TOWERVIEW October 2013
VOL. 15
ISSUE 2
+ MORAL MONDAYS: Professors recall the summer protests. + TORTURE FLIGHTS: An extraordinary rendition site in North Carolina. + GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE, SOLD!: The auction of Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans’ personal collection.
a Cut Above: behind the scenes with duke head football coach david cutcliffe.
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Publication: Chronicle Towerview Size: 7 x 4.75 Job Number: 864-3020 Run Date: August 12, 2013
Tour guide October 2013
VOL. 15
ISSUE 2
BUS STOP NITE: 05 PAINT An unconventional date night at the West End Wine Bar.
08 WATCHLIST: 10 best study spots at Duke and in Durham.
ON THE COVER! ILLUSTRATION BY: ALAN DIPPY
FACULTY CLUB: 10 THE A refuge from complaining undergrads. HEALTH: 13 GLOBAL A new interdisciplinary major.
THE PLAZA ABOVE: 18 AAnCUT insider’s look at David Cutcliffe’s journey with Duke football.
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TORTURE FLIGHTS:
Extraordinary rendition in N.C.
MONDAYS: 26 MORAL Professors dish about being arrested.
SHUTTER DESCENDANTS’ 16 DUKE COLLECTION:
An auction fit for royalty.
THE INQUISITOR 30
GAME-CHANGERS:
Faculty sound off on the most important discoveries.
TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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A NOTE
fROM THE EDITORS T�������� ��� ���������’� ���� � C������ �������� EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Ashley Mooney and Caitlin Moyles PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR EXECUTIVE EDITOR ONLINE EDITOR
Jennie Xu Dillon Patel Lauren Carroll Emily Feng Jamie Moon Julian Spector Danielle Muoio Linda Yu
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Daniel Carp, Lauren Carroll, Rebecca Chen, Hailey Cunningham, Emily Feng, Anna Koelsch, Andrew Kragie, Sharif Labban, Marissa Medine, Jamie Moon, Ashley Mooney, Caitlin Moyles, Connor Moyles, Emilie Padgett, Becky Richards, Julian Spector CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Amanda Brumwell, Daniel Carp, Julia Dunn, Sophia Durand, Shanen Ganapathee, Jaclyn Karasik, Sharif Labban, Eric, Lin, Marissa Medine, Ashley Mooney, Jennifer Sekar, Kristen Shortley CONTRIBUTING STAFF Andrew Beaton, Lauren Carroll, Sharif Labban, Jamie Moon, Julian Spector GENERAL MANAGER ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR OPERATIONS MANAGER DIGITAL SALES MANAGER
Chrissy Beck Rebecca Dickenson Barbara Starbuck Mary Weaver Megan McGinity
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Towerview is a subsidiary of The Chronicle and is published by the Duke Student Publishing Company, Inc., a non-profit corporation independent of Duke University. The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of Duke University, its students, faculty, staff, administration or trustees. Columns, letters and cartoons represent the views of the authors. To reach The Chronicle’s editorial office at 301 Flowers Building, call (919) 684-2663 or fax (919) 684-4696. To reach The Chronicle’s business office at 103 West Union Building, call (919) 684-3811. To reach The Chronicle’s advertising office at 2022 Campus Drive, call (919) 684-3811 or fax (919) 684-8295. Contact the advertising office for information on subscriptions. Visit The Chronicle and Towerview online at dukechronicle.com 2010 The Chronicle, Box 90858, Durham, N.C. 27708. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior, written permission of the business office. Each individual is entitled to one free copy.
Dear Readers, Whether you consider yourself to be a glass-half-full kind of person or a cynic, you’re probably a bit of an optimist because you believe in the value of a college education. We want to better ourselves, maybe make a difference in others’ lives and eventually make our marks on the world. (Wouldn’t even the cynics among us agree?) Fall is our season because it’s ripe with opportunity. Maybe it’s something in the air, or the fireflies that glow at night. We want to get out of the classroom, dorm room, library and do things this fall. It might not happen at all, but we make hopeful plans anyway, and because we hope and plan, some of it might just happen. Ergo, we’ve put some thought into our fall bucket lists. We want to climb to the top of the Duke Chapel and get a new perspective on the miniscule students rushing around below. Before we got into Duke, tour guides told us about having a faculty lunch with a cool professor. It’s time to gather up the courage to actually “flunch.” Many Blue Devils sleep in tents to get into Cameron Indoor Stadium for the Duke-UNC basketball game, but how many show up to support our lesser-known teams like cross country or wrestling? We want to check out every Duke team in competition at least once. (Check out our profile of head football coach David Cutcliffe on p. 18). We’re going to embarrass ourselves while salsa dancing at Cuban Revolution on Thursday nights. It’s time for Ashley to take her dog, Misty, to the quarry for an afternoon runaround. In October, we’re going to gorge ourselves on fried Kool-Aid and hopefully not get sick on our friends on the rides at the N.C. State Fair. How have we not yet been to the Durham Farmers’ Market? We published a photo essay of it in Towerview’s summer issue, for goodness’ sake. The Duke Teaching Observatory holds regular open houses, and we’re going to watch the Orionid Meteor Shower there Oct. 21. Everyone settles into a routine at Duke, but not all routines are good ones. Why not get out of Perkins and study in one of the 10 spots that our writers selected for our October Watch List? (p. 8) Ashley got a head start on her bucket list when she and Sharif Labban went to Paint Nite at the West End Wine Bar for a less conventional date (p. 5). Later in the issue, three Duke professors reflect on what motivated them to partake in the Moral Monday protests, and the repercussions of their arrests (p. 26). It’s time to jump into the Fall semester.
ASHLEY MOONEY
CAITLIN MOYLES
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Bus stop
To break the monotony of campus dating, Sharif Labban and Ashley Mooney explored Durham for a more memorable date.
EXPRESS YOURSELF
ARTICLE & PHOTOGRAPHY BY: SHARIF LABBAN & ASHLEY MOONEY
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ttending too many Greek date functions or wasting food points at the Washington Duke Inn can get stale after a few years, so we ventured into Durham for a fresh night out. We entered the top loft of the West End Wine Bar on Main Street to find smocks, brushes and individual canvases scattered among the alcoholic beverages. The painters were an eclectic mix of dating 20-somethings, mother-and-daughter pairs or groups of friends looking for a way to spice up their Tuesday summer nights. Created as a way to draw the 21-and-older crowd to local pubs, Paint Nite “makes art accessible to people who don’t consider themselves artists or creative in any way,” according to the company’s website. We hadn't painted since high school, so this was a test of how much those skills had deteriorated. For convenience, we picked an event in downtown Durham, but Paint Nite hosts events in bars throughout the Triangle Area during slower weeknights. For many, it was their first time painting. But Krystal Kerns, a local artist and our teacher for the night, eased many of our fears by providing step-by-step instruction for creating our own sunset scenes. “I created all of [the example] paintings with my Paint Nite classes in mind, because I’m going to be teaching people who have never painted before,” Kerns said. “It’s something that comes easy to me because I’ve done it for so long, so I have to think outside of
Top: Paint Nite patrons check out their fellow artists’ renditions of a sunset scene. Bottom: Artist Krystal Kerns teaches the class how to give more texture to water.
the box a little bit, take really good paintings and simplify them.” Kerns led the group with two canvases: one completed sunset to model the collective goal, and a blank one on which she recreated the sunset. She patiently explained her process of blending colors, utilizing different brush strokes and how to get the most out of combinations of black, blue, red, white and yellow—the seemingly limited palette available to us. As the evening progressed, so did the mishaps. An amateur brush stroke resulted in a stain on Sharif ’s pants. Ashley’s attempts at palm trees looked more like shish kebabs. Across from us, our fellow painters were having some of their own problems. “Your painting is looking good, mine is jacked up,” the woman across from me told her friend. “Oh man, I just jacked my sun up!” In between various stages of the painting, Kerns walked about the room and gave us suggestions on how to “un-jack” our paintings when necessary. Though the booze provided an initial lure to the experience, after the first hour the participants became so engrossed in their paintings that most ignored the bartender's invitations for more drinks. As the night dwindled down and our canvases began to look like masterpieces, Kerns gave us a chance to move about the room and check out
everybody else’s paintings. No two pictures were alike. Some painters added starry scenes or tiny birds, while others frantically added more paint to cover up small mistakes. “My favorite part is definitely the end when everyone is done,” Kerns said. “Then you get to see how everybody actually did put their own little input into everything and no two pictures look alike. That’s really the most fun of it all because when you’re done and you’re looking around from your seat at what everybody else has done, it’s a really cool experience to be a part of—you all collectively created something different.” Despite the group's general lack of painting experience, the inevitable mistakes and the constant feeling that we were about to damage our work irreparably, no one walked away from the experience without a smile. Somehow, we managed to create two decently executed tropical sunsets to display side-by-side on an apartment wall. Now it's up to guests to figure out who painted which. “I would love to be able to paint something by myself but I can’t, so [Paint Nite] allows me to have some guidance while I created it,” said Nancy Williams, another Paint Nite patron. “[I loved] hearing people go ‘this is awful, this is awful,’ and then their finished product looks awesome.” Paint Nite tosses some spice into Durham's social scene. If you need something new in your life, grab a brush and a beer and see what you can make. TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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respite cafe francesca’s DESSERT CAFFE
It’s all about keeping it local at Respite Café. Respite’s owner Courtney Brown, a 2007 Duke School of Law graduate, pulls from Durham’s unique food scene by using local vendors and ingredients for nearly the entire menu in the coffee shop. Respite offers exactly what its name implies—a haven away from campus to do things at your own pace, whether that means doing homework on one of the comfy couches or spending a relaxed day solving puzzles. —Ashley Mooney
On Ninth Street, a long black awning hangs over a series of lavender columns. On it, “Francesca’s” is scrawled in neat cursive font. Here, members of the Duke and Durham communities can re-energize with delicious caffeinated beverages, satisfy a sweet-tooth and enjoy free Wi-Fi and friendly service. The café also features large wooden booths lined with purple cushions. It’s an ideal study haven.
