From the Administration
I can imagine an ideal university, a place where students, employees and scholars come together from different continents and states, different religions and political viewpoints, different races and classes. In this place, these differences are the source of curiosity and robust, respectful debate, not of division and alienation. The people of this place seek out and intellectually engage those who are different to help see their own thoughts more clearly.
Duke University is committed to becoming such a place, one where diversity is not measured in numbers only but in the inclusive, welcoming, stimulating climate we all experience as members of this community. This pledge was renewed in October 2006 with the approval of the university strategic plan, Making a Difference. In that plan, we outline our goals to aggressively recruit and retain a diverse complement of faculty and students and to promote engagement and understanding across all human boundaries.
Why does diversity matter?
The purpose of a university is to expose its students to the wide range of human experience to train their minds in creativity and flexibility. It is to ask challenging questions about the pressing needs of our time, and then seek answers through research and discussion. Neither of these things can happen in a world where people think the same way and reinforce each other’s preset opinions. Breakthrough moments of learning tend to come through the play of difference, when the clash of ideas produces new insight. Further, in our increasingly interconnected world, our students must be able to understand and collaborate across the many dimensions of difference – of race and ethnicity, income, religious affiliation, national culture, and many more – to succeed. Diversity makes our world a far more interesting place, and that’s a good reason to build this university as a place where difference isn’t just tolerated, but actively embraced.
Duke has made great progress in the past few years. In undergraduate admissions, we are drawing an increasing number of applications from under-represented U.S. groups and from overseas. A third of all graduate and professional students are international, and our medical school leads the nation in the percentage of African-American students it recruits. We have increased the number of African-American faculty and faculty of color in all fields, and of women in the fields where they have been underrepresented. We have created new policies that help our faculty and staff balance their work and family lives and expanded our equal opportunity policies to include gender identity. We have raised more than $220 million toward a Financial Aid Initiative that will ensure that all students have access to and can afford a Duke education.
But we can do even better in creating an environment where all people listen and learn from each other and feel their voices are heard. We can do more to help students engage with people who look or act or believe differently than they do, in daily experiences inside and outside the classroom. We can do more to invite people from all backgrounds and places around the globe into the Duke community, and to retain their talent once it’s here.
We can do all these things, and we will.
Richard H. Brodhead