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‘I didn’t feel rehabilitated’

Our beat writers answer 3 key questions leading up to Thursday’s clash | Sports Page 14

Law School discussion focuses on racial disparities in the criminal justice system | Page 2

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ONE HUNDRED AND TWELFTH YEAR, ISSUE 54

Plaintiff settles lawsuit against EVP Tallman Trask

Graphic by Ben Yang | The Chronicle

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2017

Staff Reports The Chronicle A lawsuit filed against Executive Vice President Tallman Trask for hitting a contract parking employee with his car has been dismissed. The Chronicle reported last year that Trask hit Shelvia Underwood with his car and allegedly used a racial slur while attempting to park for a football game. Underwood later filed a suit against Trask and Duke on counts of battery, negligence and civil conspiracy. In April, a judge removed Duke as a defendant in the case. “It was settled last month by my insurance company for nuisance value,” Trask wrote in an email. Donald Huggins, attorney for Shelvia See TRASK on Page 6

Sameer Pandhare The Chronicle

Chronicle File Photo EVP Tallman Trask oversees Duke’s finances and administration.

As Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski strolled onto the court in his return to the sidelines following back surgery, the Blue Devil crowd did not hesitate to shower the legend with adulation. But even the roar Krzyzewski received Saturday against Pittsburgh may not compare to the decibel level inside Cameron Indoor Stadium later this week. No. 18 Duke and No. 8 North Carolina will renew the Tobacco Road Rivalry when they square off for the first time this season Thursday at 8 p.m. The Blue Devils come into the contest riding a three-game winning streak and will look to close the gap on a Tar Heel

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team that has won nine of its last 10 and sits atop the ACC standings, 2.5 games ahead of its rival. However, Krzyzewski’s return means Duke finally has all its rotation players and coaches active at the same time as it searches for a signature win. “He brings a sense of urgency and a verve to our team that makes us better,” Blue Devil graduate student Amile Jefferson said after Saturday’s game. “He’s amazing as a coach, as a leader, as a bringer of emotion and toughness, and when we get on his bus and follow the energy and the verve that he has, we’ll be a really good team.” After battling injuries early in the season and playing without Krzyzewski for the last month, Duke (18-5, 6-4 in the ACC) has slowly righted the ship despite dropping three of four in the middle of

January. During their winning streak, the Blue Devils have made key defensive stops when needed down the stretch and held their opponents to just 27.3 percent shooting from beyond the arc. Although co-captains Matt Jones and Amile Jefferson have played at less than 100 percent recently, Duke has continued to grow more cohesive as a group and will need all hands on deck to slow down the best rebounding team in the nation. “We’re more together. It wasn’t about attitude or anything like that,” Kzyzewski said Saturday. “The two single biggest things to develop something good are preparation and continuity, and this group has been denied a lot of preparation and continuity.” The Blue Devils will have their hands See M. BASKETBALL on Page 15

go for it.

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Law School panel examines Environmental research funding flaws in U.S. prison system in question under Pres. Trump Harrison Labban The Chronicle The Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy hosted a symposium Tuesday focusing on efforts to improve criminal justice and the American prison system. Titled “Intersectionality and the Black Lives Matter Movement,” the event featured a panel of speakers, including James Coleman, John S. Bradway professor of the practice of law, and Umar Muhammad, community organizer for the Southern Coalition for Justice, along with Theresa Newman, clinical professor of law. Coleman and Newman, who are co-directors of Duke’s Wrongful Conviction Clinic, related their clinical work to Muhammad’s history with the prison system during their discussion. “This is my lived experience,” Muhammad said. “I’m formerly incarcerated, I spent a lot of my childhood in different systems and I had no idea about the beast that communities of color are fighting. My mother didn’t know about the school-to-prison pipeline, she just knew she had a black boy.”

Coleman explained how his work with wrongfully-convicted clients had shaped his view of the U.S. criminal justice system, which he described as racially lopsided. “It’s not by choice that most of my clients are African American,” Coleman said. “It’s a fact of life and of the prison system. If most of the people going into the system are black men, most of my clients will be too.” Coleman added that he perceives the Black Lives Matter movement’s name to be posing a question rather than making an emphatic statement. “I don’t believe you can look at what is happening to black men in prison and think that anyone really cares about them,” he said. “As a result of the largely inconsistent prison conditions across the nation and the lack of true rehabilitation in most cases, there is an innate sense of urgency in the approach to these problems.” The panelists agreed that in their opinions, the criminal justice system is See PRISON on Page 6

Bre Bradham | The Chronicle James Coleman and Thersea Newman (far right and far left) serve as co-directors of Duke’s Wrongful Conviction Clinic, which investigates incarcerated felons’ claims of innocence.

Bre Bradham The Chronicle Research funding from the federal government could see declines if budget cuts are implemented by the new presidential administration. So, how will this affect Duke’s environmental research? The Trump administration called last month for a temporary freeze on all EPA grants, which was eventually lifted. But the administration has also floated significant cuts to the agency’s budget, perhaps larger than $800 million. Similar plans have been proposed for other federal agencies. “From [Trump’s] campaign and the past history of Republicans in Congress—and they are very public about it—there is not a lot of support by them for research into climate science, research into alternative energy resources or alternative research technology,” said Chris Simmons, associate vice president in the office of government relations. Simmons said that Duke, compared to other universities, is one of the largest recipients of federal research funds.

Simmons noted that funding for the EPA, Department of Energy and National Science Foundation might be pulled back, but that predicting exactly what the administration will do is impossible. But he added that even if Trump wanted to eliminate entire departments, that would not be a simple task for a new president and that he cannot remember the last time someone was successful doing this. Nicholas School Dean Jeffrey Vincent wrote in an email on Tuesday that he is “deeply concerned” about scientific funding from the Trump administration, and that he is in active communication with Simmons’ office about developments in Washington. “Humanity faces a host of major challenges, including tough environmental ones, and we can’t hope to address them without a stronger scientific research capacity than we currently have,” he wrote. None of the Nicholas School’s current grants have been cancelled, Vincent wrote. He added that the EPA is not currently a See FUNDING on Page 6

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons In January, President Donald Trump called for a temporary freeze on all grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, which ceased at the end of the month.

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How can universities confront the legacy of slavery?

Rachel Baber | The Chronicle Brenda Allen, a former administrator at Brown University, explained how Brown formed a committee to explore its connection to slavery during a talk Tuesday.

Likhitha Butchireddygari The Chronicle Brenda Allen, a member of a task force that studied Brown University’s connection to slavery, spoke about the committee’s work in a lecture Tuesday. Allen’s talk—part of the Duke Human Rights Center’s “Dangerous Memories” series, in which speakers address the challenges of studying the sometimes sordid history of American universities—detailed Brown’s process of studying and reporting its connection to slavery. Concurrently, a Bass Connections project team entitled “The Construction of Memory at Duke and in Durham: Using Memory Studies” is looking at

Duke’s history with race. “As an African American, I came to understand so many things about how the past actually intersects with the future and how much of my own life and my opportunities were bound up in this story,” said Allen, who is currently the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Winston-Salem State University. “These are stories that are deeply human and human beings have a lot of different perspectives on it. As we try to come to grips with those ideas as a community, we come to understand the great diversity in those thoughts.” Allen said that the committee was created in response to multiple raciallycharged events at Brown and in the United States in general. She praised Brown’s then-

president Ruth Simmons for her initiative in forming the committee and her leadership throughout the process. At the time, many people were looking to Simmons—the African American daughter of a sharecropper in Texas, who grew up to earn graduate degrees from Harvard University—to address the campus’ racial issues, she said. “One thing that I am so proud of President Simmons for was that she understood the significance of the story. She also understood the complexity of the conversation,” Allen said. “These were questions that were intellectual, these were questions about history, they were questions about perspective.” Allen also noted that the project was a positive undertaking for the university, allowing it to showcase its “intellectual muscle”. “You want to be on top? Let me see you have courage enough to do this. That’s what they wanted,” Allen said. “[They liked] that it was steeped in the fact that it talked about intellectual resources of that institution. It talked about the strength of the mind for figuring out these problems in the way that can lead the nation. It was the kind of the rhetoric that [the board] eventually bought into and supported.” The committee had members from a diverse array of disciplines, she said. This caused some disagreements initially, specifically about whether contemporary race issues were connected to slavery and whether slavery was a crime against humanity. However, she noted that they eventually came to a consensus, especially after seeing images of Hurricane Katrina and the intersection of race and poverty in the affected communities. Allen added, however, that she noticed problems with the implementation of the committee’s recommendations. She said

that she never saw the completion of one of the recommendations, which called for an oversight committee to ensure that the changes were made. But overall, the University followed through on many of the recommendations, including the formation of a Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. First-year Kevin Solomon said he appreciated the talk because of its potential insights for Duke. “I thought hearing the perspective of another institution that we often try to compare ourselves with and moreover being able to use their accomplishments and their progress to look back at our own selves and challenge our own institutional realities today is a really interesting thing to consider,” Solomon said.

