Centennial Oral Histories:
Peter Lange

Peter Feaver

Hello, I’m Peter Feaver, and I have the great privilege of interviewing my friend Peter Lange for the Duke Centennial Oral History Project. So, Peter, welcome. 

Peter Lange

Thank you. 

PF

And it’s so good to see you again. We’re going to dig into your time as provost. You were the longest-serving provost in Duke history. So very consequential in your role there. But before we get there, I want to talk about your career, before your provostial career. 

PL

Okay. 

PF

So talk a little bit about what you did before you came to Duke, and what brought you to Duke. 

PL

Okay. So, I went to school in New York City, and then I went to Oberlin College. I was the first person from my rather snotty little private school in New York City to go to college in Ohio. They thought that was like, “Oh, you don’t do that.” Anyway. And then after that, I got a Ph.D. at MIT. And then I taught at Harvard for eight years. And then I did the usual thing. You know, very, very few assistant professors got — well, I was an associate [professor] — but got promoted to tenure. And I came to Duke in 1981 as a visiting associate professor. And then in 1982, I was given tenure and put on the faculty in the Political Science department at Duke. 

PF

Well, I was going to ask. You had hidden the discipline. 

PL

Oh, the discipline. Right. So, I did comparative politics, mostly Western Europe, and then advanced industrial democracies. And then, I think the thing that’s relevant to this interview, really, is that during [that] time from 1982 until the early 1990s, beyond teaching and research,

I did a variety of committees at Duke. Pretty much seeking self-consciously to be on committees that actually had some consequences. Because there are a lot of committees, as you know, [for] the faculty that don’t have a lot of consequences. And then in 1982, I chaired a committee on behalf of the provost about internationalizing Duke. And we produced a report at that time which really argued for a kind of pervasive strategy of internationalization, not just creating a building and a center, but trying to make it permeate the whole university. When President [Nannerl] Keohane came, when Nan came, she was committed to that. She believed strongly that Duke needed to be a more international place. So that report fit into her thing. And I also became a vice provost for academic and international affairs, which I did from 1994 to 1996. 

PF

You said in 1982. 

PL

I meant 1992, sorry. And then in 1996, I decided to step away from the Provost’s Office and go back to the Department as chair, which I did for three years. And then in 1999, the opportunity to become provost opened up and I went for it and I got it. And then I was provost from 1999 until 2014. I think. One further thing. In the period from 1997 to 1998, I chaired a committee to completely redo the undergraduate curriculum. Which ended up [being] Curriculum 2000. Which has just now, a long time later, been reformed. 

PF

Well, you dangled a lot of threads. I’m going to pull one of them. But first I want to go back. What was Duke like? What was its national reputation [and] its standing when you came in, and what was the draw, if any, besides a paycheck. 

PL

The paycheck was big. The paycheck was kind of a big one. And it was a very — I would say Duke was a leading, the leading, regional university in the South in the early 1980s. The only thing close would have been Vanderbilt [University]. And it had kind of a rising reputation. But it was nothing like what we are now. 

PF

And in some ways, the political science department was similar. That is, over the course of the 20 years — culminating in your time at chair — it went from a lower ranking to a more —

PL

Right. It had been more highly ranked, actually, probably in the 1960s and 1970s. And then it had been — about the time I came, it was pretty much on a downward curve because some of the most prestigious people had moved on. And so we really, in the mid-80s, really built the department. And I’d say “we.” It was a group of us faculty that got together and decided we really needed to raise our aspirations and manage to get the resources from the administration necessary to do some great hires.

00:05:35:09 – 00:06:02:14

PF

Well, we’ll talk about that. Not just in terms of political science, but more generally, how does a university go from a good regional reputation to something national? And then eventually international? 

PL

Okay, I think first of all you have to make great hires. And that means you have to raise your aspirational level. Which means you also need to raise your internal standards. Which means it’s really a process, and a cultural change.

00:06:02:14 – 00:06:26:21

PL

You can’t impose rule. You have to get people to buy into the fact that we can be better, and that to do that we need to have higher aspirations, to be more stringent in our hiring criteria. We had a couple of cases in the department, as you know, where we had great teachers, for instance, but they were not great researchers. And we chose not to give those people tenure. And that set a tone. That was, I mean, somewhat divisive. Because [in] schools that are rising in trajectory, there’s always faculty who would prefer the older model to the newer model. And you’ve got to work through that. So I would say that was true for the university as a whole.

00:06:51:16 – 00:07:19:22

PF

And then in some cases, is it hiring superstars, people who are internationally famous, and then they come and then you have a little bit of that? 

PL

There’s some of that. And that’s what happened in Literature. That’s what happened in humanities fields. That was before I became provost. That was really [former Provost] Phillip Griffiths. And that was a less expensive way of achieving a national reputation in a sub-area.

00:07:20:00 – 00:07:43:08

PL

But you can’t sustain that. You can’t do only that. Because you have to more broadly raise all of it. For instance, when I became provost, the Engineering School was very good, but it really only had one really nationally-recognized area, which is biomedical engineering. Where it had been a frontier department, probably the first or the second one.

00:07:43:10 – 00:08:02:12

PL

So we determined that for the 21st century, we were going to have to have a much stronger Engineering School. So we committed a lot of resources. So that’s an example of where you identify areas where you’re weaker, decide how important they are, and then if they’re important enough you have to put the resources in there. You really need three things.

00:08:02:12 – 00:08:34:11

PL

You need good ideas, good leadership, and money. Those are the three things you need. Well, a lesser man would ask if the Political Science Department had made a strategic hire in 1990 in this space. But I’m not going to ask that question. 

PF

Oh, you’re not? 

PF

No, I’m not going to ask that question. Instead, I’m going to ask you to talk a little bit about the review you did that pushed Duke to have a more broad-based strategy on internationalization. Because that’s taking Duke from national aspirations to international aspirations.

00:08:34:11 – 00:08:56:00

PF

And in some ways, that’s a much, much bigger jump. 

PL

So, well, there really are two major stages of that. One is in the early 1990s, which is that report I did, which really argued that we needed to — which was really what I would call a magnet strategy. How do we attract more international resources to Duke? More faculty [and] more students?