MARKET STREET COFFEEHOUSE Market Street Coffeehouse is the place to go when only the highest-quality coffee will do, you have a five-page paper to churn out and Perkins is about to explode with anxious bodies. Conveniently located on Ninth Street, the coffee shop formerly known as Bean Traders boasts two levels: the main floor where you order coffee and a basement populated with an assortment of charmingly mismatched tables and chairs. —Anna Koelsch
saladelia at Sanford A comfortable distance from the hustle of the center of Duke’s West Campus, the Sanford School of Public Policy offers not only a palliative change for the overworked Duke student, but also a new eatery. The new Saladelia provides a middle ground between the wide variety of menu items offered at the main Saladelia locations and the condensed “Yum on the Run” menu offered in Perkins. With sandwiches, wraps and salads prepackaged daily, any student can find a fresh meal in a matter of minutes. Many items are gluten-free, vegetarian or vegan, catering to the dietary needs of most Duke students and employees. —Sharif Labban
duke gardens When the stress level in the library has reached its peak or the Plaza poses too many distractions, many Duke students find sanctuary in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. With 55 acres of foliage and botanical beauty, the Duke Gardens is a majestic natural maze which many Duke students use as a jogging course, a place to picnic or a secluded study spot away from the hustle and bustle of campus. If you’re lucky, you may catch a glimpse of a great blue heron, or ducklings in the spring. —Becky Richards
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the link
On West Campus, Perkins Library is a hub for studying. And one of the most unique places to study in Perkins is the Link. Located on the lower level of Perkins, the Link offers a variety of resources, including study booths, 11 group study rooms for collaborative work and a multitude of computer kiosks and armchairs designed for independent studying. —Rebecca Chen
Bus stop mcclendon tower Whether for interminably long nights of breakneck studying or nights with friends that pass too quickly, McClendon Tower provides a mix of environments for the multitasking Duke student. Forming one of the corners of Keohane Quad, McClendon, or “the Tower,” features a moat-like walkway and stone crenellations. Unlike its medieval predecessors, however, McClendon is a warm, multipurpose area that provides comfortable spaces for studying, eating and socializing. —Emily Feng
Penn pavilion
One of the most noticeable new additions to West Campus—the glass Penn Pavilion—offers food, gorgeous views and natural light to all who come to either socialize or study. The Penn Pavilion will serve as a dining hall until the renovations of West Campus Union are complete. The structure was built over a one-year period with the help of $25 million, which also contributed to other site work and the plaza extension, wrote Paul Manning, director of the Office of Project Management, in an email. Once the work on the West Campus Union is done in two years, the building will become a fully-realized events pavilion, he added. —Emilie Padgett
SANFORD COMMONS Just a five-minute walk from West Campus dorms and a stone’s throw from Cameron Indoor Stadium, the Sanford School of Public Policy offers both convenience and a dose of good luck that comes from our nearby basketball temple. Hundreds of undergraduates visit the building for classes during the day, since Public Policy consistently ranks among Duke’s five most popular majors, according to a 2010 Chronicle article. But just a few Dukies know to return late at night to take advantage of an unappreciated study spot hiding in plain sight. —Andrew Kragie
THOMAS READING ROOM On Lilly Library’s second floor, students sit at long benches completing calculus assignments, while some type Writing 20 papers at desks facing East Campus’ Main Quad. Some teeter organic chemistry textbooks on their laps in oversized armchairs and others nap on striped couches. It’s a peaceful and quiet space, in a conveniently located, air-conditioned library, with gorgeous Asian decorations. —Hailey Cunningham
Check out Towerview’s webpage at
www.dukechronicle.com/ section/towerview/
for full stories on each study spot on our list.
watch list 10 BEST STUDY SPOTS
TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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O
n the evening of Jan. 25, 1919, about 20 professors gathered in the lavish East Duke parlors for the first meeting of the Faculty Club of Trinity College. With the airs of an oldfashioned dining club, the male scholars sat in highbacked armchairs, puffing on cigars and debating the politics of the day. According to their constitution, their purpose was threefold: “First and principally, to foster good fellowship, mutual understanding and cooperation among the faculty; second, to contribute to the social life and interests of the faculty and their families and of the college in general; and third to promote among the faculty the common consideration and discussion of matters of scholarly and general public interest.” Lists of early members include names that are still known on campus today, many as namesakes for buildings—Joseph Penn Breedlove, William Hane Wannamaker, Paul Magnus Gross, Julian Shakespeare Carr and plenty more. Today, the Duke Faculty Club—now 800 members strong—would be unrecognizable to the members of the original fraternity. The organization, once exclusive to only full professors, has grown into a casual recreation facility for Duke staff and their families. Regulars at the current club, built in 1971, are quick to assert that it’s not a stuffy private club catering to the rich and well-connected. “We’re not a country club,” said Thomas Metzloff, a law professor and long-time president of the club’s board of directors. “We haven’t been since we’ve been here. This is a family place.” Nestled in the Duke Forest, just to the east of the Washington Duke Inn, the Duke Faculty Club is an oasis from West Campus. The 10-acre facility is reminiscent of a vintage summer camp—with wooden fences and spreads of picnic tables closed in by a leafy tree canopy. Duke-blue awnings shade the swimming pools, and tennis and basketball courts line the perimeter. The only remnant of a dining club is a
Members of the club and their families gathered for a barbeque at the the first football tailgate of the year Aug. 31.
modest snack bar. This year, the facility is undergoing $6.2 million in renovations. Even as it gets a polished look, complete with the gothic-style Duke stone featured on many buildings on West Campus, members and staff want to maintain the homey atmosphere that has evolved over the club’s century-long history.
and a Radiola 4, both priced at $215—which is approximately $3,000 today. The club meeting minutes don’t indicate which device they decided on, but they did say that a radio would suit their needs, not as a scholastic organization, but as a social one. “Friday nights of each week were fixed as the special time on which members might bring their wives and sweethearts to the clubhouse for n 1924, the club decided to make waves by buy- the purpose of listening to the radio,” the meeting ing one of Durham’s first radios. A special com- minutes stated. The organization’s constitution did not mittee had to decide between a Grebe CR15 plainly say that the club was for men only. But there were no women who had the title of full professor until 1930, when Katherine Everett Gilbert joined the faculty as a professor of philosophy. Smoking, a habit traditionally practiced by men, was the most common social activity for club members. They would entertain professors from other universities, politicians and representatives of academic societies. An early gathering in 1919 involved listening to presentations from Trinity College professors who had served abroad during World War I. The professors often tackled University issues, such as student-faculty interaction and curriculum. In 1936, they expressed a desire for a facARTICLE BY LAUREN CARROLL ulty dining room in the West Union. That desire PHOTOGRAPHY BY JENNIE XU grew into the Faculty Commons, also known as Plate and Pitchfork, which has been closed off due to current renovations. Starting in the late 1920s, the club began to hold seasonal gatherings, like the Spring Frolic
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the FACULTY
HIDEAWAY
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and much-loved annual Christmas Dinner, often held in the Great Hall. The events, which carried on into the 1970s, were well-attended by Durham socialites and were often noted in the local newspapers. Even though the club only grew over the decades, it hopped from place to place until it secured its current location near the Washington Duke Inn in 1971. They met in East Duke, Kilgo, West Union, Old Chem and every other building on campus, which many members felt wasn’t suitable for their growing numbers. Because its location was always in flux, the club was unable to offer the faculty a place of refuge from the University. One disgruntled member scribbled his sentiments on the back of the meeting minutes in 1964: “I deplore the concept of a University ‘community house.’ For a faculty club, I hope we can have a place where there will never be students— a refuge from them, and from our children, too! Some might like to exclude even wives from all areas, save the dining room…. “Experience shows, if wives aren’t thus held down, they soon take over the place, with such tripe as fashion shows, etc. Female faculty members, of course, are fully welcome. Old misanthrope!” Regardless of some professors’ desire for a true men’s club, the overwhelming opinion was to create a place where families could also social-
Bus stop
ize. In 1966, the club moved to the 11-acre Teer Homeplace at 4019 Roxboro St., which is now a Duke University Health System building. At the historic estate, the club had a pool and other recreation facilities. With the new focus on health, leisure and family, members and officers decided to lease land from the University to build its own space. From there, they morphed from a social organization into the casual recreation club it is today.