Rachel Baber | The Chronicle The talk was part of a series by the Duke Human Rights Center, which examines historical issues of race at universities.

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Munger sounds off on executive orders, anti-intellectualism President Trump thinks that he’s carrying out a promise that he made during the campaign that was a big part of the reason that he won. In 2009, Barack Obama said, ‘elections have consequences and I won,’ and no one on the left then objected because they agreed with it. We’re paying the price now of having for 16 years basically eroded the rule of law and allowed presidential executive orders to substitute for laws. And now we’re looking for ways around it, and it would’ve been better if we had done it when President Obama did it. But we agreed then, and now we’re in the position of being hypocrites.”

Gautam Hathi The Chronicle

Michael Munger, professor of political science and director of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics certificate program, sat down with The Chronicle to discuss the immigration ban, anti-intellectualism and government spending during a conversation about the new Congress and the Trump administration. A podcast of the full conversation, which also includes comments from Chris Simmons, associate vice president in the office of government relations, is published online. On anti-intellectualism and diversity at Duke: Here are some highlights from Munger’s responses to The “I think it’s a mistake to say that the Trump campaign Chronicle’s questions: was anti-intellectual. There’s an element of that, but there’s something larger going on. Trump saw himself as On Trump’s executive order regarding immigration: fighting the establishment. First, the establishment in the “[The Trump administration] may have been taking a Republican party and then, I think sort of unexpectedly, the position so that they could walk it back. It also may be that larger establishment. I don’t know that he expected to do so

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well, and certainly not to win. So universities by their nature are elite—we hope we’re a meritocracy. But universities have also become a set of institutions that are separated by economic class.” “Nick Carnes, who is a professor here at the public policy school at Duke, has done quite a bit of research on the difficulties that upper-class people have connecting, whether in universities or in politics, with the concerns of middle-class people. I think universities have a lot of work to do, and to be fair, we are doing some. We’re trying to attract students who come from a diversity of economic backgrounds, not just a diversity of races. But Nick has said this, I’ve said it in some places also, in terms of class, we just don’t have a very diverse faculty. I don’t think our concern should be the kind of diversity of hues, but of views. Having everyone be different colors and having everyone have the same perspectives and experience is a mistake. But I think we’ve made quite a bit of progress on that, and that’s something Duke is committed to. I don’t think we’ve done a very good job of making that clear to outsiders though. And it’s not the fault of our government affairs office.” “A lot of the reaction I’ve seen of the Trump supporters have been caricatures of the white privilege view. If you’re a lower-class person who lost your job and didn’t get to go to college, you don’t feel very privileged. While it’s true there are a lot of discriminatory policies and implicit things that minorities face, but the middle-class Trump voters see themselves as being oppressed by a set of policies and condescended to by a set of institutions. So it’s not antiintellectualism, it’s something larger and it’s a fight between what sort of establishments are going to be respected and what type of things are we going to emulate as worthy of admiration. And I think universities have to work harder to connect with that zeitgeist.” On how the University can play a leadership role: “One thing I think universities can do is play more of a leadership role in explaining why it is a number of government functions are important, and we’re doing a pretty bad job of providing that information. So I think if you were to ask people, has the number of people working for the federal government gone up or stayed relatively the same for the last 20 years, there’s this perception that there’s been a huge increase in employment in the federal government. And actually, if you take out military and health care, we have straight-up fewer, not per-capita, but straight-up fewer workers in the federal government than we did 20 years ago.” “The government is perceived, right or wrong, as being intrusive, as asking too much information and as regulation writ large. A lot of this stuff was layered on and lot of it was done in pretty good faith. We’re trying to have compliance, we’re trying to have reporting requirements, but a lot of them were either redundant or contradictory. And a lot of money that we’re spending in the federal government is actually being used on those sorts of compliance costs and in the getting of grants. I’ve worked a couple of times for the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies. There’s a whole lot that universities can help do about making the government both more efficient and more effective. I think it’s a mistake to think of there being a dimension of more government or less government. What we should do is participate in our area of expertise of making sure that government does a better job of doing those things they should be doing and explaining why they should be doing these things.”

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Courtesy of Duke Photography Munger said that former President Obama’s promotion of executive power paved the way for Trump to make the controversial executive order on immigration.

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ATTENTION: BONFIRE GUIDELINES February 8, 2017 The University has requested a City bonfire permit for February 9, 2017 (Duke Men’s Basketball v. UNC game). We want to remind you about safety guidelines for basketball bonfires at Duke. The Durham Fire Marshal once revoked permits following a bonfire that, in his view, had gotten out of control. Students and administrators subsequently agreed on the guidelines outlined below which will help ensure everyone’s safety. 1. The bonfire site is in front of House P. The bonfire must be contained within a 40-foot marked boundary and everyone should remain outside that boundary. 2. Do not put furniture in the bonfire. 3. Periodically, the bonfire must burn down to a safe height. During “burn downs,” no additional fuel may be added to the bonfire. 4. Bring beverages in plastic bottles or cans. 5. Do not sit or stand on building roofs. 6. Do not add fuel to the fire more than two hours following the game. 7. The use of any accelerant is prohibited. 8. Bonfires on any other day or at any other location are not permitted. Students who participate in a bonfire on any other day or at any other location may be subject to prosecution. Celebrating basketball victories with a bonfire is a Duke tradition. Follow these basic safety rules so we can maintain this tradition for years to come.

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Tallman Trask III Executive Vice President Duke University

PRISON from page 2 defined by a general aura of indifference. Muhammad noted that during his fiveyear prison sentence, he completed multiple classes, earned certificates in his courses and built his resumé. Upon release, however, he was unable to find work because of his criminal background. “I’m prepared to speak in interviews, but I’m not getting interviews!” Muhammad said. “I didn’t feel prepared for the world. I didn’t feel rehabilitated. I had no resources.” The discussion later turned to the prospect of higher education as a means for released individuals to strengthen and expand their job opportunities. Panelists noted, however, that past criminal charges can make the college admissions process— even at technical and community colleges— almost impossible for many. Muhammad emphasized the cyclic nature of the criminal justice system, explaining how released individuals often end up back on the streets engaging in the same behavior for which they were initially prosecuted. “I honestly believe this [work] is the only thing I could be doing right now,” he said. “So, you know, for me, this is my way out.” The Southern Coalition for Justice is a center where former inmates serving felony charges can seek free legal counsel and possibly erase their criminal backgrounds, Muhammad said. He added that these opportunities make it possible for past criminals to get a fresh start with future employers. Coleman, Muhammad and Newman noted the importance of focusing future efforts on the treatment and rehabilitation of criminals, emphasizing the role of local communities in contributing to such changes.

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Looking at national policy, Coleman said he does not believe that President Donald Trump’s election will directly affect the prison system’s current condition, both due to the general difficulty of achieving prison reform and Trump’s lack of interest in the matter. The panelists called on audience members to reach out to local leaders and make their voices heard, before trying to bring change at federal level. The problem of the U.S. prison system, they said, can only be solved “one bite at a time.” “On a local level, Duke impacts our whole city of Durham,” Muhammad said. “I believe that, collectively, the voices in this room can lean on the structures of Duke—banning the box, calling out white supremacy and structural and institutional racism. [Duke] can set the bar for Durham.”

