Category: Speeches & Writings Page 1 of 5

To the Duke Community,

With the approach of Thanksgiving, I write in gratitude for all you do as members of our Duke community and to extend best wishes.

As we enjoy the company of family and friends, many among us are working through the holiday and unable to celebrate, or are separated from loved ones many miles away. All of us are feeling the strain of a world that seems unsettled and divided.

In these moments, I draw both strength and inspiration from our Duke University family, and I hope others find that encouragement and comfort as well. Wherever we come from or whatever brings us to Duke, we all belong here together. And everything we do—in the classroom, on campus, in the clinic, or in our surrounding neighborhoods—we do as part of a community, turning with shared values and commitment toward a more joyful tomorrow.

I am grateful you are with us at Duke and hope you find refreshment and relaxation this Thanksgiving.

Sincerely,

Vince

Thank you all for being here for this exciting moment for Duke.

I’d like to begin by recognizing trustee Jeff Ubben, who served as chair of our Climate Change and Sustainability Task Force, along with Dean of the Nicholas School Toddi Steelman and Executive Director of Sustainability Tavey Capps, who both served as Vice Chairs. Without your leadership, none of this would be possible. Thank you.

In coming to Duke, I knew I was joining a community of enormous intellectual power. We are also a community dedicated to purpose and commitment, a community brimming with innovation and potential and the opportunity to write a bold new chapter. Today, that new chapter—a story of a better future—begins.

The Duke Climate Commitment is a transformational initiative for Duke, one that is unprecedented in our history and in higher education.

Never have we committed to marshaling every part of our enterprise—our collective resources, talents, and passions—toward solving a global problem in such a focused way. The scale and importance of our climate-related challenges call for nothing less: creating sustainable and equitable solutions that will place society on the path to a resilient, flourishing, net-zero-carbon world by mid-century.

Our history has prepared us well to rise to this moment—indeed, at a time when some of our peers are launching new climate schools, we have been leading in this work for as long as we have been Duke.

The School of Forestry and the Marine Laboratory were both founded more than 80 years ago, in the early days of our university. More than 30 years ago these entities came together into one school—and thanks to a foundational gift from the Nicholas family, we now have the Nicholas School of the Environment.

Seventeen years ago, we launched what is now the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, which elevates our environmental work through education, sustained engagement, and convening of stakeholders and policy experts. A dozen years ago, we launched our plan to achieve carbon neutrality, and we have operated with a broad strategic plan to achieve sustainability in areas such as energy, water, food, and land use.

The Duke Climate Commitment builds on and concentrates these many complementary resources. Our research will advance core areas of expertise in transforming energy, creating climate-resilient communities and ecosystems, and developing data-driven climate solutions—all with a focus on more equitable engagement. Our teaching will infuse climate and sustainability into programs across the university, improving the lives of our students and preparing them to lead as alumni.

But the reason that this can only happen at Duke is our distinctive excellence in interdisciplinary collaboration. While the Duke Climate Commitment will have the Nicholas School and Institute at its heart, it will encompass research and teaching across all of our schools and institutes, guide our campus operations, and help us foster stronger, collaborative relationships with partners in our community, state, nation and around the globe.

To that end, we’re launching data expeditions with an initial focus on climate and health and collaboration grants to drive creative research across disciplines. We’re committing to making climate and sustainability fluency foundational to the curriculum for every student at Duke and extending our reach to our alumni. As we continue to work toward our goal of carbon neutrality in 2024 and to lead the way in sustainable operations, we’re developing Duke as a living laboratory to study and solve climate and sustainability issues. And perhaps most importantly, we’re supporting environmental sustainability in the community and advancing our understanding of the critical impacts of climate change on social and racial equity.

None of this would be possible without the support of our extraordinary partners, donors, and alumni.

The Duke Endowment has provided early foundational support in launching climate literacy, research, and campus sustainability efforts.

Jeff and Laurie Ubben and Mike and Karen Stone are leading the way in supporting our transformational teaching and an endowed professorship.