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hemistry professor Steven Baldwin came to Duke in the Fall of 1970. In 1972, he made his first trek down Science Drive over to the Duke Faculty Club. His children grew up on the Faculty Club pool deck, playing in the water when they were little. Some became lifeguards when they were teenagers. Baldwin was president of the club in the early 2000s. “It’s been part of our whole life,” he said. Baldwin, now 71, still makes a point two or three times a week to go to the gym or swim laps at the forest retreat, only three blocks from his French Family Science Center office. By the time Baldwin became a member, the academic society aspect of the Duke Faculty Club had all but disappeared, as had any level of exclusivity. Now, club membership is open to all full-time employees—which includes professors, administrators, support staff and doctors, as well as 100 alumni who live in the area.
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or faculty and staff, it’s a break from students, and a break from high-pressure University life. “My interactions with faculty and staff are when they’re in their bathing suits,” Club Director Eamonn Lanigan said. “I see them on campus… as Dr. So-and-So, when I know him as Tom.” But Baldwin said it’s not like a professor becomes a different person as soon as they park their car in the private lot next to the Al Buehler trail. “I feel like I’m at Duke when I’m here,” he said. “You’ll see people up here talking about their papers, what’s going on, University life, their opinions on [Duke Kunshan University].” He added that he hasn’t seen much change since he first joined, except that the buildings are becoming a little threadbare. For years, club staff and officers have noticed the effects that everyday wear and tear have had on the club, particularly because it was designed for 300 members and their families, and membership has grown almost three-fold. Metzloff noted that the renovations began with a decision to renovate the locker rooms, which set off a domino effect of various rooms and buildings also needing to be updated. Renovations have already begun on the 41-year-old facilities, and they will be complet-
The 41-year-old facilities of the Faculty Club are currently undergoing renovations, to be completed in the Spring.
RENDITION OF THE NEW FACULTY CLUB ed by the end of the Spring. Project managers have planned a new clubhouse, snack bar, fitness center, lap pool, clay tennis courts, playground, locker rooms, game rooms and an expanded patio. In order to accommodate the changes, the campus will push out into the forest, increasing its space from 10 to 13 acres total. The architects seek to maintain a sense of Duke when building the new facilities by using gothic stone and taking advantage of the location's tucked-in-the-forest feel, Metzloff said. The club is a nonprofit organization sepa-
rate from Duke, so the $6.2 million for the capital project is a mix of out-of-pocket cash, savings and a loan from the University. Even though it is technically not part of the University, the club still has strong Blue Devil pride, Metlzoff said, amid the club’s crowded picnic area for a family tailgate before the first football game of the year. In one of the earlier attempts to spruce up the locker rooms about 10 years ago, the rooms were accidentally painted Carolina blue. “It was gone in a week,” he said.
Bus stop PHOTO COURTESY OF SASHA GIEDD
PHOTO COURTESY OF HUNTER NISONOFF
PHOTO COURTESY OF PHIL REINHART
STUDENTS PASSIONATE ABOUT IMPROVING HEALTHCARE AROUND THE WORLD CAN NOW PAIR THEIR PRIMARY STUDIES WITH A GLOBAL HEALTH MAJOR OR MINOR.
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ll she could make out were small, outstretched arms, open hands and a chorus of impatient giggles. After ripping paper after paper from her spiral notebook in order to meet all of the eager children’s demands, junior Sammie Truong folded the edges of paper in and out as quickly as her fingers permitted. It was her fifth day in the parish of Naama, Uganda. She had been waiting outside a primary school, where local health workers were meeting with parents to receive informed consent to run anemia tests on their children. A few students, also waiting, had approached her with eyes full of cautious curiosity. Truong, however, could not speak the language and didn’t know how to respond. So she turned to an old babysitting gimmick she knew—origami cranes. As soon as she fumbled together two or three cranes, students flooded the bench she was sitting on. Even though she was making them as quickly as she could, she knew that for every one student that received the origami bird, there would be five or six
healing in the
field
other students who would go home disappointed. Although she had barely completed her first week on a Duke Global Health Institute program in Naama, Truong couldn’t help but relate the cranemaking frenzy to the various global health issues she had been working on that week and would continue to work on for that entire summer. “The hardest thing for me was to see the great needs in the community in Naama and accept the fact that we couldn’t help everybody,” Truong said. “Every person that we offered HIV testing meant that there was another person out there who couldn’t have it.” Since its establishment in 2006, DGHI has aimed to open students’ eyes to similar dilemmas like Truong’s, not only in Uganda, but also in several locations across the globe. A sense of unanimity emerges when discussing issues of global health. Scholars, physicians, policymakers and even economists will acknowledge that effectively preventing malaria or providing HIV testing for a community are justified, if not necessary, concerns for the global-minded citizen. Duke students are no exception. More and
ARTICLE BY JAMIE MOON
more service-oriented students have turned to programs and curricula that give them an opportunity to translate their academic experiences into tangible assistance. Since the institute first opened, more than 150 students have earned certificates in global health, and 37 new members have been added to the faculty and staff. In a little more than five years, about 300 students have participated in DGHI-sponsored field research projects in 24 different countries. Yet since 2006, the only structured academic pathway available for these students passionate about global health has been a certificate. In response to this rising interest in global health, DGHI will offer a major and minor through the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences beginning this Fall, allowing students to delve more deeply into the issues of global health while still pursuing a more traditional discipline. Although the institute will no longer offer the certificate, students who already began the process will have the option of keeping their certificate, changing to a minor, or adding classes to pursue a major. TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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“Faculty groups have discussed the creation of a major from the very beginning,” said Gary Bennett, director of undergraduate studies for global health. “The view then was that we needed more resources, faculty and student interest in place and right now the institute has progressed to that point.” Growing interest and demand for first-hand experience in general international development can also be seen through the popularity of programs such as DukeEngage or DukeImmerse. DukeEngage, since its birth in 2007, has funded civic engagement programs for more than 2,400 students, who often focused on global health issues. Students who desired a more fully fleshed academic curriculum in global health often had to look for other options not available through DGHI because there was not yet a major. “Many people focus their Program II in global health because they want a more robust curriculum about the topic, but there wasn’t anything to give them other than the certificate,” said Program II senior Emily Jorgens, who worked with HIV and addiction patients in Durham two summers ago. Jorgens created her own major through Program II, combining biology and economics to look at global health, sustainability and environmental studies. In a similar vein, Truong constructed a Program II titled “Global Health: Determinants, Behaviors and Interventions.” Now students can attain a co-major in global health, which would require students to pair global health with another major. The global health curriculum includes core, foundation, seminar and statistics courses, in addition to an experiential learning activity. A range of experiences, like research, DukeEngage and fieldwork qualify as experiential learning. While the requirement of complementing
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global health studies to a major of another discipline may seem arduous and unnecessary, both faculty and students have asserted the significance of an interdisciplinary approach. “Global health is inherently an interdisciplinary field,” Bennett said. “These problems are complex by definition, which requires multiple disciplines to be brought to face these challenges.” The interdisciplinary goals of the new major also mesh well with the Trinity College curriculum of liberal arts, which calls for students to “make meaning of complex information,” “apply knowledge in the service of society” and “engage a wide variety of subjects,” according to the website. Some faculty members, like Assistant Professor of the Practice Sumi Ariely, argue that by having an additional primary major, students will have substantial knowledge from their other major that shapes their critical and analytical perspective on global health issues. “A practical reason for the co-major is to make sure our students have core training in a traditional major, one that’s been around for years, tested and true, as well as training in global health,” Ariely said.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF JEFFREY GRAHAM
fter senior Joy Liu spent the summer of 2011 researching HIV/AIDS in Muhuru Bay, Kenya in 2011 with DukeEngage WISER, she realized that simple patient-to-patient communication was too limited in scope to make the substantial changes in health disparities that she wanted. Because of this Liu argued that having training in a specific expertise is essential to being useful and effective in the global health field. While researching reasons why children were not getting properly vaccinated, Liu realized that PHOTO COURTESY OF SASHA GIEDD embedded in a simple question was a larger systemic problem. One of the key problems she dis- covered was that while the vaccination was free, clinics often charged a service fee that many families could not afford. “It was more a policy issue and a socioeconomic issue,” Liu said. “There was also the issue of women having to get money from their husbands. The problem exists in how the system works, the fact that they are subjected to this fee they shouldn’t be and that men aren’t engaged in their children’s health.” After realizing the significance of being able to bring systemic change and wanting to learn a top-down policy approach for health situations like in Muhuru Bay, Liu declared public policy as her first major. “I felt like I didn’t have any expertise in international development or global health to bring to the table,” Liu said. “Global health is not something you can go in without any expertise and do very well.” After her second global health experience in Jamkhed, India in 2012, Liu struggled with feeling less useful for the community once again. She encountered issues that seemed irresolvable without actual medical aid, influencing her later decision to drop her global health certificate and pursue biology as a double major instead. “If I do go to medical school, that’s a breadth PHOTO COURTESY OF SASHA GIEDD
Bus stop
PHOTO COURTESY OF AMEE TAN
of knowledge that is very specific and applicable anywhere that no one can take from you,” she said. “All of my choices at Duke have been framed by what I think I can do for global health.” Junior Ben Ramsey, who also participated in the same Naama, Uganda project with Truong, was initially drawn to global health issues in high school through initiatives like Doctors Without Borders. But at the time, he believed that these issues were strictly medical and in need of only that type of expertise. It was not until he took the Introduction to Global Health course as a sophomore at Duke that he realized it enveloped so many more disciplinary approaches. “In a team, you’re going to need to have different opinions based on what you’re knowledgeable about,” Ramsey said. “As a public policy major, I would always come in with a policy perspective that these issues need.” Even if students decide to pursue careers not directly linked to global health, Ariely argued that experiencing and witnessing global health issues teaches students something essentially humane and powerful about the world. “Some people might argue that a career like investment banking might be the opposite of global health—that it’s hurting the globe, rather,” Ariely said. “But their training in global health enhances their understanding of how to be a global citizen and offers a unique perspective of the world in that industry.”