TRASK from page 1 Underwood, filed the notice of dismissal Jan. 27. “Now comes the plaintiff, by and through her undersigned counsel, and dismisses her claims against the defendant, with prejudice, pursuant to the provisions of Rule 41(a) (1) of the Rules of Civil Procedure,” the document reads. The Chronicle’s report on Trask was part of a two-part series of articles alleging a discriminatory work environment within the Parking and Transportation Department and later led to nine students staging a sit-in at the Allen Building from April 1 and April 8. Students called for the resignations of Trask, Vice President for Administration Kyle Cavanaugh and Carl DePinto, director of Parking and Transportation Services. Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, declined to comment on the case.

FUNDING from page 2

office go through the spending plan and find the aspects of it that would positively impact the University. They then push congressional major source of funding for the Nicholas representatives to support those parts and School, but that budget cuts could still oppose harmful components. potentially affect researchers. The University “We would ask our members of has received $15,308,715 from 26 grants since Congress to support Duke and support 2003, according to the EPA’s Grants Awards our researchers and work against the Database, but there are only two ongoing president’s budget as it makes its way grant-funded projects that started in 2013 through Congress,” Simmons said. and 2014. That being said, he acknowledged that “We have only a couple of faculty the University is “definitely in a wait-and-see members who currently have either an mode.” Although his office works to support active grant from the agency or a proposal funding for academic research, it is up to under review with it,” Vincent wrote. “We Duke’s faculty to compete for the grants— also have a couple of graduate students who something they have been very successful at are on fellowships funded by EPA. Although in the past. a reduction in our current level of EPA “We have always been a consistent supporter funding would not have a big impact on of research into alternative technologies for the Nicholas School overall, I’m concerned energy, climate research and research that is about how a reduction would affect those done at Beaufort to study erosion,” Simmons particular faculty members and students.” said. “Research that impacts our environment Although Vincent indicated cutting EPA is a huge, huge part of Duke’s research funding might not significantly hurt the portfolio, not only at the Nicholas School but Nicholas School’s budget, the EPA is not the across the University.” only agency that provides grant funding to Duke as a whole. Looking at grant funding data from the National Institute of Environmental Health Services alone, about $7.5 million went to University researchers in 2015 and $8 million in 2016. Vincent raised concerns that the pending confirmation of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA would be felt more strongly in areas outside of research funding. He wrote that the EPA is primarily a regulatory, and not funding, agency. Any weakening of that regulatory mission would risk progress toward a cleaner and healthier environment, he wrote. Even if Trump wanted to directly make significant changes to academic research funding, he would be looking at a lengthy Courtesy of Duke Photography process, Simmons explained. When the Jeffrey Vincent is the Stanback dean of the president proposes a budget, Simmons and his Nicholas School of the Environment.

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recess

VOLUME 18, ISSUE 16

FEBRUARY 8, 2017

recess

The story of Till and Tyson

Duke researcher discusses Emmett Till case, page 13

Is pop culture liberal?

And does it really matter?, page 8

Doing senior year right Even if it involves Guy Fieri, page 8

PC: Shashank Rajkumar

R 8 | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2017

recess editors If you were a candy what would you be? Dillon Fernando .........Sour Patch Kids Christy Kuesel ......................Twizzlers

Drew Haskins ....................... left Twix Tim Campbell ...................... right Twix Kirby Wilson ......................... Snickers Jessica Williams ................sugar free Georgina Del Vecho...........“gummies” Aditya Joshi ..........................wrapper Will Atkinson .............................fudge Nina Wilder ....................Swedish Fish

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I’m a senior. I’m writing that just as much to provide some context for the editorial I’m about to write as to reiterate the fact to myself. In some ways being a senior feels normal, but in others it feels completely unreal. My time at Duke has flown by, and now that I’m looking down the barrel of the rest of my life, I’m beginning to feel what one friend of mine adeptly dubbed “premature nostalgia.” It’s an odd feeling, and the best way that I can try to explain it is to say that despite the fact that I still have three months left at Duke, I feel like I’m already looking back at the experiences that I’m having right now and asking myself things like, “will I remember this night five years from now?” and “what about this is going to make for a good story when I tell my kids about it?”. On a surface level, these questions are innocuous. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with looking at your life from a birds-eye view; in fact, that kind of thinking can be useful and can help you keep things in perspective. But, at a deeper level, premature nostalgia is just a repackaged version of the depression that I’ve experienced all too frequently at Duke. I’m not about to tell you that there’s a secret to handling depression in a college setting, because there isn’t one. Everyone’s experience with it is different. But one thing that I know for sure is that being depressed in college is hard, and not just because it can make it harder to handle schoolwork or to deal with job applications. Depression can do those things, but it also makes it really, really hard to have fun. And while multiple counselors over the course of my time at Duke have told me that not having fun isn’t the end of the world, it’s hard to accept their reassurances when everyone around me seems to buy into the oftquoted saying that “college is supposed to be the best four years of your life.” Despite trying for years, I still haven’t been able to resolve those two sentiments. In response to people who

told me that I should be having the time of my life, I have wanted to ask: “Why isn’t it okay for me to just be scraping by? Is there really anything wrong with putting my head down and grinding through week after week of work, despite the fact that I feel like I lost my drive and I don’t even know why I’m working anymore?” And when other people told me it was alright to be depressed, I wanted to grab them by the collar and say “Look around you—where do you see any sort of validation for that statement? Can you point to a single movie, book, TV show or motivational speaker that says that being unhappy is alright?” This cycle of thinking can be destructive in and of itself. I have witnessed the pressure from the social expectation of college being a wild, fun time drive both myself and others into

editor’s note harmful physical and mental patterns of behavior. I have personally spent months at a time searching for some sort of catharsis or satisfaction in quintessential college activities, often to find that people around me were having a great time while I felt unhappy or, even worse, empty. After repeating this cycle several times, I finally discovered that, at the end of the day, there’s rarely anything fulfilling about having someone else tell you that what you’re doing is fun. Realizing the truth of this last statement was a huge turning point for me. I’ve gradually been getting better over the past few years, but the idea that I should be better than I was, should be having the time of my life, should be young and carefree was a huge roadblock on the path to combating my depression. Finally acknowledging that I don’t always have to enjoy the things people say I should (like sports, loud

recess

parties and Fireball whiskey) then led me to decide that it’s okay for me to enjoy things that other people might not (like cooking, science fiction and Guy Fieri, for whom I harbor a deep and burning passion), a decision that I believe has been instrumental in helping me to grow to become a much happier and more content person. And, ironically, it’s also helped me to have more fun doing “college stuff” because it’s helped me stop myself from holding my level of fun accountable to some disembodied idea of what college is supposed to be. I’m honestly embarrassed that it took me until late in my college career to come to this realization, but I’m also not entirely surprised. As college students, everywhere we look we’re confronted with the notion that not only is college the best time in our lives, but that we’re doing something wrong if we don’t feel that way. And now that I’m coming up on my last few weeks in college, that mentality seems to be coming to a fever pitch, with people (including myself) saying things like “I need to do this now, I’m a senior!” and “we won’t be able to do this stuff forever!”. As I write this, I’m still not sure whether I buy into these statements because I’m not sure whether I truly mean them or whether some subconscious part of me still wants to prove to myself and everybody else that my four years at Duke have been fun, despite the rocky patches. What I do know is that even though books, movies and TV shows rarely show that being unhappy at the end of a story is alright, the end of my time at Duke is not the end of my story. It’s the ending of a chapter, and I hope that it’ll be a fun one, but if it’s not that doesn’t mean my time here was wasted or that I’m doomed to be unhappy for the rest of my life. And now, if you’ll forgive my abrupt ending, I have some “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” to go watch, and I just can’t bring myself to keep Guy Fieri waiting. ––Tim Campbell

The limits and paradoxes of pop culture’s liberalism Will Atkinson The Chronicle The last presidential election seemed to open a rift within the pop culture community. On the one hand, we saw a reality-television show host rise to power in no small part due to his celebrity status. On the other, we witnessed the combined forces of Beyoncé, Jay-Z and a whole host of entertainers stand for his rival. Never before has the liberal skew of pop culture seemed more apparent. Never before, too, has its politics seemed more contradictory— President Trump, after all, has long been a pop culture icon. This all begs the question: is pop culture really “liberal”? Pop culture, of course, is no monolith. But the leftward leanings of this vaguely defined nexus of singers and actors and producers is hard to deny. The two nuclei of pop culture, Hollywood and New York, are two of the bluest areas in the country. And historically, art—and its extension, the entertainment industry—has sprung from the oppressed, those demanding change. Already in the weeks since Trump’s inauguration, a number of entertainers have used their platforms to call out the president on his policies and stand in solidarity with minorities, immigrants and refugees. Last week, “Stranger