00:08:56:00 – 00:09:29:04

PL

At that point, I think 2% of our undergraduate student body were students with visas. [With] international passports. Now it’s like 12%. We had relatively fewer faculty. We didn’t even know how to pay faculty when they went abroad. I remember we had a long discussion with the Payroll Office to get them to really figure out how to pay people. Because they had —

00:09:29:04 – 00:09:53:01

PL

No, you know — it wasn’t on their radar. [Crosstalk] No, it’s more complicated. There’s tax issues, et cetera, et cetera. So it was — and there was [also] just sort of bureaucratic resistance. So one of the things I learned then is that nothing happens unless you go all the way down. If you just think you’re going to do something by having a good idea and declaring, “This is what’s going to happen,” it’s not going to happen.

00:09:53:03 – 00:10:13:00

PL

You’ve got to go into the structure. You’ve got to understand how things are related all the way down, through the bureaucratic structure, and then make those changes. And that really paid off when I became provost. 

PF

Was there resistance to — you mentioned bureaucratic resistance on the payroll issue — but more generally was there resistance to internationalization. Did people say, “No, we’ve got to focus on [how] we’re a university in the South?

PL

No, not so much. I think that was more a difference of opinion, about whether we would do it with this kind of pervasive strategy or whether we should build a big center for international studies. There were people — especially people, for instance, who had connections with Harvard — who would say, you know, “Oh, no, no, no. We need a big center for international studies.”

00:10:34:13 – 00:11:01:16

PL

And I kept saying, “No, that’s just going to be an isolated center for those activities. And what we really want is international to [be] everywhere.” And I can remember a meeting at which we were pushing the international approach. And one of the scientists in the meeting said, “I don’t get this international thing. After all, you know, science is science.”

00:11:01:18 – 00:11:28:04

PL

And another scientist, who had just spent six months in Paris working in labs — a chemist who had spent six months working in labs in France — said “No, that’s not true.” And I can remember going, “Oh, it’s not just me.” [Laughs] 

PF

Buy them coffee. 

PL

Well, that’s a different story. 

PF

So, whom the gods would destroy, they first assign to reform the curriculum.

00:11:28:06 – 00:11:51:23

PL

Uh, I don’t know. That’s a Biblical reference. [Laughs] 

PF

But you attempted to reform the curriculum. 

PL

No, we did reform the curriculum. 

PF

But this is usually a.. 

PL

Graveyard. 

PL

Exactly. So how did they talk you into it, and how did you avoid having this being the capstone. Well, that’ll tell you something about me, which is that I volunteered for the activity. I wanted to do that. 

PF

You volunteered to chair it, or to be on the committee?

00:11:52:01 – 00:12:17:22

PL

I volunteered to even have such a committee, and then to chair it. Because I believed that we could not be — well, goes back to this evolution thing. The evolution of the institution. Right? We had a curriculum which was convenient for undergraduates. But it wasn’t a really profoundly liberal arts curriculum, because it didn’t drive people into areas that they didn’t want to study and or they came from high school feeling they weren’t as good at. So we had these six areas of knowledge. You could not do one. You could take only two courses in a second. Okay, so guess what? Foreign languages was the least done. And math was the second least done. Okay.

00:12:41:08 – 00:13:08:03

PL

So we revised the curriculum doing that. And then it was just an enormous amount of political work. Grassroots political work. Going [from] department to department — by me and other members of the committee — selling this curriculum, selling the language requirement. And, basically, then when it finally got to the Arts and Sciences Council, we didn’t have that much resistance.

00:13:08:09 – 00:13:32:03

PL

It went through. And I was pretty confident. I knew how to count votes at that point. So we knew we knew it was going to go through then. 

PF

But along the way, often what happens is a stallion gets turned into a camel, right? That a well-designed, logically coherent approach gets changed by compromise, compromise, compromise, into something [else].

00:13:32:03 – 00:14:04:22

PL

Alright. So I knew, and I impressed on our committee, [that] we had certain core principles we were not giving up. So let me give you an example. One of the things we wanted to do was go from 34 credits for graduation to 36. And another one was to have a language requirement. Okay. So we got pushback from Athletics about both of those things [crosstalk], because of student-athletes. Especially about the language requirement.

00:14:05:00 – 00:14:28:17

PL

And we got pushback. Then we did a forum with work-study students, and they said 36 credits is going to be a tremendous burden on us, because we have to work along with doing our coursework. So we talked about it in the committee. We said, “Okay, we’re not going to give up both. So which is going to be more important for the quality of a Duke liberal arts education?”

00:14:28:17 – 00:15:04:04

PL

Over time we said, “Okay, we’ll give ground on the credits issue.” And we went back to 34. And we [were] going to stick with the language requirement. And we did that. And we got Athletics — Athletics saw that as a compromise that they could support. And the work study students, of course, did as well. And with respect to the language requirement, the only people who were opposed to the language department requirement were romance studies.

00:15:04:06 – 00:15:28:05

PF

Why? This is not obvious. 

PL

Okay, why was romance studies opposed. Because the senior non-language-teaching — that is the ones who taught the literature courses and such — felt [they didn’t] want students in [their] classes who don’t really want to take [their] courses. If you have a language requirement with the structure that we had, which is that you had to take one upper level course, [they said] “We’re going to have all these students.”

00:15:28:05 – 00:15:53:17

PL

Okay? Well, today they would be in deep, deep trouble without the language requirement. Way fewer student enrollments. So, you know, times change. But that was it. 

PF

Now you can’t design a curriculum that students and departments can’t game. So over time there was an effort, I think, to game it and find the course that fit the bingo sheet the most.

00:15:53:17 – 00:16:11:20

PL

Sure. 

PF

So as you saw the curriculum unfold over the course of your time, what were the ones that paid off? What were the bets that paid off, and what were the ones that you . . . 

PL

Well, I think the whole curriculum paid off because we have a much better curriculum. We have a much stronger liberal arts education.

00:16:11:20 – 00:16:33:18

PL

And as you saw in the new curriculum reform, they’ve retained their commitment to the humanities. Which our curriculum really did, and [that] has been sustained. So I would say that, yeah, there was gaming. I think sometimes too much has been made of that. As you said, people game every curriculum. We gamed curriculum when I went to Oberlin.