Katy Hollister and her husband Brad Miller have provided seed funding along with an anonymous 1994 Pratt School graduate to create the DESIGN Climate program—a first-in-class experiential learning initiative for engineering and environmental students.

Cindy Marrs has supported courses and co-curricular activities in climate finance in the Duke Financial Economics Program.

And building on their incredible support of this work, the Nicholas Family this week announced a significant lead gift to create a Presidential Climate Action and Innovation endowment to lift the entire university-wide initiative.

These gifts represent a tremendous foundation for a climate commitment that will harness the best of Duke toward solving a seemingly intractable problem.

We know we can do it. We know that we will do it.

And that’s why the Duke Climate Commitment marks a hopeful moment for us—when we seize the opportunity and step up to our responsibility to lead toward a brighter, healthier future. I hope you will join us in this transformational undertaking.

Duke is in it, together, for life. Thank you.

[END OF EVENT]

I want to thank our program and panel participants for joining us today—and thank everyone here with us for your support as we mark this important moment—both for our university and the world that we hope to shape.

Too often in modern life, the drive to be innovative, the drive to be creative, has not been coupled with a thoughtful approach to being sustainable—to innovating in a way that leaves us all better off fifty or a hundred years down the road. 

As an institution, we have an opportunity today to chart a different course. At Duke, we have the bold thinkers to allow us to make this commitment. We have the diversity of thought, we have the talented students and staff, we have the global network of extraordinary alumni, we have the obligation as an employer, and we have the history.

That is why we must succeed. That is why Duke is in it, together, for life.

Thank you all. That concludes today’s event, but I hope you will join us for the sessions tomorrow and beyond.

I’ll begin by saying once again—welcome to the great Class of 2026. We are so thrilled to have you join the Duke family, and we know that you will each bring something extraordinary to this special place.

Let me also say welcome to the parents and families who are watching today’s convocation around the world—you are also entering the global Duke community, and we are grateful for your support.

We are gathered this afternoon on Abele Quad, the heart of West Campus, under the generous shade of these towering oak trees that seem as old as time. But it is East Campus, your home for this first year at Duke, that is actually much older. It was there that this institution moved to Durham in 1892 when it was still Trinity College. It was there that Duke’s first classes were held, first friendships born, first discoveries made, and yes, first basketball game played—in 1905.

And a little more than a century ago, it was on East Campus that President William Preston Few installed one of our first pieces of art—the statue of The Sower. Like some of you, this statue came a long way to arrive here, from Germany by way of New Jersey. But a quiet corner of East Campus is now his home—a farmer in bronze, scattering seeds from a sack around his waist.

President Few must have thought this was a fitting analogy for the college he led, which would grow from modest seeds into the towering university we see around us today. I would venture that he must also have believed The Sower was representative of the experience of learning—of potential growing into being.

Members of the Class of ’26, you have come to Duke to sow your goals and aspirations. And just like the oaks that surround us and stretch along the drive to East Campus, we know that what you plant here will grow tall and true.

In that spirit, I want to offer three thoughts as you enter this exciting new season of growth.

First, know that the Sower’s seeds landed in the right spot: this is fertile soil. It has been tilled and cared for by generations before you—and by the classmates and teachers you will meet along the way. From your first day of class to your last, through your exploration of opportunities like Bass Connections and Duke Engage, from creating art and performing to tenting in K-ville, you will find countless opportunities to have your perspectives broadened, your principles deepened, and your curiosity sparked.

You’ll have a chance while you’re here to get into the weeds—to explore your interests with classmates and expert teachers, to conduct research on real-world problems, to serve our community and engage with the world.

Take full advantage—but remember, it takes time for things to grow, and patience. By rushing into every opportunity or taking on too much, we can rob ourselves of the joy of reflection and contemplation.

So I have one valuable recommendation if you find yourself needing some time: make a list of 10 things you are doing or want to do, and scratch two off. Doing fewer things allows us to explore interests in greater depth and focus, to get out of the weeds and take a step back, and to remain open to those opportunities yet to come.

