“Harry Belafonte’s talk was one of the most profound history lessons you could have had,” said Willie Jennings, a co-chair of university’s King celebration committee and a dean in the DivinitySchool. “For a student to hear that is a once-in-a-lifetime.”

Writing online in FrontPage Magazine, Duke junior Steve Miller, president of the Duke chapter of Students for Academic Freedom, said, “It’s a sad and troubling thing to see a packed house celebrating this man and his hate, believing and reveling in his every word.” 

Responding to such criticisms on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” show, John Burness Duke’s senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, said, “The best way to counter what people don’t like about what Mr. Belafonte might say is to go back with counterarguments and at the end of the day, as a result of those discussions, you have what’s called education.”

A student who heard Belafonte speak had another response.

“I think a lot of times we try to make everyone feel comfortable with what’s being said as opposed to the spirit of the holiday and the spirit of what Martin Luther King was trying to do, and he was a liberal person,” said Duke senior Thomas Stratton. “I mean, I’m not sure if the people who oppose Belafonte today would have supported Martin Luther King then.”

Ben Reese, vice president for institutional equity at Duke and one of the co-chairs of the university’s King celebration committee, said he was pleased with the crowds at commemoration events but acknowledged that conservative voices were largely absent.

“I don’t hear comments that are as representative as they might be,” he said. For next year’s celebration of King, he said, “I really am going to think creatively about how to engage the conservative students.”

Belafonte’s speech was not the only event that sparked debate and discussion under the university’s King commemoration theme of “Call and Response: Listening, Learning, and Living the Legacy.”

At the Freedom School teach-in sessions on Monday in the Bryan Center’s Von Canon rooms, President Richard H. Brodhead in his opening remarks remembered the Civil Rights Movement as “the series of events that let me know that there were more things in the world than I reckoned,” and invited students to use the day to expand their views of the world.

The implications of Hurricane Katrina was the topic for a series of sessions.

Danielle Taylor, dean of humanities at Dillard University in New Orleans, gave a firsthand account of rebuilding in New Orleans.

She said 1,100 of Dillard’s 2,000 students have returned to the historical black university (HCBU) campus, one of three HBCUs in the city. She said the HBCUs will be crucial for reviving New Orleans’ character as “the most African of American cities.”

Professor Kenneth J. Surin passed out a list ranking countries in order of equality of wealth distribution, which put the United States below all developed nations and tied with Turkmenistan. Commenting on the list’s relevance to Hurricane Katrina, he said, “So when the refrain went up -- ‘Why does [the U.S.] look like a third-world country?’ -- in terms of economic inequality, you have the answer there.”

Professor Maurice Wallace expressed skepticism about the intentions and effectiveness of church relief efforts after Katrina. “Relief from the faithful is never totally pure,” he said, suggesting that Christians should approach relief work with the attitude “there but for the grace of God go I.”

Nicholas Dula, a recent UNC graduate living in Durham, said the discussion gave him a new appreciation of the challenges in rebuilding New Orleans.

“There’s no way of giving a voice to everyone who is displaced -- that didn’t really occur to me [before],” he said.

After hearing a Freedom School presentation by the Rev. Mazie Ferguson, sophomore Will Arnold said he was inspired to “get out and start making a difference” by getting “involved more in the ACLU or local Durham programs.”

Senior Malcolm Ruff went to the session on white privilege by Polly Weiss, director of diversity and equity programs in the Office of Institutional Equity.

“People felt we were preaching to the choir,” he said. “The white people in there already have thought about white privilege.”

Chris Champion, a senior who is applying to medical schools, went to the same session and said it drew his attention to how medicine is “really white-dominated.” He noted all 16 of the people who have interviewed him for medical school have been white.

At King commemoration events on Friday, about 150 employees gathered in the morning at the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture to have breakfast, listen to King’s 1968 “Drum Major Instinct” sermon and discuss it.

“People responded to that sermon like they would in church,” said Joe Jackson, assistant director for facilities management and an organizer of the event. “It woke me up this morning.”

During a repeat of the event that afternoon, staff specialist Nikki Harris said that the “Drum Major” sermon with its description of racial tensions and anti-war declarations speaks to life today.

“If it wasn’t for [King], I probably wouldn’t be able to hold the position I hold, great or small,” she said. “That was the guy.”

Friday evening in the Richard White Auditorium, movie director Charles Stone III delivered his presentation between signs on chairs that read “Filmmaker” and “Black Filmmaker.”

“I sit in both chairs, I guess,” Stone told an audience of about 100 people.

He lamented that for African-American characters in Hollywood films, “you’re either ghetto or Martin Luther King … and nothing in the middle.”

For contrast, Stone played clips from his films, which include “Drumline” and “Mr. 3000,” to illustrate, he said, how black characters can be portrayed with complexities present in all people. Commenting on a marching band duel scene from “Drumline,” he said, “It’s a black thing worked into a universal fabric.”

After the presentation, Duke graduate Khalil Tribie said, “I wish we could do stuff like this more often and not even connect it with Martin Luther King.

“I don’t see this [as being] any more appropriate now than it would be in November,” he said.

Celebrations on the King holiday Monday were capped off by a dramatic reading of the play “Speak Truth to Power: Voices From Beyond the Dark” in the nearly-filled Reynolds Theater.

In inviting people to his play about the struggles and victories of contemporary human rights activists around the world, Professor Ariel Dorfman noted that King was relatively unknown 50 years ago when, in January 1956, he decided to oppose Jim Crow laws.

“He’s calling us to be in our own ‘January of 1956,’ to stand up and take the first step,” Dorfman said.

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 Some King commemoration programs, including the “Gathering in the Stories” photo documentary exhibit in Duke South Clinic, continue beyond this week. See a summary of the 2006 King commemoration.