00:16:33:18 – 00:16:57:14

PL

People game the curriculum wherever they go. So could they game this curriculum more? It just looked more obvious because of the matrix. But not really, you know. And what they couldn’t do nearly as much was avoid. And I was way more worried about students not being exposed to the things than I was them being exposed to it through this course rather than that course. 

PF

I assume you’ve taken a look at the reformed curriculum? Do you have anything that you want to say about [that]. 

PL

No. 

PF

Ok. 

PL

It’s 25 years old. 

PF

Yeah. It’s time to make some changes. So the normal progression of a faculty member like you, would be once you’ve had the taste of Admin, of, you know, working in the Allen Building in some way, you either stay there and eventually leave to go to another university — rise the ranks and leave — or you’re cured for all time.

00:17:32:02 – 00:17:55:09

PF

Never want to be in the admin. You took an interesting turn. You came back to chair the department, which in some ways might be a step back. But then you vaulted forward to be provost. 

PL

Right. 

PF

So talk a little bit about that. 

PL

And that’s a little complicated. And speaking of gaming. 

00:17:55:11 – 00:18:15:20

PF

So, I worked for — there was a new provost in 1994. There was a new president in 1994. There was a new dean of Arts and Sciences in 1994. So by 1996, I was kind of tired of being a vice provost. And I wanted a position with a little more authority, which you may laugh and say, “What? The chair of the department has more authority?”`

00:18:16:00 – 00:18:37:01

PL

But the vice provost is a vice, you know. And the chair of the department, at least we could — and you’d remember we tried to do some, I think, interesting things. So I went back to the department and I thought my senior administrative career was over because we had three — well, I didn’t ever think I’d be president — but the provost was going to be ten years.

00:18:37:01 – 00:18:58:19

PL

Eight more years. [The] dean was going to be eight more years, at least. You know, with those two people in those positions. So I thought, either I stay at Duke and I don’t move up in administration — which I did have a desire to do — or I go to another school. And in fact, that was one of the only times I ever made a list of places that I would like to go.

00:18:58:19 – 00:19:17:23

PL

Well, if you make a list of places you’d like to go, and you cross off the places where you’ll never get [hired], it’s a pretty short list, if you’re at Duke. And so I sort of said, “Well, okay, so I’ll be at Duke.” And then the provost position opened up in 1999, and people started pushing me for that job.

00:19:17:23 – 00:19:37:04

PL

I think the curriculum — the success of the curriculum reform — made a big difference. And I think it impressed Nan, too. And then, you know, I went through the search process and I got selected. 

PF

So before you left, any consequential tenure decisions while you were chair or should I not ask about a consequential tenure decision?

00:19:37:04 – 00:20:01:17

PL

I don’t really remember any. 

PF

None that you can remember [laughs]. 

PL

The same way I don’t remember the hiring decisions. I don’t remember that.

PF

He was chair when I got tenure, and so thank you, again. 

PL

Well, I didn’t do it. 

PF

But, to jump from department chair to provost without ever being dean. Is that common? 

PL

No.

PF
So talk about the pros and cons of that kind of jump.

00:20:01:19 – 00:20:20:23

PL

I can’t talk about it in general. In my case, I was ready. I was prepared. I got that position because I knew what Duke needed. Not too long ago, maybe 2 or 3 years ago, I looked at the statement — I came across that statement that I had sent to the search committee. You know, you have to make a statement.

00:20:21:01 – 00:20:44:23

PL

And it was right on. I mean, it was what we actually did. And I think it was consequential for getting that job.

PF

It was controversial to have a political science president pick a political science provost. 

PL

But that was Nan’s problem, not my problem. 

PF

Right. So did you have to bend over backward the other way not to show favoritism? How did you manage that? 

PL

No. I mean, every administration that comes in the job has to be careful about not feathering their own nest. But my nest would have been political science, and I wasn’t going to do that anyway. And no senior administrator would do that. But I didn’t bend over too far backwards.

00:21:04:11 – 00:21:28:04

PL

I mean, you guys did fine. And, so, no. 

PF

Well, if I were a lab scientist or I was interviewing lab scientists, would they say [in] those years Duke improved in the social sciences but not as fast in the sciences? 

PL
No. Where did we make the biggest investment after I became provost? Engineering. Okay. So, this will take us to strategic planning.

00:21:28:04 – 00:21:55:06

PL

But basically, in 1999, the previous provost and I had jointly decided on who we were going to have as the new dean of Engineering. And that was Kristina Johnson. And attached to that was a commitment. This was really a little bit on his part, and totally on my part, that we could not have a boutique engineering school and be a great national and eventually international university.

00:21:55:08 – 00:22:19:14

PL

So we needed to really beef up engineering. And that was really the charge to Dean Johnson, one which she was totally into. And then she was proved an incredibly effective fundraiser, in part because there was a lot of pent-up enthusiasm about engineering among people who made quite a bit of money but had not seen engineering as being a place that was attractive to give donations, because they didn’t think you had enough dynamism. All of a sudden now it’s looking good, so we got a lot of money. It’s also — we had one donor who had had a mammoth hit, not in private equity, [but] in a tech company. And so it was just a very fortuitous time.

00:22:44:13 – 00:23:10:11

PL

When I became provost, we had 65 faculty in Engineering. When I left, there were 115. And if you think about that, that’s 65 or 70 new positions. 

PF

Each with their own lab needs. 

PL

Right. But think also about how many hires that means. Because you have people retiring, too. So if you’re growing like that. Yeah, I mean maybe 105, not 115.

00:23:10:11 – 00:23:36:05

PL

Sorry. But in either case it doesn’t matter. So it was huge growth. And as I’ve often said, there are only three ways to really improve a department, okay? One is through retirements. 

PF

Additions by subtraction. 

PL

Addition by subtraction. The other is a second form of the addition by subtraction, which is that the person leaves to go to another school.

00:23:36:07 – 00:24:07:11

PL

And the third one is growth. And the first two are very slow. So the only rapid way to really improve is to grow a unit. And then to do it with a level of standards, and a willingness to spend, to meet the market necessities. And that’s what we did. 