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uke has long prioritized helping students understand their global citizenship and use their privilege and education to bridge the gap in health disparities. Taking on these responsibilities has pushed DGHI to organize and develop adequate preparation and reflection processes for its students. For example, the Student Research Training
Program, a DGHI experiential learning component, dedicates an entire year to preparing participants. Not only do students have to attend bi-weekly meetings with their faculty director, but they also engage in workshops and meetings to familiarize themselves with their on-site community’s culture, as well as communicate with their local partners. DGHI’s long-standing relationships with community partners are often what draw many students to their programs. Through the ongoing collaboration of research, programs and service in the community, Duke students are assured that the researchers, health workers and families can play a larger role in whatever effort is at hand. “What I thought was great about the Naama project was that it was a group effort and not just Duke coming in, playing our part, and then leaving,” Ramsey said. “The community definitely had ownership in what we were doing.” DGHI faculty and staff also stress the importance of preparing students emotionally before the summer. Programs like DukeEngage and DukeImmerse have similarly agreed with these priorities. While the rapidly increasing interest in global issues is both significant and exciting for faculty, this calls for an equally evolving and available infrastructure for reflection. “Students carry so much of their experience in different ways,” Student Projects Coordinator Lysa MacKeen said. “Re-entry is enormously stressful. Students come back and struggle with understanding why they’re here when they were providing free health screenings in Uganda just a few weeks ago.” In years prior, DGHI held four mandatory workshops over the course of two months for students who returned from their summer programs. While the workshops were effective to a certain extent, schedule conflicts led DGHI to experiment with a different post-fieldwork processing method.
This year, the institute has decided to host a mandatory one-day retreat. Having this structured environment for assessing every part of their experience—ethical, emotional, social, political or academic—allows students to begin their re-entry process back at Duke. Weaving the lessons learned from their new relationships and fieldwork experiences into their interdisciplinary studies forms the foundation of an ongoing reflection process. “We want students to be able to take all they learned into this more practical realm and enrich the education they have here,” MacKeen said. This type of investment in undergraduate students interested in global health is unique to Duke, say some people involved with DGHI. “We have put very serious resources in advising, classrooms and experiential learning,” Bennett said. “We have chosen to make the investment in the undergraduate side, and now we have this type of infrastructure ready for our students.” Through the emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration with diverse faculty members, DGHI has been able to venture to what some would call a new frontier of academia. Moreover, DGHI also remains unique in that it couples students’ academic experiences with intensive and extensive experiential fieldwork programs. While this experiential learning requirement offers students the opportunity to help communities in need, their contribution is, in reality, limited. Repairing a broken health system or finding the cure to a certain disease is not the heart of the mission for the program itself. At the end of the day, students are not doctors, nor are they legitimate policy makers just yet. “We want to make sure that participants are learning and serving in a way that helps and enhances them, and provides them with the educational structure they need,” Ariely said. "Our first mission is to educate our students.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN DAVIS
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ThemaryCduke ollection: biddle trent semans ARTICLE BY CONNOR MOYLES PHOTOGRAPHY BY JISOO YOON The book room displayed literature; photography and children’s books; cookbooks; and some first editions, such as Charlotte’s Web. The prices ranged from $6 to $200.
Left: A bronze and cut crystal fourlight table candelabra from Semans’ apartment at 1009 5th Avenue in New York. Its estimated selling price was $600 to $900. Middle: The head of Heracles, a patinated bronze bust by Émile Antoine Bourdelle, estimated to sell between $12,000 and $18,000. Right: The foyer displayed large furniture items, including a 1915 Steinway Grand Piano, estimated to sell between $12,000 and $18,000.
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SHUTTER Top: One of the several tea sets that were up for auction. Bottom: The Vera Wang wedding dress worn by Elizabeth Gotham Semans, Mary Semans’ daughter, at her wedding in 1992.
The dress’s bodice is embellished with beads and seed pearls applied in a foliate motif, and the skirt features lace floral sprays accented with pearls, gold beading and sequins, according to the auction catalog.
“Walking into the auction room felt like walking into a royal palace in Europe, not a hotel.”
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hen I think of auctions, the image that comes to mind is one of boredom. Paddles lethargically raised into the air as a monotone voice calls out items and their prices. My experience at the auction of the collection of Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans, greatgranddaughter of Washington Duke, was the exact opposite. The auction took place August 25 at the Washington Duke Inn. Walking into the auction room felt like walking into a royal palace in Europe, not a hotel. The room was filled with intricately handcrafted tables from 18th century France, luxurious 19th century French couches, brilliant sets of silver pieces, fashionable Louis Vuitton purses, a vast collection of art ranging from the 1700s to the 21st century and a 1915 Steinway Grand Piano. Following Semans' passing in January 2012, her family hired Brunk Auctions to represent them and sell her possessions, said Aaron Edwards, public relations director for Brunk Auctions. The collection comes from
her family’s four homes in New York City and three estates in the Durham area. As people settled down into their seats, I noticed that the crowd consisted mostly of elderly attendees and was sprinkled with a few middle-aged couples and the occasional child. The bidders also included absentee, online and telephone bidders. Then the fun began. The auctioneer briefly described a silver coffee pot, and then started pointing around and speaking so quickly that it was hard to follow him. It was slightly comedic watching people's faces shoot back and forth as multiple buyers aggressively out-bid one another on items. Although the catalog gave estimates of selling prices, many items far exceeded their predictions. For example, a set of four silver-plated urns, which were estimated to be sold at $200, went for $1,100. The auction perpetuated the legacy of Semans, a powerful member of the Duke community and renowned philanthropist, whose spirit will be kept alive through her collection. TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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i
n a coaching career that spans back 33 years, David Cutcliffe has a laundry list of accomplishments that the average person wouldn’t dream of matching. He has coached under a college football legend, mentored a future NFL Hall of Famer, won a national championship and guided a Duke program known only in recent memory for futility back to the postseason for the first time in nearly two decades. But before Cutcliffe wakes up and throws on his national championship ring, he starts his day the same way many people do—by taking a walk with his dog. Cutcliffe’s 5 a.m. walks with his miniature labradoodle serve as fleeting moments of leisure before the Blue Devil head coach re-enters the pressure cooker of the college football world. But the Birmingham, Ala., native can’t even get football off his mind during his quiet walks of reflection. His dog’s name is TD—short for touchdown, something he has seen more than a few of over the years. With the 2013 season quickly approaching, Cutcliffe is entrenched in preparation for Duke’s final set of practices during August training camp. By 6:30 a.m. on August 19, the head coach was already knee-deep in his practice notes for the day. The scratches on his yellow legal pad were laid out with meticulous detail, and each member of Cutcliffe’s staff held a full training camp schedule for
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every day leading up to the season. “There’s an art to this,” Cutcliffe said. “Almost every minute of the day matters.” As Cutcliffe scribbles his notes, a John Mellencamp song plays from his speakers in the background. Mellencamp’s son Hud walked onto Duke’s team last season, and Cougar is one of many celebrities Cutcliffe has rubbed elbows with over the years. But most of the others, including NFL quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning and Colorado Rockies first baseman Todd Helton, are former pupils who went on to stardom in professional sports. “Coach Cut has been around a lot of great players, so I definitely feel like he has experience getting the best out of those players,” redshirt junior wide receiver Isaac Blakeney said. “He has the experience of how to work with great players and how to make good players great as well.” The coaching journey has been a long one for Cutcliffe—after spending nearly three decades in the SEC on staff at Alabama, Tennessee and Ole Miss, the head coach inherited a Duke team six years ago that had managed to win just two games in its previous three seasons. Five years later, the Blue Devils were taking the field at a bowl game for the first time in 18 years. Cutcliffe’s six-year stint at Duke seems short when compared to Blue Devil men’s basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski. But by lasting six years with a Duke program that has seen limited stability since a young Steve Spurrier was at the
helm in the late 1980s, Cutcliffe is actually the Blue Devils’ longest-tenured head coach since Mike McGee was fired following the 1978 season. The Duke program that Cutcliffe has been sought to build since 2007 is founded on what the head coach calls “the four Fs,” which are faith, family, future and football, in that order. Cutcliffe has never been shy that he is a man of great faith. When he opened the first full team meeting at 7:10 a.m. to address his squad, it was as though Cutcliffe had entered his personal cathedral. With every seat in the room filled, the public persona of a stoic head coach melted away as the preacher stepped up to his pulpit. It was the beginning of the last two-a-day Cutcliffe’s senior class will endure during their college football careers, and the team’s head coach had a special message for his squad. “The best thing this team can do is have the time of their life every play. There is no pressure. There is no looking back. There are no regrets,” Cutcliffe said. “It’s the next play, and that’s the play that we’ve got to have the time of our life. And that’s the greatest lesson that all of us can remind each other—we’re going to go have the time of our life. It is going to be exciting, because I cannot wait for that next play. I cannot wait for that next play. Regardless of the results, it doesn’t matter what just happened. That’s football—you’ve got a first, second, third and often fourth down. Anything can happen on any of them…. Let’s go for it. Let’s go for it with all the gusto we’ve got.”
