Marta Tienda, a professor of demographic studies and professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, spoke last week about inequality in the context of public education.
"If we don’t continue to invest in both (K-12 and higher ed), we’re going to do ourselves in," she said. "It’s not an either or, and to not decide is to decide.” Her talk at the Sanford School of Public Policy was part of the Center for Child and Family Policy’s Sulzberger Distinguished Lecture series.
Debbie Goldstein, who has served in a number of community policy roles in North Carolina and elsewhere, will become the new executive director of the North Carolina Leadership Forum.
The forum, a program of the Office of the Provost at Duke University, provides a venue for civic, business and political leaders from across North Carolina to discuss issues central to the future of the state, such as jobs, education and energy. The goal is to bring together people of different ideologies and backgrounds to discuss the nature of the challenges, to understand different points of view about how to address them, and to advance mutually acceptable solutions that improve the lives of North Carolinians.
“Debbie is a proven bridge builder and problem solver,” said Noah Pickus, associate provost at Duke. “She knows how difficult it is to forge genuine partnerships — and the necessity that we find ways to make them real.”
Goldstein previously served as executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), a national policy organization based in North Carolina that advocates for fair and affordable financial services for low-income families. At CRL, she specialized in mortgage and student loan policy, worked closely with industry leaders, advocacy groups, and community leaders to craft policy solutions, and led fundraising and operations.
She also has played a key role in negotiating predatory mortgage lending reforms in New Jersey and Massachusetts, and worked on national financial regulatory policy, including the Dodd-Frank Act, after the financial crisis.
"NCLF has created an opportunity for local leaders to hold constructive discussions to address issues of critical importance to North Carolina,” Goldstein said. “I look forward to helping to continue and expand these vital conversations and hope to foster increased interest in understanding each other and how we might work together on topics that impact us all."
Goldstein has taught consumer law at the UNC School of Law at Chapel Hill as an adjunct professor. She is also active in the local community, having served on the boards of Durham Congregations in Action, Carolina Jews for Justice and Beth El Congregation in Durham.
Goldstein, a graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School, has lived in Durham since 2001.
The North Carolina Leadership Forum is jointly funded by the Duke Endowment, the John William Pope Foundation, and the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.
Duke University senior Azim Dharani has been awarded a 2020 Churchill Scholarship to pursue a year of graduate study at Cambridge University in England.
Dharani, a senior Angier B. Duke scholar from Lewisville, Texas, is completing a major in chemistry and minors in computational biology and classical archaeology. He is the 22nd Duke undergraduate to receive this honor.
Dharani’s chemistry adviser and one of his recommenders, Stephen Craig, was Duke’s 12th recipient.
“Azim and the Churchill Scholarship are wonderful fits for each other,” Craig said. “Azim’s ability to appreciate and connect both the fine technical details and big-picture context of his scientific interests is remarkably mature, and I am delighted that he has the chance to take a ‘deep dive’ into another vibrant, leading research environment at Cambridge.”
The Churchill Scholarship program enables outstanding American students to conduct one year of graduate study in engineering, mathematics or the natural or physical sciences at Cambridge's Churchill College. Sixteen scholarships are being awarded this year by the Winston Churchill Foundation of New York City.
Dharani plans to pursue a master’s degree in chemistry at Cambridge, while working with professor Erwin Reisner, a pioneer in the field of semi-artificial photosynthesis. During his fellowship, Dharani aims to combine his interests in computational chemistry and biophysics to develop efficient metal-based solar fuels.
At Duke, most of Dharani’s research focused on developing metal-binding, prostate cancer-targeting drugs with professor Katherine Franz. Outside of Duke, he has pursued computational chemistry research at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the D.E. Shaw Research institute.
Before he departs Duke for Cambridge, Dharani plans to complete an independent senior honors thesis simulating the activity of disordered proteins involved with cancer signaling for improved anti-cancer drug design.
Dharani is a Goldwater Scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and has received the American Association for Cancer Research Undergraduate Fellowship. He is a teaching assistant for introductory chemistry and serves as the co-president for the Undergraduate Research Society, for which he develops programs to help underclassmen get involved with research. In his free time, he enjoys watching stand-up comedy, cooking with friends and gardening.
After his study in the UK, Dharani will return to the United States to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry. Dharani’s ultimate goal is to lead a research team devoted to addressing impactful and challenging scientific problems and teaching undergraduates at a top research university.