My second piece of advice today is for you—like the trees planted by the Sower—to sink deep roots here. We are thrilled that yours is the first class to experience the full benefits of QuadEx—and that your Duke will be more engaging, inclusive, and fun than it has ever been before. Seek and relish in those moments of connection, whether formal events with your quad or casual conversations at Marketplace and kanjam in the Gardens.

These moments are what make Duke Duke, and they are what keep you rooted in this special place for the next four years and a lifetime to come. As you sink deep roots, also be sure to branch out.  Get to know people who are truly different from you—who have ideas that excite you, challenge you, or even upset you. They are the ones who will help you grow even stronger.

The extraordinary connections you make here will far transcend the walls of our campus—you are today entering a global Duke community numbering hundreds of thousands who want to do all that they can to help you succeed. These are strong roots—they run deep and will support you as you grow. 

And with the Sower’s hopeful planting in mind, my final recommendation to you today is the most important: take good care of yourself.

Even with the best soil and the deepest roots, plants need a bit of care to grow and thrive—particularly in dry or stormy seasons. Likewise, to be at your best here, you have to first invest in your health and wellness. Make time for exercise, eat right, and get lots of rest and relaxation. Explore this wonderful city of Durham. Go for a hike in the forest. And when a dry spell or storm comes, seek support in our comprehensive wellness and mental health resources.

Most importantly of all—Get. Some. Sleep. I say this every year at this event because I really mean it. A tired brain can’t learn, can’t enjoy relaxation, and can’t thrive nearly as well as a rested one. Believe me, it’s important.

When you stroll over to The Sower in these next few weeks, you’ll notice something remarkable: over the years, through a sort of Duke magic, he has succeeded in his planting. He’s surrounded now by a grove of oaks and pines much taller than these — but if you look at photos from the early years of campus, you will see that those trees were but tiny saplings, planted on the edges of a small but hopeful new institution.

Think how they have grown over the years—thriving in the rich soil, sinking deep roots, and benefitting from the care of generations of Duke people.

Like those towering trees, you are sowing seeds of your own here—with excitement and attention and more than a little hope—and we can’t wait to watch them grow.

Welcome, Class of ’26. We are so glad you are here.

On behalf of the Duke community, I am honored to welcome you to Duke Chapel for this commemoration of the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the rhythms of the university calendar, this important event is perhaps unique, in that it is both a solemn and celebratory occasion—celebratory because we mark the progress made toward Dr. King’s noble goals, and solemn because we mourn his loss and the long and challenging road ahead.

In that spirit, I have been reflecting on this year’s theme—Dr. King’s notion that tomorrow is today, that we should be inspired to action by the fierce urgency of now.

To be sure, our now has perhaps never been more fierce or more urgent—amidst a global pandemic that is disproportionately impacting communities of color and a parallel pandemic of racism and violence across our country.

In the face of these circumstances, we must take action today—inspired by Dr. King’s profound words—to build a better tomorrow. We are committed to doing this work at Duke, to making anti-racism a core priority at every level of our university and providing leadership and compassion to our neighbors.

As we gather for this solemn celebration, may we remember that the work that Dr. King undertook half a century ago has still only just begun—and while the road ahead may be long, we are walking it together toward a better tomorrow.

Thank you.

Thank you all for being with us today. We gather as a community in this solemn moment to mark the 20^th anniversary of the September 11^th attacks.

The great poet Maya Angelou, who preached many times in this Chapel, wrote that trauma lives on “in our heart, our mind, and our memories.” As we gather today, we all share in the collective trauma of those terrible events, whether we remember them or not. We share in the pain of the lives lost, in the uncertainty of a world still unbalanced by the horror of that day, and in the mistrust that sadly pervades so much of our society.