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CUTCLIFFe'S
CALLING ARTICLE BY: DANIEL CARP PHOTOGRAPHY BY: DANIEL CARP & ERIC LIN
“The best thing this team can do is have the time of their life every play. There is no pressure. There is no looking back. There are no regrets.” -DAVID CUTCLIFFE The entire room went dead silent—the players’ gaze locked onto their head coach. It took less than two minutes before the tired student-athletes were ready to put in a full day’s work. Duke’s special teams unit remained in the room as special teams coordinator Zac Roper ran film of kickoff coverage. Shortly after, it was wide receivers coach Scottie Montgomery who took the room for his position meeting. Montgomery is entering the first year of his second stint on the Blue Devil coaching staff, retrurning to his alma mater after three years as the wide receivers coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He began the meeting by reciting the day’s drills from memory and breaking down each play on film, critiquing each player posi-
tion by position. Montgomery made a point of adding that “it’s the detail” that separates good players from great ones. By 8:30 a.m., the Blue Devils were en route to the practice facility for their morning workout. Before exiting the Yoh Football Center, every player walked past the Victory Bell, the trophy Duke earned after its last-second victory against North Carolina to secure bowl eligibility in 2012. The bell sits directly between the team’s weight room and training room, serving as a reminder of the ultimate goal that is born out of significant sacrifice. The scene was chaotic when the Blue Devils first arrived at the field for practice. Different units were spread out in all corners of Pascal Fieldhouse TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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discussing plans with position coaches and waiting for the day to begin. As soon as Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier” blasted over the PA system, everything seemed to snap into place.
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ractice started slowly, synchronized with the ticking of the scoreboard clock. But as the short period ran out and drills shifted, the pace revved up until Duke’s workout was nothing short of a well-oiled football machine. Position groups moved about the fieldhouse, always ready for their next task as soon as the clock struck zero. The team’s managers and training staff provided scenery changes as the practice field became a crowded stage, ushering in construction barrels, pads and rope ladders for drills. The Aug. 19 practice was scheduled for 68 minutes—not a moment more or a moment less. On the field, the intensity level rose. Freshman Johnell Barnes showcased his breakaway speed on a deep route, but lets what would have been an easy touchdown pass slip through his hands. On his way back to the line of scrimmage, the rookie is immediately pulled aside by Blakeney for a pep talk. There was plenty of action on the sidelines as well. Redshirt freshman quarterback Thomas Sirk, who suffered a ruptured Achilles in April, tossed a football as he continues to rehab. On the receiving end was wide receiver Blair Holliday, who has returned to school after a year-long leave of absence following a nearly fatal jetski accident during the summer of 2012. Holliday will serve as an undergraduate assistant coach this season. Duke’s young players have opportunities to learn both on and off the field during training camp. In the evenings, Cutcliffe often arranges the team’s veteran players to lead lectures and discussions regarding topics such as academics, dorm life and social life, bringing the learning experience full circle. "You’re developing leaders, which is something that we want to do out of this program," Cutcliffe said. "We want them all to leave officers, so to speak. And I think it’s just more effective coming from the people who have lived it.” There is no shortage to Cutcliffe’s intensity on the gridiron, but when it comes to dealing with his players, the Duke head coach could not be more laid back. Cutcliffe did not raise his voice once in frustration, only in encouragement, and that is a quality that is not lost on his players. “He’s super positive. He knows how to treat his players,” senior wide receiver Brandon Braxton said. “He knows when to work us and he knows when to back up. He’s a personable guy. He cracks jokes, he’ll crack on people in the meeting room, but when it comes down to it, if you’re going to be messing around he’s going to get on your butt.” When practice drew to a close, Cutcliffe gathered his team again for another meeting. This time, he spoke to his players about holding themselves to a higher standard, and accomplishing the little things with excellence. As the head coach droned along in his southern drawl, another type
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of music played in the background. It wasn’t Mellencamp or Marley this time. Cutcliffe’s speech was interrupted by the opening of the fieldhouse door, which revealed that the ice cream truck had arrived. You’ll never see 100 football players more excited for ice cream at 9:30 in the morning. It was that raw joy that showed why they had all chosen to play this game starting from the time they were five or six years old, making sacrifices along the way to reach this point. After the players lined up for their frozen treats (seniors first, of course), Cutcliffe retreated back to his office to watch the tape of that day’s practice. Cutcliffe said he first learned his organizational skills from Alabama head coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, the college football legend who gave the Duke head coach his start as an undergraduate assistant in the 1970s. In a game where coaching trees are constantly dissected an analyzed, Cutcliffe remains one of Bryant’s last direct coaching disciples. The Duke head coach sat at his desk, watching each drill with a meticulous attention to detail as his mentor had—but Bear Bryant wasn’t taking down practice notes on his iPhone. “People know where to go and what to do— that doesn’t happen by accident. We have a system. We’re not just out there by the seat of our pants,” Cutcliffe said. “It goes back to something [Bryant] told me, ‘Don’t get in this because you love it. The only reason you do it is because you can’t live without it.’" As he reviewed that day's drills, Cutcliffe chose to focus on the cornerbacks, a position that graduated two of its top-three players last season and was a part of a secondary that gave up more gains of 25 yards or more than any unit in the country. Cutcliffe paid particular attention to freshmen Breon Borders and Bryon Fields, both of whom saw action in their first collegiate game, with Borders recording the first interception of his career.
THE PLAZA “Don’t get in this because you love it. The only reason you do it is because you can’t live without it.” -BEAR BRYANT
The Blue Devils’ current freshman class is the most talented Cutcliffe has brought to Duke during his tenure. As the program continues to rise, recruiting dividends will follow. The quarterback guru has sent his last seven starting quarterbacks to play in the NFL—the future that all college football recruits desire. Cutcliffe made his biggest recruiting splash during the past summer when he received a verbal commitment from four-star signal-caller Nico Pierre—Duke’s first ever recruit ranked in the ESPN 300. Braxton said he has seen the caliber of recruits entering the Duke footall program rise throughout his four-year college career. “This recruiting class we got is phenomenal,” he said. “There’s definitely a lot of competition. There’s way more competition now at every position than there ever was. So that’s huge because it’s making everybody else better.” The head coach made the short trip from his office to the conference room for his 11 a.m. staff meeting. Coaches crowded around the table as the room quickly reached full capacity. Position coaches all sat at the table, but graduate assistants and video coordinators were relegated to sitting on the ledge by the window. It was as though Duke football’s family had just sat down to dinner together. Laughter and joking filled the room, and light-hearted moments were shared between some men who have coached together for decades, others who played for their current colleagues. The meeting started with every coach around the table grabbing a pen and some stationary. Two recruits’ names flashed on the television screen in
the conference room as the coaches tried to explain to 17-year-old kids why their future should be a part of Duke’s future. Cutcliffe has a history of barraging prospective recruits with some goodold-fashioned snail mail—a series of tweets this summer showed prospects receiving as many as 115 handrwritten letters from Duke, all in the same day. The coaches spent the remainder of the meeting discussing the team’s play from the day’s first practice and debating drills for the afternoon session. As the group broke their meeting, they departed for lunch after a long morning’s work. But for Cutcliffe, there is no such thing as a lunch break. A self-proclaimed “brown bagger,” the head coach prefers to work through meals, estimating that he goes out to lunch only once during football season. Working through lunch is just another part of Cutcliffe’s many routines that make up his long-term plans. As the old ball coach says, every minute spent preparing in August will pay its dividends come November and December. Defensive end Kenny Anunike, a redshirt senior, was a part of Cutcliffe’s original recruiting class at Duke, coming into a program that at the time was famous only for its futility on the gridiron. Anunike has watched his head coach grow this program and said the difference between his first season and his last is night and day. “I know that coming through here was the best decision of my life, and I’ll never regret it,” Anunike said. “Even though I was recruited by many other schools, I don’t ever regret signing to Coach Cutcliffe and Duke.”
