Graduate University Scholar Jessica Covil Responds To Founders’ Day Speaker’s Call to Action
L-R: Duke President Vince Price; Founders’ Day Speaker and President of Paul Quinn College Michael Sorrell; Professor Don Taylor, Chair of Academic Council. Photo by Sujal Manohar, Duke Chronicle.
Every year, members of the Duke community gather for Founders’ Day Convocation. Students, faculty, alumni, and trustees are honored for their accomplishments and contributions to Duke through various awards including student scholarships and fellowships, distinguished teaching, and service to the university. Duke alumnus Michael Sorrell (Duke Law, Sanford School of Public Policy) served as the keynote speaker and was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Since 2007, Sorrell has served as president of Paul Quinn College, the oldest HBCU west of the Mississippi and transformed the school, reducing the school’s debt, revitalizing the campus, raising academic standards, and reshaping the school into a work college, the only urban work college in the nation.
Sorrell’s keynote remarks followed a sermon by Rev. Luke Powery, the Dean of the Chapel at Duke, who recollected the contributions of numerous prominent historical figures over time, including Julian Carr, in shaping the university as it stands today. Powery’s invocation of Julian Carr shocked many in the audience. While Carr donated much of the land that is now East Campus to Duke, he is also known for his veneration of white supremacy and his virulent racism. Duke’s History Department is housed on East Campus in a building named for Carr and is negotiating with the administration and the Board of Trustees for a name change.
In his keynote address, Sorrell drew inspiration from his favorite passage in the Bible, Isaiah 58:10-12, to challenge Duke to aspire to greatness through reaching out to those in greatest need. He recognized the ways in which the university has opened its doors to marginalized peoples over time, from Native Americans to women and to African-Americans. Sorrell’s call to action came on the heels of recent racist and classist actions on the part of students and administrators, from racist defacements of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture and Mi Gente’s mural on the East Campus bridge to the administration’s new requirement for housekeeping staff to work weekends and rebid for their shift hours and locations (the latter change was not ultimately implemented).
University Scholar Jessica Covil, a graduate student in the English Department and Graduate Assistant to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program, recalled Sorrell’s clarion call for Duke to rise to greatness by attending to the needy and oppressed in the service of public welfare with an column in the Duke Chronicle. She contextualized his remarks against Duke’s racist historical legacy and its continued impact on both contemporary actions and its institutional memory. Click here to read the full article.