Things” star David Harbour brought down the house at the Screen Actors’ Guild Awards. Before that, Meryl Streep delivered a blistering defense of Hollywood, the arts and the press at the Golden Globes, saying, “When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.” For an observer watching from home, something in these speeches rang hollow (we’ll talk about the unfair vilification of the MMA later). The entertainment industry has a long history of paying lip service to progressive causes. Underpinning pop culture’s ideology is the fact that behind every performance and awards show and entertainment product is a corporation with its own set of interests. To truly embrace progressive ideals would be to dismantle the system on which these industries are built. A number of beloved corporations have made headlines recently for their politics. Of course, there’s been the Uber-versus-Lyft fiasco in the wake of protests at JFK Airport. Before #DeleteUber, though, surprising revelations came out of that most revered of all pseudo-Woodstocks: the Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival. Philip Anschutz—who owns Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns concert operator Goldenvoice, which owns Coachella—was recently found to

have monetary ties to anti-LGBT and climate change denial groups. The fact that this news was surprising to music journalists, concertgoers and musicians alike was itself no surprise. To most people, a place like Coachella is the last place they’d expect conservative ideology. Then again, isn’t a Hollywood star the last person we’d expect to lead the charge against the “Hollywood elite”? What this all amounts to is a strange contradiction between the values espoused by pop culture and the values enacted by those who have the most control over it. Hollywood liberalism, Coachella liberalism and Lyft liberalism

are united in that they outwardly call for change while failing to address the systemic issues that boil underneath. No matter how many singers campaigned for Hillary Clinton or abstained from Trump’s inauguration, pop culture’s brand of liberalism is one that only takes progressivism as far as it will benefit consumerism and no further. Its joined forces were not enough to prevent Trump from taking the White House. They will certainly not be enough to prevent him for the next four years. An abbreviated version of this story appears in print. For the full story, visit dukechronicle.com/recess.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Celebrities like Beyoncé and Jay-Z have been vigorously opposed to Trump’s presidency.

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Duke professor links Emmett Till’s past to our present Kirby Wilson The Chronicle

Before Timothy Tyson got the phone call, he did not want to write a book about Emmett Till. Like most historians of the American South, the senior researcher at Duke’s department of documentary studies thought he knew the story. In 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Chicagoan, allegedly whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a white Mississippian. Bryant’s husband and kin, drunk on whiskey and white power, charged Till for his act of racial disrespect with Till’s life. Pictures of Till’s brutally mutilated body, published in black magazines, sparked worldwide outrage. The murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury. But like most southern historians, Tyson also knew that there was at least one part of Till’s story that had gone untold: Carolyn Bryant had not spoken publicly since the time of her husband’s trial. So when Tyson got a phone call in 2008 from a Raleigh woman who said her mother-in-law, the former Carolyn Bryant, wanted to chat over coffee, Tyson quickly scheduled the meeting. Carolyn Bryant Donham knew a lot about Tyson, having read his critically acclaimed memoir, “Blood Done Sign My Name.” Tyson did his research on Bryant as well. He dug into the Emmett Till case, only to find there wasn’t much to dig into. “There was only one history book and it was a very flimsy thing indeed and was written 25 years ago,” Tyson said. “I was surprised to see there was not a stack of decent history books on this story.” So he decided to write that book, “The Blood of Emmett Till.” Despite a few flashy headlines (“How Author Timothy Tyson Found The Woman At The Center Of The Emmett Till Case,” blared Vanity Fair), “The Blood of Emmett Till” is not a story about Carolyn Bryant’s conscience. It is a story of tragedy, brutality and love in action. It is a story of societal guilt and boyish innocence. That Bryant decided to tell some measure of the truth a half-century after perjuring herself in court is of little consequence to Tyson’s work. “It wasn’t the morning news to me that she was lying,” Tyson said. Bryant’s courtroom tale was just another etching in the racist mythology of the black beast and the southern beauty. The Emmett Till story is much bigger than that narrative; it is a “global story,” to use Tyson’s language. Like most global stories, it began with an act of displacement. Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, was a refugee. In 1924, when she was two, her family moved from the “ancestral homeplace” of Webb, Mississippi to escape “a land of ghosts and terror,” as Tyson writes. Their new home, Argo, Illinois, was not a great deal friendlier than the South in some ways. Segregation was even more robust; white terror manifested itself in dozens of house bombings. But Mamie, as Tyson calls her “to depict her as a human being rather than an icon,” could vote. And she could organize. When she sent her bubbly, baseball-loving son, Emmett, to Mississippi to visit family in 1955, just over a year after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, she sent him to a hostile South. Emmett was accused, tracked down and killed after an encounter with Bryant at a convenience store. When his body, maimed almost beyond recognition, returned to Mamie in a casket, she gained a new, unspeakable grief. But unlike so many contemporary family members bereaved by white brutality, she had institutions she could leverage to help her tell her story. Even though Emmett’s skull was fractured in multiple places, one of his eyes gouged out, and parts of his ear missing, Mamie decided to hold an open casket funeral for the world to see. Even Tyson said he was surprised by the extent to which Mamie was able to turn “grief into love on behalf of humanity,” wearing herself out with speaking engagements in the months following Emmett’s murderers’ acquittal. To read the rest of this story, visit dukechronicle.com/ recess.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Duke researcher Tyson believes that lessons learned from Emmett Till’s case can be applied to the present political landscape.

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Our beat writers explain who needs to step up against the Tar Heels Staff Reports The Chronicle Ahead of Thursday’s Duke-North Carolina clash at Cameron Indoor Stadium, The Chronicle’s men’s basketball beat writers Amrith Ramkumar, Sameer Pandhare, Hank Tucker and Brian Pollack scout the No. 8 Tar Heels and explain what they’re most looking forward to watching Thursday night. Grayson Allen has had three solid games during Duke’s recent three-game winning streak. What has been the biggest reason behind Allen’s success in the last week? Amrith Ramkumar: To me, the biggest difference is that Allen is not secondguessing himself when he gets the ball coming off screens on the perimeter. He has made 13 triples in the three wins, with many of them coming off quick catchand-shoot opportunities following down screens or dribble handoffs. It no longer looks like Allen is worried about deferring to Luke Kennard, Jayson Tatum, Amile Jefferson or anyone else for that matter, and I think the result is that Duke’s offense has better spacing. Allen’s aggressiveness as a shooter opens up driving lanes for himself and others, and he has still shown the ability to find teammates inside for easy looks as well while displaying more of a scoring mentality. Obviously a lot of this is contingent on the outside shots going in, but I’m looking forward to seeing how Allen attacks a defense that allows more than eight made triples per contest. Hank Tucker: Basketball is a simple game at its core. Shots need to go in the basket more often than not, and Allen has knocked down a lot of key shots in this three-game stretch. Without his triple to trim the deficit to one with less than a minute left at Wake Forest, Duke

home stretch A little more than two weeks ago, Blue Devil fans watched their team continue its downward spiral. Duke was playing without its head coach, had lost three of its last four games—including a defeat to N.C. State in Durham for the first time since 1995—and seemed to be on its way out of the top 25 for the second time in as many seasons. But with a pair of consecutive road wins at Wake Forest and Notre Dame, followed by a home victory against Pittsburgh Saturday, the No. 18 Blue Devils are now two games above .500 in ACC play and in the running for a top-four seed in the conference tournament next month in New York. Duke’s rivalry matchup with No. 8 North Carolina Thursday night is as critical a juncture as any game the Blue Devils will play this season. With that in mind, I decided to take a look at some of the key numbers for Duke so far, measuring Blue Devil head coach Mike Krzyzewski’s impact as well as where the team can improve the final month of the regular season.