"TIME OF THEIR LIFE"
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K
haled El-Masri grew up in Lebanon. When he was 23, he and his family moved to Germany in order to escape the Lebanese civil war. El-Masri worked as a car salesman and became a German citizen in 1995. In 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency misidentified him as an al-Qaeda operative with a similar name. This is what happened. On December 31, 2003, El-Masri, who was 40 at the time, boarded a bus from Ulm, Germany to Skopje, Macedonia, where he intended to take a brief vacation. The drive proceeded as expected until the bus crossed into Macedonia. Without explanation, Macedonian law enforcement officials boarded the bus and escorted him off. They confiscated his passport and transported him to a hotel in Skopje, where he was detained and interrogated. “I was guarded at all times, the curtains were always drawn. I was threatened with guns and I was not allowed to contact anyone,” El-Masri stated in a 2005 lawsuit that the American Civil Liberties Union brought against CIA Director George Tenet on ElMasri’s behalf. “At the hotel, I was repeatedly questioned about my activities in Ulm, my associates, my mosque, meetings with people that had never occurred or associations with people I had never met. I answered all of their questions truthfully, emphatically denying their accusations.” After 23 days, a team of Macedonian men drove him to the airport, where members of the CIA assumed custody of him “I was severely beaten by people’s fists and what felt like a thick stick. Someone sliced the clothes off my body, and when I would not remove my underwear, I was beaten again until someone forcibly removed them from me,” El-Masri said. “I was thrown on the floor, my hands were pulled behind me, and someone’s boot was placed on my back. Then I felt something firm being forced inside my anus. I was put in a belt with chains that attached to my wrists and ankles, earmuffs were placed over my ears, eye pads over my eyes, and then I was blindfolded and hooded.” The team led El-Masri onto a waiting plane. When the plane landed in Kabul, Afghanistan, the men drove El-Masri to a secret CIA detention and interrogation black site called the Salt Pit. “That first night I was interrogated by six or eight men…. I would remain in solitary confinement for more than four months,” he said. “My requests to meet with a representative of the German government, a lawyer or to be brought before a court were repeatedly ignored.” Meanwhile, in the United States, the CIA analyzed El-Masri’s passport and concluded that it was genuine — they had captured the wrong person. ElMasri was to be immediately released. “I was warned that as a condition of my release, I was never to mention what had happened to me,” El-Masri recalled. On May 28, El-Masri was driven to the airport. He was told to change into the clothes he had worn on the tourist bus to Macedonia. Then he was blind-
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ARTICLE & PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARISSA MEDINE
Smithfield, N.C. is a quiet town of under 13,000 people. Many people who live there claimed not to know or not to believe the rumors of extraordinary rendition in their town.
folded, handcuffed and led onto the plane where he was chained to his seat. After the flight, he was placed in the backseat of a vehicle that drove through mountains for several hours. When it stopped, El-Masri received his belongings and passport. The driver ordered him to walk down a path without looking back. “I believed I would be shot in the back and left to die, but when I turned the bend, there were armed men who took my passport,” El-Masri said. Around the corner, an armed man asked him why he was in Albania. Then he drove El-Masri to a nearby airport from which he was flown back to Germany. “Only when the plane took off did I believe I was actually returning to Germany,” El-Masri said. “When I returned I had long hair and a beard, and had lost 40 pounds. My wife and children had left our house in Ulm, believing I had left them and was not coming back.” In 2006, the U.S. District Court dismissed the American Civil Liberties Union’s case against the CIA on the grounds that it would expose state secrets. Subsequently, the Supreme Court refused to hear his case.
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his does not sound like a chain of events that began in Smithfield, North Carolina—a small town located less than an hour southeast of Duke. But when El-Masri’s story became public in 2005, the members of that community were faced with the news that their own neighbors could be involved in a topsecret CIA program called extraordinary rendition. April 11, I drove 40 minutes from Duke’s West Campus to Johnston County Airport. Many North Carolinians have never heard of this small airport because it does not offer commuter flights—just aircraft maintenance, refueling and runway space for various private clients. The main part of Johnston County Airport consists of the terminal—a small, three-room building—and a series of runways. That day, I was particularly interested in visiting a client called Aero Contractors, the company that transported Khaled ElMasri from Macedonia to Afghanistan in January 2004. The entrance to the Aero Contractors’ area appeared as unwelcoming as I had expected: a towering gate covered with threats against unlawful entrance and a card-access entry point. As I pulled back to drive away, a sympathetic elderly lady with delicately coiffed
THE PLAZA
Torture Flights
in our
Backyard: extraordinary rendition in north carolina
ARTICLE & PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARISSA MEDINE
hair rolled down the window of her white GMC. “What’s over here?” I asked through the window as she pulled in towards the gate. “Oh, just different companies. The main terminal is over there,” she replied in a grandmotherly tone. This mix of mystery and innocence would come to characterize my entire Smithfield visit. Did she know what I was really curious about? Did she work for Aero Contractors? Did she even know what they did? At the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, retired pilot Jim Rhyne, who flew CIA missions in the Vietnam War era, started Aero Contractors in 1979. Early on, Aero was primarily responsible for transporting foreign dignitaries visiting the United States. But according to a University of North Carolina School of Law analysis of flight records and aircraft registrations—as well as interviews conducted with former CIA officers, declassified agency documents and numerous other materials—Aero operated aircraft for the CIA’s top-secret extraordinary rendition program between 2001 and 2006.
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xtraordinary rendition means transferring a suspected criminal from one country to another for interrogation, without going through the judicial process. Often, the detainee would be taken to a country where loose laws allow torture as part of the interrogation process. Under Article 3 of the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory, it is illegal to surrender a detainee to a country where torture is likely. Extraordinary rendition comes from the concept of rendition, which simply means moving a suspect from one jurisdiction to another—not necessarily to be interrogated. Throughout history, the United States has debated the value and morality of rendition as various cases arose. The earliest instances involved for-
eign fugitives who were captured in the United States and whether they should be returned to their native countries if the justice system there was excessively harsh. Later cases questioned the legality of kidnapping and returning American criminals who had escaped abroad. While former President Bill Clinton was in office, the concept of rendition developed radically and began to be called “extraordinary,” according to the ACLU. Intelligence agencies began abducting terrorist suspects from one foreign country and transporting them to another for information gathering, often using techniques that do not comply with international law. In a 2005 New Yorker magazine article, Michael Scheuer, a former CIA counterterrorism expert, explained that by the mid-1990s, his investigative team had designed a mission to dismantle key al-Qaeda cells, but because the Central Intelligence Agency does not operate courts or jails, there would be nowhere to take captured suspects. For reasons of national security and because any evidence obtained through torture would be inadmissible, the cases were unfit for regular U.S. courts. Scheuer remarked, “we had to come up with a third party,” and later told Congress, “it is basically finding someone else to do your dirty work.” Egypt, it turns out, was the perfect host. At the time, it was a U.S. ally with a reputation for harsh treatment of criminals. Moreover, then-President Hosni Mubarak’s primary opponents were radical Islamists linked to al-Qaeda. Egypt acquiesced to the arrangement, forming a secret pact with the United States. The process worked as follows: Egypt issued a formal arrest warrant for a suspected terrorist. The U.S. would coordinate intelligence efforts, alongside local law enforcement, in whatever country the suspect resided. Upon capture, the suspect would be flown to Egypt for interrogation. A former CIA renditions program ana-
lyst told The New Yorker that American CIA personnel could give Egyptians the questions they wanted to ask the detainee in the morning and get answers by the evening. U.S. personnel, however, were never permitted to be in the same room as the suspect. The program worked: terrorist suspects were captured, and the United States had a place to put them. Soon, the Clinton administration established third-party relationships with Jordan, Morocco and Syria, as well. Less than a decade later, the system evolved again. In response to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Justice Department officials argued in a document called the Yoo-Delahunty memo, which was released to the American Civil Liberties Union December 2009, that the government should disregard the Geneva Conventions’ regulations on detainee treatment, such as violence against hostages. Former President George W. Bush accepted the Justice Department’s conclusion, affirming in an official statement that he had “authority under the Constitution,” and it was “consistent with military necessity,” to deny protections of the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaeda combatants captured during the war in Afghanistan. With newfound leeway, the CIA began operating its own detainment and interrogation centers in third countries, known as black sites. By holding terrorist suspects there without charges and by obtaining their confessions through torture, intelligence officers eliminated the possibility of convicting them in U.S. courts or even using them as witnesses. But by releasing them, the CIA would potentially endanger the public and expose itself to domestic and international criminal charges. Jamie Gorelick, the former deputy attorney general and a member of the 9/11 Commission, explained TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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Aero Contractors’ planes, which are used in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, depart from Johnston County Airport.