Former Ambassador Rick Barton joined Duke political scientist Kyle Beardsley this week for a conversation about American power and the problem with peace. Barton teaches at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, where he is a co-director of Princeton's Scholars in the Nation's Service Initiative and Ullman Fellowships.
Barton led conflict management initiatives in over 40 crisis zones across the globe, including Haiti, Iraq, Nigeria, Burma, Pakistan and Turkey. His roles included first assistant secretary of state for Conflict and Stabilization Operations (2011-2014), U.S. ambassador to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (2009-2011), and founding director of USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (1994-1999).
His 2018 book, "Peace Works: America's Unifying Role in a Turbulent World," uses a mix of stories, history, and analysis to offer an affirmative approach to foreign affairs through concrete and attainable solutions.
Video of Duke Faculty Books | Findings from “Making Young Voters”
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Voter turnout among young Americans has been dismal since 18-year-olds earned the right to vote with the passage of the 26th amendment in 1971.
While 18–29 year-olds account for nearly 22% of the voting age population, they made up just 13% of the voting electorate in 2018 – and that’s an improvement over previous years.
By not voting, younger Americans miss out on representation, policies and civic benefits that come with the practice, researchers say.
But it’s not that younger Americans are apathetic about politics and elections, according to a new book, “Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action” (Cambridge), which publishes Feb. 20.
Rather, 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 and barriers.
That’s because the act of voting can take considerable time, effort and planning. There’s the institutional hurdles — such as voter registration (quick — how many days before an election does your state require you to register?), and acquiring the accepted voter identification, which can vary by state.
And young people often have irregular school and work schedules while juggling life’s many other demands and distractions.
“We did qualitative interviews of young people to try and understand their barriers to participation, and all of those things are barriers,” said co-author Sunshine Hillygus, a professor of political science at Duke University.
“Even though they don’t really seem like that big of barriers to people who have been established in their communities for a very long time and have lived at the exact same address for a very long time, they are actually big obstacles for young people and can make it harder for them to follow through on their intentions.”
As a result, many citizens — young people, especially — fail to vote even though they wanted and intended to do so, the book says.
“Despite eight in 10 young people saying they are interested in politics and plan to vote, less than half of them actually follow through and actually turn out. This has been true for decades. Even in the recent high-water mark for youth turnout — 2018 — only about 31% of young people voted,” says co-author John Holbein, assistant professor of public policy and education at the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.
Hillygus and Holbein make numerous suggestions for improving voter participation among young people.
Transforming high school civics courses so they focus more on how to become an active voter than on age-old subjects like how government works will help, they write.
“The way that we teach civics is fundamentally flawed if our goal is to increase citizen participation,” Hillygus said. “Right now we teach civics, kind of what we call ‘bubble sheet civics,’ because we’re teaching facts and figures about politics and government and history, which are not necessarily connected to the issues of the day, or even the very kind of fundamental and basic practical facts that people might need to know about when and how they need to register and vote.”
The way that we teach civics is fundamentally flawed if our goal is to increase citizen participation.
—Sunshine Hillygus, professor of political science at Duke University
Pre-registration at the DMV when getting a driver’s license at age 16 and registration drives high schools would also help, they write.
Moreover, to get young people off the sidelines and into the polls, the book emphasizes the need to make voting a habit for young people, not unlike activities that are already routine for them.
The authors say what they propose is not unlike achieving nonpolitical goals, like exercising, healthy eating or performing well on an exam. They write that individuals who are best able to follow through on their goals and intentions, political or otherwise, are those with strong noncognitive skills related to self-regulation and interpersonal interactions.
Such skills would help these potential voters persevere in the face of anticipated — and unanticipated – obstacles, according to the authors.
“Whereas cognitive abilities — especially political knowledge and verbal capabilities — have traditionally been considered the cornerstone of theories of voter turnout and civic education policies, we argue that non-cognitive skills are a missing piece of the turnout puzzle,” the book says.
“Our work provides concrete insights about how to get more young people to participate in politics,” says Holbein, who was Hillygus’ co-author while earning his Ph.D. at Duke. “It shines light on how to help young people follow through on their interest in politics and illustrates the need to lower obstacles to registration and voting in the United States.”
A $5 million gift from the Mary Alice Fortin Foundation will provide opportunities for Duke University students to work with faculty on complex societal problems, Duke President Vincent E. Price said Monday.