Mitchell Gladstone

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Lily Coad | The Chronicle Grayson Allen has looked much healthier in the Blue Devils’ last three games, knocking down 13 3-pointers and averaging 20.3 points per contest.

probably would have lost that game, and his 3-point shooting late in the last two games has also helped the Blue Devils hold off a pair of scares. If Allen had a 1-of-9 night from deep in any of those three games like he did more than two weeks ago against N.C. State, the results may have been different. But as Amrith pointed out, hot shooting seems to fuel his game in other ways. He is asserting himself and attacking the boards much more effectively, grabbing at least five rebounds in each of the last three games after reaching that threshold just three times in his previous 12 contests. Duke’s frontcourt will have to bear much of the burden of containing the best rebounding team in the country, but the Blue Devils could certainly use any help

Carolyn Chang | Chronicle File Photo Junior Justin Jackson has taken a big leap for North Carolina, averaging 18.6 points per game and shooting almost 40 percent from 3-point territory.

they can get from the perimeter. Sameer Pandhare: Allen’s play has really been fueled by his ability to knock down perimeter jumpers consistently. Although making injury excuses is a particular pet peeve of mine, there’s no denying that Allen’s form on his jump shot looked cleaner in the last three games than it did when he struggled with a finger injury against Miami and N.C. State or his earlyseason toe injury. Partially due to the extra attention on Kennard following his second-half performance against Wake Forest, Allen has been able to get good looks and knock them down with consistency. With teams forced to respect his jumper a little more, the guard has been more aggressive and gotten back to the drive and kick game that makes him such a lethal weapon for the Blue Devils. Brian Pollack: As everyone else has noted, Allen has started to find the bottom of the net more consistently with his outside shots. A player with shooting skills of Allen’s caliber is bound to start hitting his jumpers at some point, and combined with the fact that Duke has played lessthan-stellar defenses lately, that has led to the junior heating up and leading the Blue Devils in scoring in both of the team’s wins last week. Another factor, though, that has contributed to Allen’s higher output is that Tatum has taken a step back and ceded shots to some of his upperclassmen teammates. After averaging nearly 13 field goal attempts in the first seven games of ACC play, Tatum has put up just 27 shots in his last three contests, passing more See SCOUTING on Page 15

Not a huge difference, K? As Krzyzewski took just more than a month away from the sidelines due to lower-back surgery, associate head coach Jeff Capel filled in for the winningest coach in men’s Division I history. Many Duke fans were interested in seeing how Capel would fare, as he is expected to be a leading candidate for the Blue Devil head coaching position whenever the 69-year old Krzyzewski decides to step away from the program. See DATA DIGGING on Page 16

Lily Coad | The Chronicle Looking into Duke’s defensive statistics reveals a few trends it will need to maintain and reverse in the next month.

SCOUTING from page 14

Thursday, February 9 • Cameron Indoor Stadium 8 p.m. Tar Heels (21-4, 9-2) F F F G G

KENNEDY MEEKS: 12.6 ppg, 9.4 rpg, 52.2 FG% ISAIAH HICKS: 12.8 ppg, 5.6 rpg, 61.0 FG% JUSTIN JACKSON: 18.6 ppg, 4.8 rpg, 2.6 apg KENNY WILLIAMS: 6.5 ppg, 3.4 rpg, 2.2 apg JOEL BERRY II: 14.9 ppg, 4.0 apg, 42.1 3PFG%

records and conference implications will likely become mere footnotes when the rivalry’s chapter gets underway. “The media’s going to do what they do because it’s an amazing game,” Jefferson said. “It’s probably the biggest rivalry in

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Lily Coad | The Chronicle Senior Matt Jones could have a major impact Thursday with his on-ball defense—the Tar Heels have two elite perimeter scorers in Jackson and Berry.

rebounds to get if the other team can’t even get a shot up. HT: I’m also afraid this matchup might play out a lot like last year’s meeting in Cameron Indoor Stadium, when the Tar Heels outrebounded Duke 64-29 and nearly had as many offensive boards as the Blue Devils accumulated on both ends. I’d expect Duke to start a big lineup with either Giles or even freshman Marques Bolden alongside Jefferson, though neither Giles nor Bolden have played very much in the last couple of weeks. Giles and Bolden have both struggled to stay out of foul trouble, though, and it will be interesting to see if head coach Mike Krzyzewski feels comfortable with Tatum guarding a big man like Hicks for an extended period of time, or if he is willing to go even deeper into the bench and throw

Blue Devils (18-5, 6-4) F F G G G

AMILE JEFFERSON: 12.0 ppg, 9.2 rpg, 60.2 FG% JAYSON TATUM: 15.8 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 1.5 spg MATT JONES: 8.3 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 1.7 spg LUKE KENNARD: 19.8 ppg, 5.2 rpg, 45.8 3PFG% GRAYSON ALLEN: 15.8 ppg, 4.6 rpg, 4.0 apg

(Projected lineups, statistics from 2016-17 season) The Tar Heels lead the nation UNC DUKE in rebounding margin and 82.5 PPG: 87.8 have bullied the Blue Devils 67.9 PPG DEF: 71.6 FG%: down low in recent years. 47.3 48.2 3PT%: 37.5 36.8 Don’t expect that to change FT%: 70.4 74.5 this time around if Duke stays RPG: 37.7 44.7 small. APG: 18.5 14.0 Grayson Allen has made 13 4.3 BPG: 3.4 3-pointers in his last three SPG: 6.4 7.5 games, so if he and Luke 12.6 11.9 TO/G: Kennard can heat up, Duke The breakdown could be in business against a The Tar Heels are trying to stay atop the leaky perimeter defense that ACC standings as they enter a daunting final gives up 8.3 triples per contest. seven-game stretch, and Duke is searching Theo Pinson’s availability is still for a signature win. Both teams can score in up in the air for UNC, and if he bunches, but the contrast in styles should make is out, this one is pretty tight. for some high drama and entertaining runs But with a physical big man in in what has the makings of another Tobacco Tony Bradley and experienced Road classic. guard in Nate Britt, we’ll lean OUR CALL: North Carolina wins, 85-82 slightly in favor of the Tar Heels.

effectively and helping Duke space the floor better. This has opened up a lot more room for Allen to operate, both in attacking the lane and shooting off screens, and allowed him to step into a more assertive role on offense. North Carolina pummeled the Blue Devils on the board in both meetings a year ago. If Duke hopes to avoid a similar fate Thursday, which frontcourt player needs to step up? AR: Frankly I don’t see a way the Blue Devils stay with the Tar Heels on the glass. North Carolina emphasizes rebounding so much—particularly on the offensive end, where the Tar Heels are second in the country—and plays with two physical big men at almost all times, making it seemingly impossible to stop them from gobbling up boards and second-chance points. That’s why they lead the nation in rebounding margin—by 2.6 boards per game. I think Duke should be more concerned with generating its own offensive rebounds and buckets inside and at least making North Carolina work for extra opportunities. From that standpoint, I look for Harry Giles to step up. Tatum is the obvious answer here for the Blue Devils, but I think if Giles can stay out of foul trouble, his rebounding ability is a major X factor. The 6-foot-10 forward was known for his rebounding coming out of high school, and a breakout game would really give his team a boost in the rivalry game. Another key for the Blue Devils will be perimeter ball pressure and forcing turnovers—there are fewer offensive