PF

Also going to be interviewed in this series is Tallman Trask. 

00:24:07:11 – 00:24:26:23

PL

Yep. 

PF

And you and he overlapped for a significant period of time. 

PL

The whole time. 

PF

You both served for a long time, but you served together for a long time. And, of course, he was watching the money side that you just referenced. So talk a little bit about how Duke was able to provide the resources. Was it just through philanthropy? What other things needed to be done to make your strategic moves possible?

PL

Okay, I would say — Well, first of all, let me say Tallman and I were like a team. Okay. We had this thing called the Budget Working Group. It was Tallman and his two top people, and me and my two people. [We] met every week.

00:24:54:01 – 00:25:13:11

PL

And in that Budget Working Group there was basically an agreement that any issue in anybody’s territory could be on the table if it was relevant. Even if you knew who the final decision-maker was going to be. 

PF

And it wasn’t you. 

PL

Well, it would be — for some things it would be me. So there might be [that question], “What are we going to do about Engineering?”

00:25:13:13 – 00:25:26:13

PL

“Okay, well, I want to spend this amount of money there, and I have it.” But it still would be on the table. And Tallman could say, “Well, you know, that’s not really a smart way to spend the money.” Or, “That’s a great way to spend the money.” Or, “If you’re going to build a building, we should do it here, not there.”

00:25:26:14 – 00:25:56:05

PL

So it was a mutually-respected collaboration, in which you had two people that had a lot of authority, and a lot of self-confidence, but could work together in a really good way. And that was critical. And I’ve seen in other universities where the CFO, so to speak, and provost don’t work closely together.

00:25:56:07 – 00:26:21:17

PL

And it’s always weaker. 

PF

Two very strong-willed people. Shouting matches you can share? 

PL

No, never. 

PF

So you must have disagreed on things. 

PL

Well, you asked [about] shouting matches. I’m not saying we never disagreed. 

PF

Okay. 

PL

Sure, we disagreed. And you know, and there were times — I’ll give you [an example]. You know, during the Great Recession. Right.

00:26:21:19 – 00:26:44:21

PL

Okay. Figuring out how we were going to — and then I’m going to bring in something else here — but how we were going to cut back our expenses without really damaging our academic momentum. That was a critical task. And for that to happen, we needed both Tallman and me, and we needed the board. And the president, obviously.

00:26:44:23 – 00:27:08:23

PL

And we did that. And we were one of the only universities that kept growing and kept hiring, among our peers, during that period. And that was critical for our long-term development. 

PF

Well, let’s dig into that, because that was one of the great shocks, geopolitical shocks, that you experienced. That some schools maybe never fully recovered from.

00:27:09:02 – 00:27:36:08

PL

Right. 

PF

So talk about why that was such a shock for a well-heeled university like Duke, and the steps that you took to avoid it bringing us down. 

PL

Okay. Well, you know, the value of our endowment declined. That meant the income from the endowment declined. The size of the annual giving from the Duke Endowment in Charlotte declined.

00:27:36:09 – 00:27:57:13

PL

The pressures on tuition were pretty severe. Alright. So you have fewer resources. 

PF

And greater need for financial aid, perhaps? 

PL

Yeah, but that wasn’t, I don’t remember that. I don’t have a perfect recollection. I don’t remember that being such a [factor]. Okay. I mean, it was already big. So it didn’t. So we had to cut.

00:27:57:14 – 00:28:20:08

PL

Okay. So the first question is alright, we could do an across the board cut. I said — this is an example of Tallman and I. Okay. So the easy thing is to cut everything by 10 percent. 

PF

Everybody takes a haircut. 

PL

Yep. But that’s very damaging, because some people deserve a big haircut. In fact, they should have had their hair cut long ago.

00:28:20:10 – 00:28:56:14

PL

And this is an opportunity to do it. And other places, if you do that, you’re going to really damage your momentum. So we decided not to do that. We had a target that we had to hit, but we could hit it differentially across different units. That was the first thing. The second thing was through that collaboration between me and Tallman over the preceding years when we’d had big growths in endowment and therefore an endowment income, we had not distributed all of that money.

00:28:56:16 – 00:29:29:16

PL

So, let’s say in the preceding year, you as dean of, well let’s say you were dean of Arts and Sciences, and let’s say in the preceding year you got a certain amount of money based on your share of the endowment income. And the next year, because the endowment income grew so much, you would get 10% more, or 15% more, than you had the year before. Because the endowment during that period [inaudible]. We said, “No, you’re capped at 7% and the residual will go into a central fund.”

00:29:29:18 – 00:29:50:02

PL

So then when that downturn ended, we went to the board and we said, “Wait a moment, we’re not taking out of endowment. We’re taking out of quasi-endowment, that we ourselves built up, through the care that we’ve taken in the preceding years, and that will allow us to continue to hire at a higher rate than was expected.”

00:29:50:02 – 00:30:10:14

PL

Then I had to go to all my deans and say, “When you do cutting, you have to do the same thing. You have to cut your expenses outside of faculty more than hiring.” So we held to, I think, that 80% of their preceding three years of hiring. Or something like that, I can’t remember the exact numbers.

00:30:10:16 – 00:30:41:20

PL

So that we could maintain our momentum of hiring, and of improving. And also as we did that, they were unhappy with that to some degree. Because it meant, “Okay, no more dinners.” You know, we imposed a whole lot of things that the faculty didn’t like. The law school faculty was like, “Oh, we can’t eat dinner at these places.”

00:30:41:20 – 00:31:07:17

PL

And it was like, “No.” And the deans were fine. But they had to deal with their own internal. 

PF

Well, I want to make more explicit something that you alluded to in passing. When Nan Keohane came as president, one of the things that she remarked upon was how little strategic money there was, and so how decentralized all of those decisions had to be.

00:31:07:19 – 00:31:50:08

PF

And that changed dramatically over the next 20 years. 

PL

Correct.

PF

And coinciding with that was the development of strategic funds that you identified, and also the development of strategic planning. You played a key role in both. So talk a little bit more about — if you have anything more to say on the strategic funds — but more on the strategic planning. 