“My requests to meet with a representative of the German government, a lawyer or to be brought before a court were repeatedly ignored.” -KHALED EL-MASRI to The New Yorker in 2005, “in criminal justice, you either prosecute the suspects or let them go. But if you’ve treated them in ways that won’t allow you to prosecute them you’re in this no man’s land.” To date, more than 54 foreign governments spanning five continents have participated in CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition programs by either contributing intelligence or housing black sites, according to a 2013 Open Society report.
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ack to Johnston County Airport. Aero Contractors fits into this puzzle because—according to declassified CIA documents, public airport records, court filings, witness testimony and NGO investigative reports—they flew the airplanes that took terrorist suspects from the United States to torture sites abroad. According to the 2012 report from the University of North Carolina Law School, the missions ran as such: first, a few Aero employees would fly from Johnston County Airport to a domestic airport, often Washington-Dulles just outside Washington, D.C. There, the team of CIA detainment and interrogation experts boarded. Next, the plane flew to the country where the terrorist suspect was located. The rendition experts prepared the detainee for travel by “a standardized procedure intended to put the individual in a state of total immobility and sensory deprivation.” During flight, the suspect would remain deprived of sight, sound and the ability to move or communicate. When the plane landed, he would remain in the dark until he had arrived at the black site.
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Why did Aero Contractors choose Smithfield, N.C. as its headquarters? Stephen Grey, the author of a book called Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Rendition and Torture Program, explained that they choose Johnston County Airport because of its proximity to Fort Bragg, which was particularly advantageous in Aero’s early days when the planes often transported Special Forces operatives and other military officials. Additionally, Smithfield is remote and rural, with a population of just under 13,000. The Johnston County Airport is too small to have a tower, meaning there is no observation or record-keeping about Aero’s flights. “We’ve been doing business with the government for a long time, and one of the reasons is, we don’t talk about it,” Aero assistant manager Robert Blowers told The New York Times in 2005. Despite these efforts for secrecy, one wonders how this corporation could keep a low profile within such a small community. N.C. Stop Torture Now, a local advocacy organization, seeks to expose and condemn the work of Aero Contractors. They update a website and hold frequent demonstrations, but I suspected that their outrage might not necessarily characterize the sentiment of the overall Smithfield population. I went to the airport that day in search of an average citizen’s perspective. After a few minutes in the airport, a gentleman named William Curtis sat down next to me. Curtis spent 27 years in the military and then 10 years with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He now supports a flight service for rescue dogs. Curtis explained
The small town of Smithfield, N.C. is located only 40 minutes southeast of Duke’s West Campus.
that he had never worked with Aero Contractors nor did he know about their operations, but when I told him about my project, his eyes lit up and he offered to brew some coffee. “People don’t understand the private airline market,” he said, emphasizing the total independence of every company that contracts with Johnston County Airport. “It would be a shame to connect the facility to what gets transported through there.” He went on to explain that local airports sustain the North Carolina economy. Many, such as Johnston County Airport, were built in the aftermath of World War II, when land was far cheaper than it is today. If Johnston County Airport were shut down, the government could find another place equally useful out of which to conduct its operations, he said, adding that the local economy would never recover. His comments made me wonder if, as a Smithfield local, he had heard rumors of torture and black sites and whether he believed them. I also puzzled over North Carolina’s connection to this much larger web. How does a highly-classified CIA program, brainstormed and directed from agency offices in the Washington, D.C. area, affect the tiny, remote community where it is executed? As I drove down Interstate 95 toward the Smithfield town center, I passed a lot of churches and fast food restaurants, along with a series of billboards displaying the Barrel Monster, an icon who uses kitschy phrases and cheesy gestures to remind visitors that the shops of Smithfield need their business. Downtown Smithfield consists of four main
THE PLAZA North Carolina Stop Torture Now has been protesting the involvement of a local company with extraordinary rendition.
“People don’t understand the private airline market. It would be a shame to connect the facility to what gets transported through here.” -WILLIAM CURTIS
streets lined mostly with bail bonds establishments, private attorneys’ offices and a few coffee shops. The streets were quiet on this weekday afternoon. And so, I was soon to discover, were the people. In terms of their relationship with this issue, a manager at the Smithfield land zoning office explained, “If you would ask nine out of 10 people [about the connection between Aero Contractors and extraordinary rendition] they wouldn’t know about it unless they happened to read it in the papers.” “And after that?” I asked. “They really don’t mind.” Others expressed more pronounced skepticism about the Smithfield connection to extraordinary rendition. When I asked the owner of a local café what he knew about the anti-torture protests at the airport, he laughed. “I’m sorry, I was just laughing at how you said that—torture,” he said. “I know a lot of people who work over there, and if even half of what the [N.C. Stop Torture Now] protesters said were true, my friends wouldn’t work there. I don’t have all the facts and it’s just my opinion, but I don’t have a problem with [Aero Contractors] being here.” That day, I talked to receptionists, shop workers and personnel at the Development Corps, Land Use Center and Town Hall. “I really don’t know much,” “maybe you should talk to the folks at the airport” and “I’ve seen it on the news, but I don’t have an opinion” were the common responses. I left Smithfield under the impression that most residents remain generally apathetic toward the issue.
and longtime peace activist, explained that the organization does engage with the issue at the national and international levels. By advocating the release of research reports and lobbying local, state and federal legislative officials, as well as judicial officials, they apply pressure on actual decision-making bodies. Why the local activism and publicity component? To keep people aware. He explained that the “torture agenda” functions in two ways: either people forget about it, or people rationalize it and then forget. Fager explains that he and N.C. Stop Torture Now are working against this forgetting. “It might take 20 years,” Fager said. “It will take long work and a lot of patience and determination. But we cannot let this be forgotten.”
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ne week later, I attended N.C. Stop Torture Now’s monthly meeting. Given some of the commentary I’d heard in Smithfield—one shop owner described the organization as “a couple angry people on the side of the road”—I expected a cluster of radical, emotional activists. But as the eight of them conversed in the basement of a Unitarian Universalist church in Raleigh, N.C., I was struck by the depth and breadth of their research-driven agenda. They discussed the United Nations’ request for the United States to honestly report interrogation practices in the upcoming fourth periodic review of compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. They anticipated press coverage of the Constitution Project’s report on post-9/11 extraordinary rendition. They devised press and logistical arrangements for a clean-up of the highway that runs alongside Johnston County Airport. They began planning a conference in Charlotte, drafted correspondence to a torture victim in Italy and brainstormed an op-ed to address recent decisions made by Senator Richard Burr, Republican-N.C. The activities of this organization are substantive and multi-disciplinary; they act locally but think internationally. They aim, overall, to expose and to end the practice of torture. After the meeting, I spoke individually with a few members. Curtis’ words were still fresh in my mind: Why act here against Johnston County Airport? The Smithfield population generally did not seem to believe the news stories about torture and black sites, nor did they care much about them even if they were true. Chuck Fager, an N.C. Stop Torture Now member TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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n a typical summer afternoon, North Carolinians might head to the Outer Banks for swimming or to the mountains for a hike. But this year, thousands flocked to a festival of politics on the lawn of the state legislative building in Raleigh. More than 900 went all the way to jail. The Moral Monday protests materialized at the end of April and grew to a nationally recognized political movement in a matter of weeks. North Carolinians spanning all demographics coalesced at Raleigh to protest a comprehensive host of legislation passing through the conservative state house and governor’s mansion, laws which protesters considered dangerous to the state and downright immoral. The events raised too many questions to answer in one story—Why did this happen? What did it accomplish? What drives respected community leaders to face arrest of their own free will? By examining the protests through the eyes of Duke community members who experienced it firsthand, though, we might get close. The Actor ay O’Berski, assistant professor of the practice of theater, frequents Durham area stages as an actor and director for his theater troupe, The Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern. This summer, he played the role of male arrested protester in a larger drama. When he heard about the protests from a Duke colleague who attended the first one, he looked into it and found something that resonated. As a Duke professor, O’Berski decided he was in a position of security that allowed him to take action. Whereas someone in a different occupation might face repercussions for protesting, O’Berski’s department chair congratulated him. “All of the legislation that they pushed through targets the little guy,” he said. “If it targets children, brown people and women only and doesn’t affect white guys like me, in an effort to supposedly right the wrongs and make the state work better, then it’s completely corrupt because it’s the privileged who need to sacrifice and the poor who need to benefit. They have it completely topsy-turvy.” What he found when he got to Raleigh was a piece of theater performed on a grand scale and fueled by grassroots emotion. After a pep talk from state NAACP leader Rev. William Barber, O’Berski and the other protesters who were willing to face arrest donned green arm bands and boarded a bus downtown. Not just any bus—“the most beautiful bus you’ll ever experience in your life,” with plush seats and potent air conditioning. After a mass rally on Halifax Mall, a field overlooked by the legislative building, the crowd of protesters parted to make way for the elite crew who had volunteered to face arrest. They processed in ranks of two by two, running the gauntlet through supportive onlookers who shouted their thanks, O’Berski recalled. “It felt like a cross between a gladiator and Fay Ray in King Kong—you feel like you’re going to be this sort of virgin sacrifice,” he said.