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2017 | 15

NORTH CAROLINA vs. DUKE

FRONTCOURT

full with a North Carolina team that knows a thing or two about continuity. The veteran Tar Heel quartet of guard Joel Berry II, swingman Justin Jackson and big men Isaiah Hicks and Kennedy Meeks accounts for nearly 70 percent of North Carolina’s scoring, with Jackson leading the way at 18.6 points per contest. All four were on the court a year ago when the Tar Heels (21-4, 9-2) clinched the ACC regular-season title at Cameron after having the memory of Duke’s 92-90 overtime victory in 2015 etched into their minds. “All the guys that they’ve got, we tried to recruit also,” North Carolina head coach Roy Williams said during Monday’s ACC teleconference. ““The kids we’ve gotten are good players. We haven’t been able to get the top-5, top-10, top-20 recruit, but they’re very good players and when they do stay around they get more experience and learn things.” As was the case last year, this season’s rendition of the Tobacco Road rivalry will offer a contrast between the more perimeter-oriented Blue Devils and the low-post heavy Tar Heels. The ability of one team to adjust to the other’s strengths could be the difference Thursday night. To battle Meeks and Hicks down low, Duke may be forced to go away from its small lineup in which freshman Jayson Tatum plays at the four spot. North Carolina pummeled the Blue Devils on the glass last season by an astounding 64-29 margin, and is capable of doing so once again with the three-headed monster of Hicks, Meeks and rookie Tony Bradley patrolling the paint. Although Tatum will have an advantage

with his quickness on offense, the Blue Devils may be forced to rely on freshmen Harry Giles or Marques Bolden for minutes if Tatum struggles to rebound or picks up early fouls against an intimidating Tar Heel frontline. Despite showing flashes of the rebounding and scoring ability that made him a highly-touted recruit, Giles has been unable to crack the rotation consistently due to his struggles on defense. “It’s my first Duke-Carolina game. It’s something you always dream of as a kid,” Giles said. “You grow up watching, especially being from in-state, so seeing it and just being able to play in it is going to be an honor.” On the perimeter, the Blue Devils seem to have an advantage with the duo of Grayson Allen and Luke Kennard capable of putting up points when needed. Allen has played especially well during Duke’s recent streak, as he has found his perimeter stroke and averaged 20.3 points per game. Despite having their own dynamic duo of Berry and Jackson, the Tar Heels have few other consistent perimeter options to match Jones and Blue Devil freshman Frank Jackson. However, with Duke likely emphasizing protecting the paint, contributions from North Carolina reserves Nate Britt, Luke Maye or junior Theo Pinson—who has been battling injuries all season but may return to the court Thursday—could give the Tar Heels a big boost by maintaining floor spacing on the road. Although the Blue Devils have won seven of the last 10 meetings between the teams, three of the last four have been decided by fewer than five points. And as is usually the case when the teams meet, regular-season

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Chase Jeter or Antonio Vrankovic into the fire. But if the Blue Devils’ big men off the bench have to play a lot, things probably won’t be going very well for Duke. SP: From what we’ve seen so far this year, it looks like Coach K is willing to take the benefit of playing Tatum at the four position on offense, despite the costs it may have on the other end of the floor. In some ways, trying to bait North Carolina’s bigs into foul trouble may be effective—battling for rebounds with Luke Maye and Tony Bradley is certainly more appealing than doing so with Meeks and Hicks. I’ve been clamoring for Giles to get more time on the floor and I think we may see it by necessity Thursday. The freshman’s struggles on defense have been more noticeable with quicker point

sports, so to be a part of that game is great and we’re going to go out there and try to get the win.” Mitchell Gladstone and Ben Feder contributed reporting. guards and although Joel Berry is one of the best floor generals in the nation, I wouldn’t classify him as the quickest Duke has faced. Giles should be capable of battling for boards with Meeks and Hicks just based on his size and athleticism alone, and if he can stay out of foul trouble and keep his cool throughout a back-and-forth contest, Giles will be the difference maker Duke needs. BP: Ideally, this is a game where Duke switches to a bigger lineup to try and counteract North Carolina’s overwhelming size, but I’m not sure that Coach K feels comfortable giving Giles or Bolden enough minutes to make that feasible. Maybe one of them gets the starting nod, as Hank suggested, but when push comes to shove I think it’s going to be a small Blue Devil lineup with Tatum— who really is a better matchup for Tar Heel swingman Justin Jackson—playing the four and having to contend with one of Meeks, Hicks or Bradley. Tatum has proven himself to be a very strong rebounder this year, particularly on the defensive end, and he’s going to need to come up big in that department again Thursday if Duke has any hopes of fending off the Tar Heels on the glass. Unlike Sameer, I don’t see Giles getting major minutes in this game, so the Blue Devil guards—particularly Matt Jones, who will likely see time guarding Jackson—will need to snatch as many long rebounds as possible to allow Duke’s frontcourt to focus on North Carolina’s interior presence. Despite losing Marcus Paige and Brice See SCOUTING on Page 17

During the seven-game stretch without Krzyzewski, Duke went 4-3—all against ACC opponents, including three teams ranked in the latest AP poll—whereas the Blue Devils have won five of their seven games against Power-5 conference teams with their head coach on the bench. Granted, only two of the latter seven games came against teams currently in the top 25 and just one was a true road game as compared to three without Krzyzewski. Despite the record disparity, many of the Blue Devils’ numbers with Krzyzewski and Capel are nearly identical. With regard to field goal percentage, opponents’ field goal percentage and 3-point percentage, the differences between the two coaches are within 2.5 percentage points. Although Duke turned the ball over three more times per contest in those seven Power-5 contests without Krzyzewski, the Blue Devils actually allowed almost four more points in the paint with the five-time national champion active. Given that interior defense has been Duke’s consistent weakness this season, the numbers make it seem difficult to fault the team’s associate head coach too much, though the Blue Devils clearly did collapse down the stretch against N.C. State in blowing a late nine-point lead.

season kept the duo off the floor until Dec. 3 and Dec. 19, respectively, and neither has emerged as the player pundits anticipated in their first collegiate seasons. Still, each has shown flashes of his potential. Giles played a key role on offense in Duke’s last two games, contributing a key rebound and two crucial free throws late in South Bend, Ind., and igniting a 13-4 firsthalf spurt with a thunderous alley-oop slam against the Panthers. Bolden was a defensive force against Miami Jan. 21, hedging hard on nearly every Hurricane screen then recovering to disrupt Miami’s guards and fuel a 20-0 Blue Devil run. The problem with the two, however, has been their ability to stay on the floor and avoid whistles when on the court. Bolden is averaging 6.6 fouls per 40 minutes and Giles is averaging 8.6—both massive numbers. They are particularly striking when compared to those of Duke’s best defenders, Matt Jones and Amile Jefferson, who average 3.1 and 3.0 respectively. Many have wondered given Giles’ occasional offensive bursts—he is averaging 18.1 points per 40 minutes compared to Jefferson’s 16.1—and Bolden’s recent defensive success why both players are struggling to crack the rotation. But my best guess is that the Blue Devil coaching staff will continue to limit minutes for the freshman duo until both players show they can defend without fouling on a regular basis.

Making a ‘bigger’ impact Many thought top-20 recruits Harry Giles and Marques Bolden would make an immediate impact for the Blue Devils inside right away. Giles was touted as a dominant scorer all over the floor and Bolden was described as powerful force in the low post. But leg injuries early in the

Let’s get advanced At 19.8 points per game, sophomore Luke Kennard ranks third in the ACC in scoring and has established himself as the Blue Devils’ best offensive weapon. Advanced metrics only make this point clearer—as shown by a number of calculations from basketball statistician

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Ken Pomeroy. With an offensive rating of numbers, the rookie has actually stood 132.7, the 6-foot-6 guard sits 14th among all out more statistically on the defensive players and third among players used on at end. Despite occasional lapses on defense, least 20 percent of their team’s possessions. the freshman’s statistics paint the picture Breaking down that rating even further, of a solid young defender still with room let’s examine how efficient Kennard has to grow. Pomeroy ranks Tatum as the been shooting the ball. ACC’s 16th-best individual on defense, Yes, the sophomore is fourth among and according to Sports Reference, the guards in the league at 53.1 percent, St. Louis native is the first Duke player to and Pomeroy also has him 27th among have both a block and steal percentage of all Division I players in true shooting better than 3.0 percent since the site began percentage—a measure that includes recording the statistic in 2009-10. free throw percentage and gives higher All told, with just more than a month value to 3-point attempts. The Franklin, until Selection Sunday, the data hints at Ohio, native also sits fourth in the ACC in a number of positive trends for the Blue effective field goal percentage, a similar Devils as they grow into their roles late metric that excludes shots from the in the year. With a challenging slate of The New York Times Syndication Sales Corporation charity stripe. games, however, Duke will need to be at 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018 Although many expected Jayson its best if it hopes to to turn these trends For Information Call: 1-800-972-3550 Tatum to putFor up eye-popping scoring into on-court success. For Release Release Wednesday, Tuesday, February February 7,8,2017 2017

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PUZZLE BY SAMUEL MICHAELA. SHTEYMAN DONALDSON

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Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 7,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year). Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay. Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/studentcrosswords.