PL

Well, the strategic funds happened — I was actually a vice provost and serving ex-officio on what was then called [inaudible], which was the sort of budget committee. And that happened earlier, and that was where we created this thing called, what was it, virtual equity, which was essentially for

00:31:50:08 – 00:32:08:23

PL

the first time — do you know how this works? Do I need to describe it? 

PF

I know how it works, but you might for the interested viewers. [Crosstalk] 

PL

Okay, so we had gone to [a] responsibility center management [model]. So each school had cash reserves.

00:32:09:02 – 00:32:37:03

PF

Right. 

PL

And they were, at that time, managing their cash reserves by themselves. And we said, “No, we’re going to change that.” I didn’t say it. I was on that committee approving that. But the ideas came from elsewhere. From the budget people. We’re going to accumulate all of those cash reserves. We’re going to invest them centrally. Like a bank. And we’re going to pay back to the schools a bank rate.

00:32:37:05 – 00:33:13:12

PL

But if the endowment grows faster than the bank rate, that will be money that will remain central and that we can then use for strategic funds. Which means they would return to the schools, but not in proportion necessarily to what their contribution was. And that made a huge difference. So when Nan came, that was true. But within a few years that was no longer true because we had this virtual equity fund, which was feeding central strategic funds, along with the annual money from The Duke Endowment in Charlotte.

00:33:13:14 – 00:33:43:02

PF

So to spend that money wisely, you need a strategic plan. So think about the strategic planning.

PL

[Laughs] So this is fun. So as I was hired as provost, the board had made clear to Nan, and it made clear to me, that we needed a strategic plan. There were members of the board who were very, very committed to that. Which was fine with me.

00:33:43:04 – 00:34:05:09

PL

Two noteworthy little anecdotes related to that. The first one was that at the first meeting I had with all my deans in the fall, after I had become provost, I announced that we were going to start a process of strategic planning. And I went through what all the details were going to be. You know, not details. But I mean, sort of what the basic structure is going to be.

00:34:05:15 – 00:34:32:10

PL

And one of the deans said, “Well, I don’t understand why we’re doing all this strategic planning anyway.” And I don’t know if this anecdote [is one] I should tell. Well, anyway. You don’t have to identify the dean. No, I won’t. I won’t. So I said, “Well, let me give you two reasons. One, because the board has mandated it. And two, because I said so.”

00:34:32:12 – 00:35:05:08

PL

Okay. And I probably said it with a little bit of a joke. I hope I did [laughs]. But in any case, I think it communicated a pretty effective message. Then we went through the first fall sort of doing an evaluation of where Duke was at fiscally, academically, in terms of research, and everything [else]. And at the February board meeting, where we were supposed to roll out to the board our plan for the strategic plan, I announced that we had a reputation gap.

00:35:05:10 – 00:35:24:09

PL

And all of the board members thought I was about to tell them that Duke was better than its reputation. And I told them that, no, our reputation was better than our reality. Which left a deep impression. And a member of the board said to me, “You know, you’re right. And don’t ever say that in public.” 

00:35:24:10 – 00:35:49:11

PF

[Laughs] What year was this? 

PL

2000. 

PF

Okay. 

PL

That was February [of] 2000. So we did that first strategic plan, which was really built around interdisciplinarity and international [focuses]. And building the faculty. Setting the standards. I mean, you could go back and look at it. I’m not going to go into it. And we did that.

00:35:49:11 – 00:36:38:14

PL

We implemented that strategic plan pretty consistently. And with probably a level of boring repetition about what our priorities were, so that people would get it. And we did hiring consistent with those priorities. And we used central funds to support deans who wanted to make hires that were consistent with that. Or start programs, that kind of thing. And then, we did the changeover from Nan to [Duke President Richard] Dick [Brodhead]. And you may recall in Dick’s inaugural address he said, basically, that in addition to those two priorities, Duke needed to commit itself to its societal impact. Which became [the strategic pillar] knowledge in the service of society.

00:36:38:16 – 00:37:26:14

PL

So now we had these three pillars. Strategic pillars. Interdisciplinarity. Internationalization. And knowledge in the service of society. And we started beating on those. And that strategic plan came in in 2006. Led to the institutes that we’ve created, the interdisciplinary institutes. Which really have a research component, and a teaching component, and a service component. Almost all of them. Go ahead. 

PF

The institutes are an example of — say, the Weatherhead Center [for International Affairs] — [of what] you said initially was not the right model for Duke, that they would become silos, that they would compete with [each other].

00:37:26:15 – 00:37:57:11

PF

So how were you able to make that choice, and not have it be the downsides that you had identified with big institutes? 

PL

Well, we were in a different place, first of all. We’d hired a lot of faculty. We were committed to interdisciplinary work. 

PF

By that time. 

PL

By that time. Second of all, the Harvard one we referred to earlier, that was really only research. We made [it so] every institute had to have a significant teaching impact.

00:37:57:13 – 00:38:28:15

PL

And that made a big difference. And then in 2009 after the downturn, we basically had all the schools look back at the strategic commitments they’d made in 2006 and evaluate their prioritization among them, given the more constrained resources. So we sort of did plan two and a half. And I went around to every school and explained to them, essentially, here’s the central budget resources, and here are the budget resources you have.

00:38:28:17 – 00:38:56:17

PL

I basically [did] meetings with the faculty in every one of the schools. Or in Arts and Sciences, with the division. So they could understand exactly where they were at, and what was being asked of them. And driving home that we were going to aggressively continue to pursue our academic improvement approach. 

PF

So I want to go back to that moment in 2000 when you said Duke [was] not as good as its reputation.

00:38:56:19 – 00:39:18:07

PF

Why was our reputation so good? To what would you attribute that? 

PL

I don’t really know [laughs]. I don’t really know. I mean, we were up to [around] five in the U.S News [rankings]. And there was no way – we were not the fifth best university in the country. I mean, think about it.

00:39:18:07 – 00:39:48:03

PF

I have a theory. 

PL

Okay. 

PF

So I’ll try my theory out on you. Alright. One was the very nationally prominent moves in Literature, and a couple of those dominated the New York Times. For sure. But the second was the rise of excellence in Duke basketball, which gave us tremendous marketing heft in hours and hours of national TV promoting Duke. 

