-run North Carolina Young People’s Alliance, POLIS, DukeVotes, the Duke Student Wellness Center and others.
READ MORE
- Sunshine Hillygus and assistant professor of political science Adriane Fresh briefed the media about voter turnout and election integrity on Wednesday.
- Additional information about voting on campus is available at DukeVotes.
- More information on early voting in the community can be found on Duke Today.