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SCOUTING from page 15 Johnson from their national runnerup team a year ago, the Tar Heels find themselves sitting atop the ACC heading into Thursday’s game. What has been the biggest reason for UNC’s success this season? AR: I’ve been pretty high on this team all season, primarily because of how balanced it is offensively. With Paige and Johnson gone, Berry and Jackson have adapted quickly to more prominent roles and played great basketball all year—both players are shooting better than 39 percent from 3-point range but are equally dangerous attacking the rim and getting to the free throw line. Meeks, Hicks and Bradley give North Carolina a trio of traditional big men that few teams can match, and that combination makes the Tar Heels almost impossible to guard when they can knock down a few perimeter shots. Because so few teams have that many physical big men inside, North Carolina has been able to overwhelm teams in transition when it’s engaged defensively. Defensive consistency is definitely the Tar Heels’ main weakness, though— they play very quickly, which can lead to transition baskets for the opponent and a long night if North Carolina turns the ball over. HT: Berry and Jackson are getting most of the consideration for All-ACC honors, and deservedly so, but it helps that when they miss shots, there’s a good chance the Tar Heels will get the ball back. It all comes down to rebounding for North Carolina, with Meeks, Hicks and Bradley combining

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to average more than 20 a game and Luke Maye available off the bench as a threat on the boards. Bradley has adjusted to the college game as a five-star freshman center much better than Jeter or Bolden down the road in Durham, giving the Tar Heels valuable depth in the frontcourt, and Meeks and Hicks are both physical, mature senior leaders. This is the type of experienced successful team that was common before the one-and-done era in college basketball, with upperclassmen stepping into voids left by departing seniors after developing and waiting their turns for a couple of years, and although North Carolina leaves a lot to be desired defensively, it certainly has the potential to make another deep run in March. SP: Berry is certainly building a firstteam All ACC resume and Bradley has been impressive as a freshman. But for me, North Carolina’s success has really come down to the play of Jackson. The junior’s scoring average has jumped a little more than six points and he’s shooting more than 10 percent better from deep than a year ago. At a lanky 6-foot-8, Jackson was always a capable defender with his size and wingspan, but converting him into a weapon on offense has been one of Roy Williams’ greatest accomplishments in recent years. With the graduation of Paige and Johnson, Jackson has really grown into his role as a leader on and off the court for one of the more experienced teams in the nation. After putting up just two points on 1-of-8 shooting in Cameron as a freshman, considering Jackson as North Carolina’s biggest weapon two year laters seems hard

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2017 | 17

to believe, but be wary. BP: If the Tar Heels had even an average defense, I think they’d be leading the conversation for best team in the country right now, because their offense is incredibly deep and can beat you in any number of ways. Berry hasn’t missed a beat stepping in to fill Paige’s shoes, and he and Jackson have helped shore up the one weakness from last year’s team—woeful shooting from the 3-point line—by both shooting around 40 percent from deep. I agree with Sameer that Jackson’s improvement has been tremendous, and in arguably North Carolina’s biggest game of the season against Kentucky, the swingman went shot-for-shot with

Malik Monk and poured in 34 points on just 17 shots. But part of what allows Jackson to be so effective is that the Tar Heels’ lineup normally features two big men, forcing opposing defenses to allocate any size they have to the inside to prevent easy post-ups and putbacks. North Carolina doesn’t have a standout two-guard, but with Berry controlling the flow from the point, Jackson dominating from the wing and a host of big bodies bullying their way around inside, the Tar Heels have proven very difficult to stop this year. Check online at www.dukechronicle.com for another question about our ACC regular-season title predictions.

Izzi Clark | The Chronicle The Blue Devils have fared well against the Tar Heels recently, winning seven of the last 10 meetings between the two teams.

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You too need ‘Me Too’

T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y

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“

his weekend, hundreds of students will make a rare visit to the Nelson Music Room in search of something they do not often find in the day-to-day grind of studying, testing, rinsing and repeating: a deeply emotional experience—a two-hour period where they will witness the portrayal of pain, grief, embarrassment and love, and in the process undergo their own catharsis while learning how to better understand their peers. They will be audience to the newest edition of the Me Too Monologues, a series of anonymous confessional monologues designed to communicate the struggles and identities of Duke students, faculty and alumni in order to promote empathy and understanding. We wrote last year that the Me Too Monologues, while admirable and worth seeing, ought not to be seen as a one-off exchange of time for emotional inoculation and social capital, but rather as a springboard towards emotional advancement. Today, we repeat that message and explain why the Monologues and what they have to offer are valuable here at Duke. A key mischaracterization of students at colleges like Duke is that their senses of emotional apathy and resistance are always carried purposefully and

onlinecomment “Endorse the candidate who has a different opinion than the others...Oh... wait...They all have the same opinions.”

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impervious to day-to-day emotional pricks builds up. To be sure, emotion does not go away—people still feel crushed about an election, disappointed about class performance and elated about a good grade— but it fades to staticky, occasionally uncomfortable, background noise. The development of emotional nearinvulnerability has its benefits: more time to focus on thoughts, study and parties, but it comes at a cost—empathy. Without recent memory of piercing emotion, it is remarkably hard to understand

What to consider in voting for Young Trustee

ince 1972, the Duke University Board of Trustees has benefited from having recent or current students serve as Young Trustees. Next week, undergraduate students will select a new Young Trustee in a campus-wide election. As students consider their choices, I’d like to share a few thoughts on the criteria trustees use when selecting new members of the board. First, here’s what Young Trustees aren’t: they aren’t representatives of the students and they don’t advocate for particular

and confidential—but friendly—manner, and value collegiality, knowing the importance of being a member of a group and respecting other members. They exercise good judgment and restraint. As representatives of the university, they embody the values that define Duke such as integrity, dedication, courage and respect for people of different backgrounds and cultures. In my tenure as secretary, I have found the perspectives of Young Trustees valuable and insightful: they are close enough to

Richard Riddell GUEST COLUMN changes or for particular constituencies. This is a popular misconception. The board is not a representative body, rather it’s a deliberative body that holds the university in its trust (thus the name, “trustees”). Good trustees are broad-thinkers. Trustees are asked to think of Duke as a whole—always thinking of what is best to support the overall mission of the university. They have an interest in the role of the university in society, respect for how universities are administered and governed, and curiosity about issues that research universities face today. Trustees speak and think independently, are able to discuss tough issues in a candid

the experience of being a student to help older trustees understand current campus issues while also eager to ensure that Duke continues to be a vital institution for future generations of students. Whoever is elected this year, I look forward to welcoming the Young Trustee to the board in the fall, and to that Young Trustee’s invaluable contribution to Duke. Richard Riddell is vice president and university secretar y, serving as secretar y to the Board of Trustees and functioning as chief of staff to the president.

VIR PATEL, Health & Science News Head

JIM LIU, News Photography Editor

RACHEL CHASON, Recruitment Chair

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another’s feelings beyond a shallow level. The friend who has failed a test and been cheated on gets a few well-meaning nods and words, but can’t truly be related to. And that is where Me Too Monologues come in. A portrayal of deeply personal emotion and discomfort, the performance offers students a chance to rid themselves of their armor and be enveloped in caring thoughts for others. The Monologues do not need to teach us how to feel— we know well how to do that; they remind us that it is okay to feel strongly by revealing to us that others, as swamped in major requirements and 9:00 p.m. meetings as we are, are suffering with issues they are dying to talk about. The Monologues, if effective as a reminder, should jolt students into taking a closer look at people around them and seeking to console those feeling down. They should prompt those facing emotional terror to feel comfortable telling a friend who went to the Monologues about the nature and essence of their misery. They should and can bring us closer as a community, acting as an ingredient for a healing salve that we can all use to help each other. Viewing and taking with you the Monologues can lead to a better you and better us.