But even amidst this despair, there is an opportunity for extraordinary hope. As Maya Angelou reminds us, we are not left with our memories alone—we also have our hearts and our minds. Together, we can turn with our hearts to build a more inclusive, empathic community here at Duke and beyond. We can use our minds to foster a greater understanding of our world and our place in it, and to live lives of service to our neighbors and engagement with our communities.

Today, as we mark this anniversary, let us hear that call together. Thank you.

Thank you, Judith, and to all of the faculty and staff who have collectively made this day possible.

Congratulations, graduates! I am so delighted to be here to welcome you to the community of Duke alumni.

In fact, I am more than delighted to be here—since as a scholar of political communications and a faculty member at Sanford, this school’s mission is uniquely dear to my heart. Please don’t tell the other schools.

Though I know that this is not the commencement ceremony that you might have imagined when you first arrived at Duke, we’ve made it through a most abnormal year to this joyful day—together.

And how about this setting? Is there any place more Duke than Cameron? Well, maybe the coffee line at Fleishman Commons—but this has to be a close second.

To be sure, there were moments these past few months when it would have been ambitious for us to expect to be here, in person.

One might even say, in the famous words of Terry Sanford, outrageously ambitious.

In your time at Duke, you have no doubt heard that phrase—outrageous ambition—used in many settings and contexts: by faculty and administrators; in admissions and marketing materials; even, for that matter, in commencement speeches. It has become a part of our identity as an institution, as fundamental to Duke as these banners hanging above us in the rafters.

But for all its rhetorical power, the notion of outrageous ambition does not capture what it was that President Sanford felt so ambitious about—that is, his hopes for this institution and its students.

Thankfully for posterity—and for future commencement speeches—President Sanford outlined these aspirations for Duke’s educational mission in the very same speech where he coined his more indelible phrase.

“Duke aspires,” he said—with his characteristic blend of rhetorical flair and folksiness—“… Duke aspires to leave its students with an abiding concern for justice, with a resolve for compassion and concern for others…and with an ability to think straight now and throughout life.”

Concern for justice. Compassion for others. And—though we might say this differently today—the ability to think straight.

These core values have brought you to this moment, have carried you through the countless hours of studying and dissertation writing, have supported you in the sacrifices and challenges you have faced, and will carry you forward to the extraordinary careers and lives you have ahead.

In your pursuit of the Master of Public Policy, Master of International Development Policy, or International Master of Environmental Policy, or Doctorate in Public Policy, you have first and foremost demonstrated extraordinary intellectual promise. It’s what brought you to Duke—what set you apart and inspired the Sanford admissions committee to make the very wise decision to invite you to join this community.

And you have certainly made good on that decision. In your research and intellectual pursuits, you have helped to transform our understanding of critical issues in politics, foreign affairs, the future of technology, immigration, education, and environmental conservation.

You have shared in the vibrant diversity of perspectives on our campus, one that I hope has enriched your lives here, broadened your own thinking, and inspired you to pursue new areas of scholarship.

The university, in rather utopian terms, has sometimes been described as a free marketplace of ideas. This is grounded in the notion that if all perspectives are given equal consideration, the truth will rise to the top.

Of course, the free marketplace of ideas comes with its attendant pitfalls. For one thing, the marketplace of ideas has never actually been free, at least not in the sense of being equitable. Ideas promoted by people in positions of power often get more attention, while great thinkers from marginalized populations are, well, marginalized.

A vital component of what President Sanford called thinking straight, then, is seeking out and amplifying the perspectives of those who may not be getting a fair or equal hearing. To borrow a phrase from the poet Robert Penn Warren, remember that even in a democracy, truth doesn’t always live in the number of voices. Remain open to hearing the hard truths, and help others tell their stories in a way that helps us all better understand and serve each other.

As we have seen in recent discourse, we are often tempted to forget that this openness to ideas—which seems so noble in the context of empowering marginalized voices—cuts both ways.

My colleague Peter Salovey, the President of Yale University, tells a story about the great civil rights icon, theologian, and legal thinker Pauli Murray, who spent her formative years here in Durham. Some of you may have seen one of the murals of her in downtown Durham, or visited the Pauli Murray Center at her childhood home on Carroll Street.