PL

Maybe. I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t know.

00:39:48:05 – 00:40:12:19

PL

And what you say is credible. So are other things. The point was that it wasn’t true. That the bottom line importance of it was [that] it was not true. And to give you an example, [Lewis] Lou Siegel who was a dean of the Graduate School was the interim vice provost for research as well. In a lot of schools, those positions were combined.

00:40:12:19 – 00:40:40:03

PL

But we weren’t doing that. But he was interim. And he brought me this profile of research at Duke. And what you saw is we had a lot of researchers at this level [gestures], and we had a small number of researchers at this level [gestures higher]. Which meant that you could decapitate our research enterprise with a few external hires. I mean, we were not strong across a broad number of areas

00:40:40:05 – 00:41:05:01

PL

in research. And in grants. So that’s just an example, that was part of – 

PF

Was it true in 2014 at the end of your time.

PL No. Oh no. That was completely changed. 

PF
In other words, was our ranking fair? Nine or 10? Had we improved to the level — to be nine or 10? Or seven through ten?

00:41:05:03 – 00:41:29:08

PL

Yeah. I mean, I never put great store in rankings. But we were in that tier. Okay. I would say there was a top tier, and there was a second tier. And we were and are in the second tier. Not in the first tier. 

PF

So the other truism of strategic planning. [Crosstalk] It that no plan survives contact with the enemy.

00:41:29:08 – 00:41:56:22

PF

That is, you develop a strategic plan, but then world events intervene. So we mentioned the Great Recession. At that time, there was an ambition before the Great Recession to develop Central Campus. So that was going to be the major [goals]. You were very integrally involved in that. And we didn’t do it. 

PL

Right. 

PF

So, do you regret that? What do you think was lost by not developing a Central Campus 

00:41:56:23 – 00:42:36:03

PF

in the manner that [Duke] had hoped? 

PL

Alright. Those are different questions. Do I regret it? Absolutely not. Because the reason that the Central Campus project didn’t go forward is because we no longer had the money. And we no longer had the money because of the Great Recession. So, it’s not like we had no money, but our choices were [to] continue with the strategic development we had on the academic side and with other construction projects, or soak up all the resources that we had on this one big project.

00:42:36:05 – 00:42:54:14

PL

And it didn’t take us long to figure out we weren’t going to do the second one. We had too many things. Too many irons in the fire. Too many good things going to say, “Okay, we’re going to build it all at the Central Campus.” So we didn’t do it. So, do I regret it? Absolutely not. Would it have made a huge difference?

00:42:54:14 – 00:43:15:21

PL

Not as much difference as doing the other things that we did. I think we made the right decision. I think that’s the question. 

PF

The other decision that was made around that same time was what became Duke Kunshan [University]. So talk a little bit about that. You were involved in that. How did that idea come about, and as you look at it now, 20 years later

00:43:15:21 – 00:43:50:21

PF

how do you evaluate it? 

PL

Okay, so as I told you, I was the first vice provost for academic and international affairs. [The] first one. And I had been involved in that internationalization thing. And Dick was also very committed on the international side. And the Business School, under Blair Sheppard’s leadership, that was where the idea of establishing a campus in China originated.

00:43:50:23 – 00:44:11:17

PL

It was part of a broader strategic vision that Blair had, where we were going to have business school campuses. People were basically going to create a global business school. There was going to be a campus in Russia. There was going to be a campus in India. There was going to be a camp — for the Business School. That latter part didn’t develop, but the Chinese part

00:44:11:19 – 00:44:40:06

PL

Blair pitched to me and Dick, and we were intrigued by it. Initially it was going to be a business school campus with some Duke operations. And it evolved into a Duke campus, with the Business School playing a much smaller role, over the course from around 2008 until by 2010 or 2011. It was going to be more of a —

00:44:40:08 – 00:45:25:12

PL

But now you ask, you have to remember, it’s extremely important to remember what U.S. attitudes were there toward China in that period, number one. [And] what was really happening in China in that period, number two. Both of which were very positive. So we built that campus, or we made that commitment. We made that commitment, in the context of Duke having an international strategy and moving to the next stage of an international strategy. I sometimes refer to the fact that up to then we’d been like a magnet drawing international filings to us. And now we were going to project rays out.

00:45:25:17 – 00:45:54:04

PL

So we would go from a magnet, to projecting rays out into the world. Projecting Duke out in the world. DukeEngage was one [aspect] of that. Global Health was another aspect of that. And this was a third aspect. And I think obviously the attitude toward China has changed. And Chinese internal politics have changed. But if they change once, they’re probably going to change again.

00:45:54:06 – 00:46:16:16

PL

And we know already the U.S. backed away a little bit — some people have, anyway — from the aggressive antagonism to China. And they, too. So we always said it’s a long term strategic commitment, and I think it’s probably still the right one. But the climate’s changed, and people are more skeptical,

00:46:16:18 – 00:46:45:21

PL

and we’ll have to see. 

PF

You mentioned internationalization. 

PL

Let me just back up one second. Universities — I think this is an important point, okay — Kunshan is a risk. Lots of other things that we did during the time I was provost with Tallman’s collaboration, with Dick’s collaboration, with the board’s collaboration, had risk associated with them.

00:46:45:23 – 00:47:18:00

PL

We were not a risk-averse institution. I believe that that’s been very, very important to our development. And I think it will continue to be, and we need to sustain that. So, you know, is [Duke Kunshan] a mistake, or not? We won’t know for a long time. But it’s part of a culture, or it was part of a culture, of taking reasoned risks in order to improve.

00:47:18:02 – 00:47:51:00

PL

And it was underlain by a basic point. Which is that so often institutions with big reputations get so concerned about their reputation [that] they become more and more risk averse. But actually the opposite ought to be the case. The bigger your reputation, at least in higher ed, and the stronger your reputation, the more risks you should take. Because that reputation is extremely resilient.

00:47:51:02 – 00:48:21:11

PL

And the best example is [the Duke] Lacrosse [case]. Okay, Lacrosse. You would say, “God, what a catastrophe. Duke will be damaged for 20 years.” Well, we were damaged for like two years. Fundraising came back. Applicants dipped one year, I think, then they went back up. Donors flocked back. Some donors flocked right in to support the institution, to which they were loyal at the time, against this attack on our institution.