KENRICK CAI, Local & National News Head

LIKHITHA BUTCHIREDDYGARI, Local & National News Head

AUSTIN PEER, Recess Photography Editor

that they willingly erect a shield system around themselves to avoid being seen as weak. Perhaps that is true of O-Week first-years and rushing Freshmen, but for others it is not so. Rather, most students simply become overly used to negative stimuli. After earning two depressing 50 percent scores on organic chemistry tests (which may in fact have won them an A), catching wind of a whispered behind-theback jibe about “tryharding” and failing to crack a desired in-group in the social scene, a thick skin

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— “Fed Up,” responding to “2017 Young Trustee endorsement policy,” published February 6, 2017

Est. 1905

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JULIE MOORE, Creative Director The Chronicle is published by the Duke Student Publishing Company, Inc., a non-profit corporation independent of Duke University. The opinions expressed in this newspaper are not necessarily those of Duke University, its students, faculty, staff, administration or trustees. Unsigned editorials represent the majority view of the editorial board. Columns, letters and cartoons represent the views of the authors. To reach the Editorial Office at 301 Flowers Building, call 684-2663 or fax 684-4696. To reach the Business Office at 1517 Hull Avenue call 684-3811. To reach the Advertising Office at 2022 Campus Drive call 684-3811. One copy per person; additional copies may be purchased for .25 at The Chronicle Business office at the address above. @ 2017 Duke Student Publishing Company

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Existential risks: Questions A tale of two classes and considerations T

ow often do you think about the end of the world? Some people think about it quite a bit. Within Effective Altruism circles, many people share a concern for the future of humanity. Effective Altruists attempt to combine good intentions with science and reasoning to find the best ways to do good, whether for humans or non-human animals. Mitigation of so-called “existential risks” is a huge priority for some of their more risk-seeking members. An existential risk, put simply, is some class of possible event that presents a risk of extinction to humanity. Nick Bostrom, Oxford philosopher and existential risk extraordinaire, defines it this way: “[A risk] where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and

David Wohlever Sánchez SIMPLE COMPLEXITY drastically curtail its potential.” Some main classes of existential risk include catastrophic climate change, malicious artificial superintelligence, the emergence of malicious nanotechnology, nuclear war and malicious bio-tech, among others. When considering the threats posed by so-called “x-risks,” there are at least three factors to keep in mind. First, bear in mind that if humanity continues for the foreseeable future, then the number of potential people in the future will be significantly higher than the number who exist today or have existed in the past. Additionally, the expected disutility of extinctionlevel events is massive, meaning that even a small mitigation of those probabilities results in a huge positive. Per one interpretation of the evidence, “The expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 1016 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least ten times the value of a billion human lives.” If this holds even remotely true, then surely we should keep listening. Second, consider that some experts believe the probability of extinctionlevel events is somewhat high. In a report released by Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, a survey of experts found the likelihood of extinction by the year 2100 to be a whopping 19 percent. While this number should be taken with a grain of salt, it is unsettling that people in the know are so pessimistic about our odds. Third, bear in mind that there are very, very few people dedicated to mitigating these existential risks. Some limited efforts exist, but they are lowstaffed and underfunded. As Nick Bostrom has noted, even “a million dollars could currently make a vast difference to the amount of research

done on existential risks; the same amount spent on furthering world peace would be like a drop in the ocean.” If you’re looking for a cause with a funding gap, this might be just the ticket. Looking throughout history, we can find plenty of examples of near-nuclear war; the Future of Life Institute compiled a nice list of the most notable. What this might show us is that our planet has almost faced nearextinction level events in the past. One reason we are all still here is because people worked to craft systems that would avoid careless mistakes or oversights. In other words, we built systems that attempted to mitigate these risks. If these systems had not been in place, and lazy fail-safes failed to prevent disaster, then what would have happened? Perhaps not outright

he sound of my phone vibrating on the wooden desk beside my bed combined with the monotonous ringing of “Radar”—the default iPhone 5 alarm sound—forced me out of bed. I leapt toward the sound and stopped the alarm, hoping that my roommate didn’t wake up at this ungodly hour because of my academic masochism. The time was 6 a.m.; after collecting four hours of sleep, I was awake again and ready to take on the day. The night before—after taking a three-hour break to watch Tom Brady cement his status as the greatest quarterback of all time, much to my chagrin—I had spent close to five hours reading articles and books on the topic of civil-military relations for a class. Despite having devoted the near entirety of my Sunday to preparing for Monday’s class, I still had more work to do. With my roommate sound asleep and the

Jacob Weiss

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the lecture, myself included. In my third and final class of the day—a computer science lecture—I spent the 75 minutes of instruction reflecting on my morning. I wondered why my first class of the day could not even manage to fill its 18-person enrollment, while the second class had eclipsed its 100-person enrollment cap. I came to the obvious conclusion that the prospect of “work” had dissuaded students. The first class focused on a specific topic with which most students are unfamiliar and required 200 pages of reading per week, whereas the second class was generally based in American histor y and the average Duke student could get by relying on education acquired in high school. One class made students push their limits, while the other provided the option to stay in their comfort zones. Certainly, students could have

NOT JUMPING TO ANY CONCLUSIONS

extinction, but disaster indeed. During the Cold War, the notion of “mutually assured destruction” was not some abstract; it was a working possibility, one that humanity had to take seriously. So today, in a world with ever-advancing technology and geopolitical uncertainty, we lack a compelling reason not to take these sorts of risks seriously. The need to mitigate existential risk stands or falls with free will—if it does not exist, then there is little or no case to be made. But if it does—even to an extent—then we have every reason to at least listen to the experts. So, perhaps my thesis is that insofar as a person believes humans have free will (i.e. a degree of autonomy over their destinies), he or she likely will have reason to support causes that mitigate the risks imposed by disaster scenarios. This is not meant to take a stand on cause prioritization. It might be more worthwhile still to donate to groups that fight global health problems or empower people economically. However, excluding opportunity cost, donating time or money to mitigating these threats is likely net positive, depending on the efficacy of the organization or project. Given that we have not observed an existential threat play out in the past, we might be biased towards believing that one might never emerge. Accordingly, this is an area where rational thinking is absolutely essential. In my view, whether or not to support or donate to these causes is an open question. But if the whole of humanity is at stake, it is at least a conversation worth having. David Wohlever Sánchez is a Trinity sophomore. His column, “simple complexity” runs on alternate Wednesdays.

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sleep deprivation washed away by a lukewarm Craven shower, I opened my copy of the assigned book and began taking notes. With ten minutes to spare, I threw on a suit and tie and rushed over to Gross Hall for my 8:30 a.m. seminar. This class—my first of three for the day—featured retired fourstar General Martin Dempsey as a guest speaker. Today’s class was the first in which Dempsey would be present. I wanted to make a good first impression and was confused about the dress code when a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is in attendance, but I hoped that the general would not notice the collection of stains that decorated my suit jacket from the various themed rush parties the week prior. All credit goes to Burnett’s and Heavenly Buffaloes’ blue cheese dressing for turning my blazer into a regular Jackson Pollock canvas. Luckily, neither my professor nor Dempsey noticed and, with 300 pages of fresh reading churning in my head, I was “prepared” for class. The next two-and-a-half hours were spent engaging in critical discussion of the readings, which every member of my 15-person lecture had so diligently done, led by a conservative instructor. Immediately after, I hustled to my 11:45 a.m. class, a lecture taught by an outspokenly liberal professor. In this class, in which latecomers were forced to sit on the floor due to a lack of seats, I could count on one hand the number of students who actually completed the entire weekly reading. The next 50 minutes were spent listening to the professor provide an informative and entertaining oration on economic mobility with jokes intermittent at the expense of certain students in

pushed their limits in the second class, but that would have required unnecessary and inefficient effort. As a result, more students opted to maintain previously held beliefs rather than expose themselves to new ones due to a factor of convenience. Such an epidemic is not unique to Duke University, but rather is seen across college campuses all over America. The phrase “comfort zone” could easily be replaced by the alliterative idiom “safe space.” As last week’s riots at UC-Berkeley proved, American students will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that they need not do more “work” than is needed. We are willing to accept what we hear as truth because we do not wish to invest the time necessary for revelation. For this reason, men and women all across the political spectrum rarely ever change their views. For this reason, college students enter their academic careers and leave their academic careers with an intellectual integrity untarnished. We decline the opportunity to challenge ourselves. At this time in our lives, we cannot afford such ignorance. When the Milo Yiannopolouses of the world challenge us to test our limits, we must respond not by resisting, but rather by forcing ourselves to listen, discuss and arrive at our own conclusions. Likewise, when we enroll in classes—no matter what level of difficulty—we have to force ourselves to do the readings. If we don’t bother to turn the page, we will just be reading the same words over and over again. Jacob Weiss is a Trinity junior. His column, “not jumping to any conclusions” runs on alternate Wednesdays.

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