Nannerl O. Keohane: Her Presidency Has Changed Duke's Sense of the Possible

Citation read at the presentation of the University Medal to President Nannerl O. Keohane

By every measure-the remarkable qualifications and impressive diversity of entering students, the record number of prestigious international fellowships that they go on to earn, or the ever-enhanced facilities that they live and learn in-Duke is an even better place today than it was ten years ago. It is a more vibrant, robust, and welcoming place. Just over ten years ago, when Nan left the presidency of Wellesley for Duke, the chair of Wellesley's board of trustees referred to the Keohane years as a "golden era" for that institution. Now Duke has enjoyed its own "golden era."

Nan's presidency has changed Duke's sense of the possible. For The Campaign for Duke, now in its concluding phase, she has been an indefatigable force. Under her leadership, the campaign surpassed the two-billion-dollar mark, catapulting the university into a position of financial strength that is unprecedented in its history, and allowing Duke to realize many of what former President Terry Sanford famously labeled our "outrageous ambitions." The campaign has represented another memorable milestone: the bringing together of all elements of the institution-which haven't always been known to operate in perfect harmony-in pursuit of overarching academic objectives

At the same time, undergraduate life has been solidified as the core commitment for Duke-truly a characteristic that distinguishes Duke from many research universities. The signs of that renewed commitment are manifold, including the all-freshman East Campus, the reinvention of residential life on West Campus, a more rigorous and directed curriculum, and a more concerted connecting of campus life with the life of the mind.

Looking to enhance the bonds between town and gown, Nan has been an assertive advocate of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership. Through the partnership, hundreds of schoolchildren have been tutored, food drives have been organized, playgrounds have been built, health clinics have been staffed, and-just this week-a Habitat for Humanity house has been taking shape in a "Blitz Build," the latest of many Duke collaborations to expand much-needed affordable housing in Durham. There can be no doubt that Duke cares about Durham and its future.

Nan's vision has extended far afield as well as close to home. In her inaugural address, she looked forward to the day "when everything that we do will be informed by our global consciousness." Since then, driven in part by her ambitious international travel schedule, the university has seen burgeoning study-abroad opportunities, a huge increase in applications from international students, a financial-aid program that now encompasses international undergraduates, and many more formal and informal links and exchanges between Duke's professional schools and institutions abroad. Today Duke leads all the nation's private universities in the number of federally supported centers for international studies-a clear sign of Duke's world-class standing.

Under Nan's leadership, the university has also deepened its commitment to enriching teaching, learning and scholarship across disciplinary boundaries. That commitment is especially conspicuous in Duke's graduate and research programs, and is exemplified through initiatives like Duke's Genomics Institute, which embraces medical science, public policy, legal thought, and ethics; the John Hope Franklin Institute, which fosters pioneering work in the humanities and social sciences; and the Kenan Institute for Ethics, which promotes moral reflection across the curriculum and in our communities.

Nan's remarkable tenure brought another bold step that has resonated as a national model. The university and medical center created the Duke University Health System to ensure, in a time of great fluctuation in and pressures on health-care finance, that Duke's schools of medicine and nursing and its clinical and research programs continued to be among the world's best. Even as Duke University Hospital provides the highest-quality care to patients from around the globe, it spends several tens of millions of dollars annually to provide the same level of care, unreimbursed, to those in this region who have no health insurance.

Nan has been not just an educational leader, but a moral leader as well. She has been confident in her views about what matters on our campus, and about what matters in our culture. As scores of groundskeepers and maintenance workers could tell us, she has been especially attuned to the valuable, but too often ignored, members of the campus community.

In one of her first major presidential addresses, to the Academic Council, our faculty governance body, Nan observed that Duke "has rightly prided itself on academic freedom and vigorous inquiry, unafraid to speak the truth even against the winds of prevailing orthodoxy." In her own vigorous way, she has been a champion of diversity, for reasons of principle and of enlightened institutional self-interest. She has said, "We have seen the growing diversity on campus enrich entire fields of study, suggest new and exciting disciplines, and influence the way we teach and learn."

As Duke's first woman president and only the second woman president of a major university, Nan has been a role model for Duke women and for women in higher education. She also is among the first generation of scholars to ask questions in a rigorous academic fashion about women's roles in civic life. In line with her leadership and her scholarship, then, she has chosen a substantively and symbolically appropriate theme in culminating her presidency. The Duke Women's Initiative, a comprehensive study and plan for action, is meant to foster, as she has described it, "a far-reaching conversation on campus that will continue in the months and years ahead."

Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One's Own, talks about women influencing other women, from generation to generation-often silently and subtly-as "continuing presences." During more than a decade of steady advance, and now with every new stride that Duke takes, Nan will be leaving her mark as a continuing presence and a shaping force. How fitting it is that today we recognize the eighth president of Duke University, Nannerl O. Keohane, with a University Medal of her own.