00:48:21:13 – 00:48:45:13

PL

So Lacrosse is a perfect example of this thing that I’m saying. Which is that the stronger your reputation, the more risks you should be willing to take. Reasoned risks. Not crazy stuff. And not necessarily terribly expensive ones. But risks which are intellectually grounded, for which you have the leadership, and which can be reasonably paid for. 

PF

Arguably also risk

00:48:45:13 – 00:49:08:19

PF

is the flip side of [former Duke president] Terry Sanford’s outrageous ambition [saying]. 

PL

Sure. 

PF

You can’t have ambition without risk. 

PL

Yeah, exactly. 

PF

So we’ve talked a lot about the internationalization. Let me ask you to talk a little bit about interdisciplinarity, because that’s the other buzzword. 

PL

And I would say that’s actually probably the area in which I made the biggest sustained strategic contribution.

00:49:08:19 – 00:49:38:08

PF

Right. So, some of those have names associated with [them like] DukeEngage [or] Bass Connections. Talk a little bit about the lingering effects of the Lange legacy, if you will, in history. 

PL

Well, I don’t know about the Lange legacy. But, interdisciplinarity was an intellectual commitment of mine from way back. First within the social sciences.

00:49:38:08 – 00:50:01:20

PL

And then as I became an administrator more generally. I really thought the most exciting work often was happening at the boundaries between disciplines or between sub-disciplines. So you’ll remember, even in our department, I used to say, “Why are we having American politics, like, locked off from comparative politics?” That’s a microcosm of the same principle.

00:50:01:22 – 00:50:28:14

PL

And in 2000 — no, in 1987 or 1988 – we’d had an accreditation report which [Duke faculty member] Len Spicer led the committee for which was called Crossing Boundaries, which had said Duke’s real institutional advantage was its scale and that we ought to take advantage of that scale through work across boundaries. That was mostly about the medical school versus the rest of the campus.

00:50:28:14 – 00:50:59:07

PL

But you could extend it. So when I became provost, we really started a push. That was a real characterizing theme, I would say, of especially the first plan. And then also the second plan, because basically there’s no knowledge in the service of society without interdisciplinary work. Right? You don’t really make an impact just through the narrow disciplinary expertise.

00:50:59:09 – 00:51:28:16

PL

So the two themes really linked up, as did internationalization, actually. The three go together. But interdisciplinarity is an internal cultural value as well. People have to come to believe in it. They have to make the hires. You make some hires, you bring in some really great scholars who are interdisciplinary in their character and influence the other colleagues in your department or in your area.

00:51:28:16 – 00:51:48:05

PL

And that’s what we did. So it’s really a process. It’s been a process of cultural change at Duke since the late 1990s, I would say. Or actually earlier, but especially since the late 1990s. 

PF

And those Duke signature programs that you helped launch, talk to us a little bit about them — Bass Connections, or —

00:51:48:07 – 00:52:17:17

PL

Okay. So, DukeEngage. Those have different origins. We could refer back to our strategic principles to underline the programs. But the programs have different origins. So, DukeEngage really grew out of an administrative initiative to try to counter the negative view of Duke that was being generated by Lacrosse.

00:52:17:19 – 00:52:53:15

PL

Okay. So, let’s be undergraduate oriented. Let’s really push our students working in society. 

PF

Doing good. 

PL

And doing good, right? Not frat boys and athletes messing around in their –okay, whatever. So DukeEngage grew up that way. We got very rapid support from the Gates’ and from the Duke Endowment. It was a funny luncheon in which more or less The Duke Endowment in Charlotte said to us, “Well, can’t we be part of it, too?”

00:52:53:17 – 00:53:14:00

PL

And we sort of said, “Yeah, sure.” Okay, that’ll be great. Another $15 million. Great. So we could start off with $30 million. And we had a great leader who had been, who had been the director of the Robertson [Scholars] program, who had announced that he was leaving the Robertson program. I knew him well. He was a perfect person for Duke Engage.

00:53:14:00 – 00:53:36:23

PL

So that program launched, and it launched with great success. And within two years when we did these surveys of matriculating freshmen, for the first time ever something beat basketball as the thing that most attracted students to Duke. So that was like — I can remember [DukeEngage founding Executive Director] Eric [Mlyn] writing me and saying, “Look at this, what we just got.”

00:53:37:00 – 00:54:03:10

PL

Okay. So that was DukeEngage. An administrative initiative. Lots of discussion. I had this thing called the Den of Ten, which was a group of [around] 15 people that talked about admissions on a regular basis. That’s where DukeEngage [came from], out of admissions and undergraduate life. Bass Connections was very different. Bass Connections was after the second plan.

00:54:03:12 – 00:54:31:12

PL

[Asking] could we develop an undergraduate initiative? No, not an undergraduate. Could we develop an initiative that would bring faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates together around interdisciplinary themes and knowledge in the service of society? And the international [pillar] came in to some degree. So we could draw on these strategic principles that we had established, and think about a program.

00:54:31:13 – 00:54:48:20

PL

We created a committee. I have the names of the people who were on the committee. We created a committee. They came up with some ideas, and we worked it back and forth in the Provost’s Office. Then Susan Roth took the lead on it, and we started driving that program. Today it’s a big success. It took a while.

00:54:48:20 – 00:55:09:17

PL

That was a big lift. But there we had the benefit of the Bass family, which we’re very attracted to that vision [of] that program. 

PF

Now I want to ask you to step back a little bit and look at the sweep, not just of your time at Duke, but of Duke’s history, which you know well from your time of service here.

00:55:09:17 – 00:55:20:01

PF

What are some of the names of key figures that you think are responsible for Duke becoming what we are today on our centennial?

00:55:20:03 – 00:55:31:14

PL

Well, certainly the two presidents. Nan and Dick, who both had very ambitious visions for the institution, and understood that point we were making [about] taking risks and being ambitious. They understood that. Dick came here in part because he knew he never could change anything at Yale. Yale was going to be Yale, and he’d just be a leading cog if he stayed at Yale. At Duke, he could really make an impact.

