Center Opens with Invitation to Community
Scholars from around the globe to participate
Friday, February 2, 2001
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Duke University will cap a weeklong opening celebration for the new
John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International
Studies with a Sunday, Feb. 11, invitation for the Durham community
to take a closer look.
Named after John Hope Franklin, a Duke professor emeritus,
historian, intellectual leader and life-long civil rights activist,
the center represents a unique consortium of 15 different
university programs spanning the humanities, arts and social
sciences. The goal of the center, according to university
officials, is to foster collaborative research and innovative
teaching on issues of profound global significance.
Franklin and John F. Burness, Duke's senior vice president for
public affairs and government relations, will be on hand to welcome
visitors to the center on Feb. 11.Tutu and Franklin: A
Journey Toward Peace, a documentary scheduled to air on PBS
later this month featuring candid discussion between Franklin and
Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning archbishop from South
Africa."
The center began operations last fall when about 60 faculty
members, students and support staff moved into the newly renovated
building, which is on the city bus line and easily accessible to
the campus and Durham residents. The facility boasts
state-of-the-art technological resources, including a daily
electronic bulletin board, in-house publishing, interactive
videoconferencing, video-on-demand Webcasting and the ability to
simultaneously translate presentations given in foreign
languages.
"In today's global world, it is no longer sufficient to look at the
most pressing social and political issues from a local
perspective," said Franklin Center founding co-director Cathy
Davidson, vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at Duke and
Ruth F. Devarney Professor of English. "From race relations and the
legacy of the African-American experience to equality and
opportunity among diverse populations, we need to better understand
the connections, similarities and differences across other
countries and cultures if we intend to address our own
problems.
"Duke is responding to this challenge through the creation of the
Franklin Center."
A weeklong formal opening celebration will kick off on Monday, Feb.
5, with an afternoon of poetry, prose and fiction with visiting
artist Yvette Christiansënd Franklin Center writer-in-residence
Ariel Dorfman, who is Walter Hines Page Research professor of
literature and Latin American Studies at Duke.
In addition to the Feb. 11 community open house, other opening
celebration events include:
- Feb. 6, 3:50 p.m. -- Open house for the course
"Remembrance and Reconciliation," taught by Karla Holloway, one of
the center's founding co-directors and dean of humanities and
social sciences at Duke, along with L. Gregory Jones, dean of the
Duke Divinity School.
- Feb. 7, 4 p.m. -- 2001 Ambassador Biddle
Distinguished Lecture by James A. Joseph, former U.S. ambassador to
South Africa and now a member of Duke's faculty, on "Politics and
Ethics: What I Learned from Nelson Mandela. (At the Sanford
Institute for Public Policy at Duke.)
- Feb. 9, 9:30 a.m. -- Ceremonial ribbon-cutting
and open house.
- Feb. 9, 2 p.m. -- Panel discussion on "African
Americans and the Media," moderated by William Raspberry, Pulitzer
Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and professor of
the practice of public policy and journalism at Duke.
- Feb. 10, 9:30 a.m. -- Daylong academic
seminar, titled "The Humanities, Area Studies and the University
Conversation Toward Cross-Institutional Cooperation."
Franklin Center opening events will continue throughout the
month of February. Unless otherwise noted, all are open to the
public and taking place in the Franklin Center.
For a complete, up-to-date schedule, see the center's web site at
http://www.duke.edu/web/jhfcenter.