When Murray was a student at Yale Law School in the early 1960s, a student group invited the racist, segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, to visit campus for a debate. There was an understandable outcry, even in that less enlightened moment of our nation’s history, and the then-president of the university was considering whether to demand that the students retract the invitation.

He then received an unexpected letter from Murray, sharing an equally unexpected perspective.  She argued that Wallace must be given the opportunity to share his views, however wrong, however vitriolic, because that very same notion of a free and equal exchange of ideas was foundational to the civil rights movement.

Wallace must be allowed to speak, she wrote, because that “has been the principle behind the enforcement of the rights of the Little Rock Nine, James Meredith and others to attend desegregated schools in the face of a hostile community and threats of violence.”

The stakes are no lower in today’s discourse. Many of our classmates, colleagues, and friends encounter speech that is discriminatory or threatening to them. We know that invocations of free speech are too easily and too often used as cover for attempts to exclude and demean. And free speech, as I’ve noted elsewhere, is similarly used to absolve those of us with editorial power of our responsibilities to exercise it wisely, and justly. 

So, it may seem like a manifestation of our compassion and concern for others to silence those ideas we find wrong, hurtful, or even dangerous. Certainly, we might think, the surest way to protect the vulnerable is to prevent others from promoting ideas designed to anger, provoke, or cause pain. 

But there are several profound challenges in this thinking.  First, the perceived degeneracy of the opposition must not release us or our responsibility to think deeply and critically about our own positions.

Indeed, it’s in defending our own ideas, in responding with argument and debate, that we both demonstrate the strength of our position and allow for continued growth and evolution in our thinking. Robust debate is the surest path, if not quite to truth, then to its most reasonable human approximation.

To borrow the Yale example, barring George Wallace from campus wouldn’t have done a thing to advance the cause of civil rights. Allowing him to debate his ideas, on the other hand, would force him to face and respond to criticism in a way that might sharpen the thinking and strategy of his opponents.

We must refrain always from ad hominem attacks.  We must support and defend those who are subject to hurtful speech, and do all we can to prevent harm and promote our community standard of respectful engagement. 

But let’s not deny those who promulgate controversial ideas their own right and responsibility to defend them. They will surely have these ideas, whether we let them be expressed or not.  Attempting to silence them is not only likely to fail, it would violate our longstanding commitment to open inquiry, which is at the foundation of research and discovery, of teaching and healing.  We can and will insist on decency and honesty, but our openness to a full diversity of ideas and beliefs enriches our work and helps make this a more engaged university, and a more engaged world.

It’s not easy, but it is just. And most importantly, this is how we change minds and hearts—not by edict, not by threat, but by something that, with our constant care and attention, approaches respectful discourse among disagreeable parties.

This, I believe, is what Terry Sanford meant by thinking straight.  This charge carries with it a firm dedication to serving the unheard and an abiding concern for justice for the overlooked.

At the same time, it carries with it the deep intellectual honesty of recognizing that we may not have all the answers—that there is in fact a chance that we may be wrong.  Wrong about the facts of the matter, and so perhaps wrong about what to do.  We hold some truths to be self-evident.  Most are not.

Maintaining our commitment to justice and our humility in granting others the right to express what they believe—that is what lifts the work of policy or research or law or writing into something more than an occupation—into a vocation. By contributing your extraordinary thinking to open discourse—and by working to create a marketplace of ideas that is truly free and equitable—you will be shaping a brighter, more engaged world for all of us.

I know that you can do it. You have done it. You’ve demonstrated leadership throughout your time at Duke, and you are ready to bring your unique perspectives to a world that needs you now more than ever.

And in doing so, by setting off in the spirit of service, compassion, and justice, you—the graduates of the Sanford school—you are the fulfillment of Terry Sanford’s outrageous ambitions for Duke.

Congratulations, and very best wishes.