00:55:53:21 – 00:56:26:13

PL

And that turned out, of course, to be true. And Nan really understood, as well, that when she came that Duke was still that regional school and we needed to do some substantial things like [the] freshman campus, among others, to really move ourselves into the top rank. Both of them also understood a challenge [that] we had, which came up in the planning for the second strategic plan. Which was [that] we were at the bottom of the top. And the bottom of the top is a very uncomfortable place to be.

00:56:26:15 – 00:56:50:10

PL

Okay? Because basically you bring people up from below, and then the people above you pick them off. And we have certain departments where that was really true. So we needed to combat that. And one of the ways to combat that was if, I can use for you, a military analogy, either you try to go through the enemy or you go around the enemy.

00:56:50:12 – 00:57:19:01

PL

Right? And interdisciplinarity was, for instance — not today, but 20 or 30 years ago — that was a way of going around the enemy. “Oh, you can’t do interdisciplinary. Oh, you’ll dilute your research.” You know, we heard all this B.S. So those were commitments that both of them understood, and were willing to have a provost really act on.

00:57:19:01 – 00:57:54:07

PL

I mean, they were fantastic people to work with, because they gave me plenty of room even while maintaining a highly collaborative and oversight kind of thing. But they gave me plenty of room to operate. 

PF

Any standout figures from before, earlier in Duke history that you say – 

PL

Well obviously Terry. 

PF

Okay. Terry Sanford. 

PL

Terry Sanford. Well, in the international area [Duke economist] Craufurd Goodwin was a very important figure in this, really from the 1960s to the 1980s.

00:57:54:09 – 00:58:21:17

PL

He was on that committee with me in the early 1990s. Sort of like my éminence grise in the background. So on the international side, I mentioned Len [Spicer] for the Crossing Boundaries [report]. 

PF

I don’t want to get you starting [crosstalk] because you might forget. 

PL

Well not only that, but you know, who you don’t put on. I don’t want to get into that.

00:58:21:17 – 00:58:53:03

PF

So, and you may have already answered this along the way, but key moments in Duke’s history that stand out as pivotal moments, maybe beyond the ones you’ve already flagged? 

PL

Okay, so 1958 to 1960 when we decided we were going to be a full-fledged all-in research university. Terry’s presidency changed the internal aspirational culture of the institution.

00:58:53:05 – 00:59:20:13

PL

I mean, how many times do we refer to that. Right? Right. Here we are 50 years later. 60 years later, almost. Yeah, almost 60 years later. I think the hiring of Nan was critical. It was an outside person, but it still showed some Ivy envy. 

PF

Right. 

PL

And it took us a while, another probably 8 or 10 years to get past our Ivy envy.

00:59:20:15 – 00:59:41:12

PL

I don’t think we have it anymore, but we had it for a long time. Was not a good — it’s not a good thing, because it’s one of those things that prevents you from being yourself as an institution and from taking those risks. “Oh, well, those guys wouldn’t do that.” You don’t want to get into that.

00:59:41:14 – 01:00:14:05

PL

Dick’s hiring, which was a different stage, a different kind of president. But with the same deep understanding of what Duke needed to become. I made a list. 

PF

No, that leads naturally to my last question. 

PL

Let me just look here. Oh, you know, you don’t want to — I think Tallman made a huge difference to it.

01:00:14:07 – 01:00:47:14

PL

Okay. Hiring Tallman, and then giving him the scope. Right? I mean, he had a scope that went from architecture, through all the money, to interacting with the academic. And I remember, Tallman told me when I first became provost, he said, “You know, my job is to deliver the highest — the greatest amount of resources to the academic mission that I can, consistent with the administrative health and financial health of the university.”

01:00:47:16 – 01:01:07:09

PL

Now, there aren’t a lot of CFOs that would say that. Not a lot of executive vice presidents who would say that and say that to the provost, which is kind of giving them a license. 

PF

Right.

PL

So, you know, you don’t want to — And in my own office, I would say [James] Jim Roberts was critical. Because he was my right hand guy. He was responsible for finance.

01:01:07:09 – 01:01:52:09

PL

He was responsible for finance administration within the provost’s area. Right. And he was like my right hand guy. 

PF

So let me close by asking you to look to the future. As you look to the future, what aspirations and hopes do you have for Duke going forward? 

PL

Well, some of those cultural elements need to be sustained. And sometimes I worry that we’ll get a little too cocky, a little too self-confident. 

PF
Complacent, maybe? 

PL

Complacent. And lose that innovative drive. And become too risk-averse.

01:01:52:11 – 01:02:12:05

PL

So I do worry about that. I think that’s probably my biggest worry. I think if we don’t do that, we can still be a — you know, I don’t worry about the rankings. It’s almost impossible to crack those top 4 or 5, even if you wanted to, and even if that were an aspiration. But we don’t need to do that.

01:02:12:06 – 01:02:56:16

PL

We need to be great at what we do. And great at educating our undergraduates. Terrific job in research. And we need to be distinctive. And so we always used to say in my office, around these strategic plans, how can we be both distinguished and distinctive? And we need to be both. 

PF

And so if you and I made a date to talk about this 25 years from now, what would be the metrics you would look at to say, “Okay, if we’re hitting these 25 years from now, I’ll know that Duke is still on the right trajectory.” 

PL

Hiring great researchers, doing a terrific job teaching our undergraduates to prepare them

01:02:56:18 – 01:03:28:04

PL

to operate in the world. At leadership levels, not at lower than leadership levels. Which is why humanities education, by the way, and a liberal arts education, is so important. Because the people who rise to the top have that breadth of education and not just that technical [education]. And having a big impact in society. And being, you know, in that tier that we’re in. If we’re in the same tier, that would be great.

01:03:28:06 – 01:03:48:16

PL

If we move up, that’s fine. 

PF

I will look forward to that conversation 25 years from now. 

PL

Me too [laughs]. I’ll look forward to it more than you will. 

PF

But at least I have the joy of having that conversation with you now. And it’s a reminder of all that you’ve done for Duke over the years. And so thank you for your service, and thank you for this conversation.

01:03:48:20 – 01:03:52:10

PL

Well thanks. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. 

PF

Take care. Bye.