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When your bus pulls out, the NAACP has organized peole chanting, ‘Thank you, we love you,’ screaming through bullhorns. You can’t see them through the mesh. That was completely surreal. -JAY O’BERSKI
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WHY WE
WENT TO
LOOKING BACK ON
MORAL MONDAYS ARTICLE BY JULIAN SPECTOR PHOTOGRAPHY BY SOPHIA DURAND
TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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nce inside, the core group made its way to the central atrium between the senate and house chambers, where they held hands and sang songs until the legislative policeman with a bullhorn said to disperse or face arrest. They didn’t disperse. The booking process took a while. A policeman cuffed and read the rights to each of the 84 protesters arrested that week, on June 17. That was the seventh Moral Monday, when the total arrests neared 500. The next step was taking the arrestees down to the legislative cafeteria, from where they boarded prison buses bound for the Wake County Detention Center, just outside of Raleigh. “It is a sweaty, mesh-windowed prison bus straight out of ‘Cool Hand Luke,’” O’Berski recalled. “When your bus pulls out, the NAACP has organized people chanting, ‘Thank you, we love you,’ screaming through bullhorns. You can’t see them through the mesh. That was completely torical scholarship as running parallel to his interest in social justice. This philosophy sent the forsurreal.” mer dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences to jail this summer. The Historian When a small group of black youths decided he protests that burst forth this summer hearken back to North Carolina’s leading to violate local segregation codes and sit down at role in the civil rights movement of the a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. in 1960, they 1960s, said William Chafe, Alice Mary Baldwin kicked off a series of protests around the nation professor of history. He didn’t just write histories and led to the formation of the Student Nonvioof the movement and the Greensboro sit-ins, he lent Coordinating Committee, which became a saw many of the events first hand. He sees his his- leading organizer for civil rights actions.
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“
[Getting arrested] provides very clear evidence of the fact that an awful lot of people are willing to make that sacrifice and take that risk, which in turn encourages others to demonstrate their support..”
-WILLIAM CHAFE
But those North Carolinians also spurred changes within state politics, Chafe said, leading to a recognition that the state needed to treat people of all races and backgrounds more fairly. Former Duke president Terry Sanford, who served as governor from 1961-65, became a voice of this new vision for North Carolina, boosting funds for public education, launching a statewide war on poverty and even sending his son to a desegregated school. This year, when Chafe saw the legislature voting to reject federal funds for Medica expansion, cut spending for education, cut unemployment insurance and change the tax structure in a way that hurts many but helps a few, he felt he needed to act to preserve the legacy of the state since the sit-ins. “In effect, to let them get away with this without protest would be almost to sanction going back to the North Carolina of 1900-1960,” Chafe said. “I felt the necessity of making a statement to protest that kind of reactionary politics.” It remains to be seen, though, how such a statement will change the course of North Carolina politics or whether it will be effective in doing so. The protests cannot change the makeup of the current legislature until it comes up for election in fall 2014. For Chafe, then, the political tactics of the protests—large, visible rallies and hundreds arrested in acts of civil disobedience—play into a long-term electoral strategy. “You’re not going to change the minds of the radical people enacting this legislation, but you are going to be able to lay the groundwork for voter registration and ‘get out the vote’ campaigns, and for conveying a strong signal that this is not where North Carolina wants to be,” he said. “[Getting arrested] provides very clear evidence of the fact that an awful lot of people are willing to make that sacrifice and take that risk, which in turn encourages others to demonstrate their support.” Chafe sees evidence that this message is getting through. As the Greensboro sit-ins spread
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from their point of origin, the current protests have branched out from their metropolitan Raleigh roots with events throughout the state. A rally in Asheville in early August drew an estimated crowd of 10,000, Chafe said, which he called impressive for a town of 84,000. The test now will be whether the rallies can produce a grassroots infrastructure capable of mobilizing widespread turnout more than a year from now, when there won’t be a presidential race to draw voters to the polls. The Canvasser unther Peck, Fred W. Shaffer associate professor of history and public policy, met his wife when they led a movement to organize graduate students at Yale to push for better compensation. Years later, their passion for organizing people to vote led them to Moral Monday, to face arrest side-by-side. Though he has organized for the Obama campaign, Peck sees the drive to register voters as a nonpartisan ideal—the work of “a radical democrat, with a small ‘d.’” “We need a democracy in which everyone not only can vote, but that they want to vote and that whatever decisions we come to collectively represent not a slim majority of the people, but ‘the people,’ whatever that is,” he said. “To me, that is a moral issue. I have a naïve, perhaps, belief that
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if everyone voted, that our democracy is better.” Peck registered about 2,000 voters since he moved to Durham in 2002 and organized a network to register even more. When he noticed that Duke student voter turnout for the 2008 primary fell well below that of other Triangle-area universities, he pushed to give Duke something the other colleges had: an on-campus voting site. He worked to secure it for the general election and saw voter turnout jump from 11 percent of students registered in North Carolina to 84 percent, with three times more students registered for the general election. The youth vote turned out to be one of the strongest voter demographics in North Carolina in 2008, and they went overwhelmingly in favor of Barack Obama, Peck said. The Voter ID law passed by the legislature this summer, though, throws up several roadblocks to this group’s ability to vote. “It’s going to discourage a lot of people who have the right to vote but don’t have the means or the money or transportation or the documentation, or they have a status as students that makes it extremely problematic for them to vote,” he said. “It’s no accident that those are the people who elected Barack Obama. It does feel like payback.” The law pressures in-state students to vote at home rather than at school or jeopardize their parents’ tax exemption for a dependent child— which can amount to several thousand dollars.
This means a student voter will have to change their driver’s license to a college address, vote absentee or travel home to vote on a Tuesday in the middle of the semester, Peck said, all of which are new requirements needed to exercise the right to vote. Non-student voters will need new documentation in order to vote and will have fewer opportunities to vote early, among other changes. Peck and his wife, Lecturing Fellow in English Faulkner Fox, now have to decide how to deal with the legal ramifications of their arrests. They could plead guilty, which comes with a $180 fine and 25 hours of community service, or they can go to trial to challenge the charges of second-degree trespassing, failure to disperse on command and violating legislative building rules. Peck said he considered doing the community service—“I thought I’d register voters.” But now he’s thinking of protesting the charges. “We have done nothing wrong,” he said. “We sang spirituals in the legislative building. We sang songs after office hours.” With a household of several children, including a seven-year-old, they can’t take the risk of going to trial if it could end up with both parents in jail, Peck added. The NAACP has promised free legal protection either way, but the choice belongs to the individuals. Although the summer’s actions may be over, the effects are still coming to bear on the people involved and those who watched them. TOWERVIEW MAGAZINE
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CONNEL fULLENKAMP,
the inquisitor
director of undergraduate studies and professor of the practice of economics
“The discovery that most changed history was the invention of the printing press, because it democratized knowledge and enabled people outside the elite to disseminate ideas and arguments cheaply—which was a big change in the power structure. Up to that point, even the big innovations like the invention of writing, money, beer, and so on still didn't alter the power structure of society that much. After the invention of money, for example, we just had another tool to use to enforce our existing social structure, which then became like a bunch of chimpanzees but with money.”
JEAN fERGUSON, head of research and instructional services and librarian for global health
CARSON HOLLOWAY, librarian for history of science and technology, military history, British and Irish studies, Canadian studies and general history
“The most pivotal ‘discovery’ in history may have been the voyages to the Americas beginning in the late 15th century. This age of discovery fueled the imagination of Europeans and began to provide people avenues to affect cultural change and to alter their individual destinies by immigrating to a new world with new possibilities. The foundations of the early modern world set in motion the forces that have resulted in the globalization we experience today.”
“As a librarian, I feel obligated to propose that the printing press or perhaps the Internet most changed the course of history. Both have been responsible for the democratization of information and the ability to easily spread new ideas.... I might [also] offer the vaccine as instrumental in eradicating killer diseases and improving the overall health of the world. Personally, the invention of the engine and the airplane, allowing us to travel to other countries and experience different cultures, has made the world a more interesting place.”
LAURA wILLIAMS, “My first impulse, having just come back from Italy, is to say that the answer has to be gelato, but I think that’s actually the answer to a different question: ‘What has been the best invention for the good of mankind? ;)’”
Music Librarian
MOHAMED NOOR, Biology Professor
which
discovery
most changed the course of
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“In a word, domestication. By growing our own livestock and crops, humans were able to settle in locations and not have to chase down meals or resources that may be sporadic and quickly depleted. Even more importantly, domestication gave us 'control' over these things via artificial selection—making juicy, sweet corn from dry maize; woolly sheep from mostly hairy ancestors; and friendly, sociable dogs and guinea pigs from their wild progenitors. Finally, and much more recently, these products of artificial selection continue to provide critical insights into our world by helping us appreciate how natural selection works.”
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