The gift is in support of Duke’s Bass Connections program, a university-wide initiative that enables undergraduate and graduate students to work alongside faculty on research teams addressing urgent issues ranging from reducing health inequities, to developing sustainable energy solutions, to ensuring fair elections and countering misinformation. Anne T. and Robert M. Bass established the program in 2013 with a $50 million commitment to Duke. The gift included a $25 million component to create the Bass Connections Challenge Fund.
The $5 million gift is matched by $2.5 million from the challenge fund — one dollar for every two dollars given — generating a total of $7.5 million of unrestricted support for Bass Connections. This gift completes the Bass Connections Challenge Fund, and is the largest single gift to Bass Connections since the program launched.
“Through Bass Connections, Duke is transforming teaching and discovery by fusing our educational and research missions,” said Price. “The Fortin Foundation’s gift will enable Duke to make new investments in the strategic expansion of this vibrant, university-wide program to the benefit of faculty and students in all of Duke’s schools.”
Funds from the gift will support the growth of Bass Connections to meet increasing student demand and to create new opportunities for intensive research experiences through project teams and courses. Since the program launched, 2,210 undergraduate students, 730 graduate students and 550 faculty and staff have participated in nearly 350 year-long project teams and 167 summer research teams.
“Over the past seven years, we have seen this program shape the trajectories of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and our community partners,” said Ed Balleisen, vice provost for interdisciplinary studies. “We see this approach to collaborative research and learning as a powerful model for 21st-century higher education and we are enormously grateful to the Fortin Foundation for enabling us to expand its impact.”
In recognition of the gift, Duke’s Board of Trustees has named an annual event The Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase, where teams share their research with the community and students present their team’s accomplishments.
“While attending the Bass Connections Showcase, what struck me most was the faculty engagement with students,” said Danielle Moore, president of the Mary Alice Fortin Foundation and a 1985 graduate of Duke. “Their reflections about how the program introduced both the faculty and students to new ways of addressing societal challenges reinforces the importance of investing in this significant program at Duke.”
The Fortin Foundation is a longtime supporter of Duke. A combined $1.5 million of commitments to Bass Connections in 2017 and 2018 enabled the program to expand to meet student and faculty demand, while also continuing innovative investment in strategic priorities.
And in 2014, the foundation gave $5 million to name the Fortin Foundation DukeEngage Academy. DukeEngage is the university’s signature immersive civic engagement program. The Fortin Foundation DukeEngage Academy is a mandatory pre-departure training conference for all DukeEngage participants.
Mark Lemley, William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology, this week gave the annual David L. Lange Lecture on Intellectual Property at Duke Law.
"Balkanization means it’s harder for people to share experiences across countries," he said. "It takes away the ability to see what the rest of the world has, and how the rest of the world thinks, and that’s a loss. I think it’s a loss for us, but it’s a real loss for people in oppressive regimes who can look to the outside world for hope, for inspiration to demand change, for the means of facilitating that change. If we take that away, we take away freedom for a substantial number of people.”
Dikgang Moseneke, former deputy chief justice of South Africa and a 2020 Rubenstein Fellow, spoke this week at the Robert R. Wilson Lecture sponsored by Duke's Center for International Development and the Sanford School of Public Policy. He is also a recipient of the 2020 Bolch Prize for the Rule of Law.
Dikgang Moseneke, former deputy chief justice of South Africa and a 2020 Rubenstein Fellow, spoke this week at the Robert R. Wilson Lecture sponsored by Duke's Center for International Devceloment and the Sanfoird School of Public Policy.
“I think we’re losing the internet," he said. "We’re replacing it with the ‘splinternet’ – a balkanized set of computer protocols that increasingly differs by company and by country. That’s not a good thing. Balkanization means it’s harder for people to share experiences across countries. It takes away the ability to see what the rest of the world has, and how the rest of the world thinks, and that’s a loss. I think it’s a loss for us, but it’s a real loss for people in oppressive regimes who can look to the outside world for hope, for inspiration to demand change, for the means of facilitating that change. If we take that away, we take away freedom for a substantial number of people.”
Margaret H. Marshall, former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, wrote the 4-3 majority opinion in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, which made Massachusetts the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2003. Some say it also mobilized the electorate to re-elect President George W. Bush. Marshall spoke this week at a Duke Law event.
Debbie Goldstein, who has served in a number of community policy roles in North Carolina and elsewhere, will become the new executive director of the 
Duke University senior Azim Dharani has been awarded a 2020 Churchill Scholarship to pursue a year of graduate study at Cambridge University in England. 
