INC NEWS - must read: Duke profiteers are setting a poor example (today's Herald-Sun)

[John Schelp]

"One would hope that the educational mission of Duke
would include teaching by example."
-Tom Clark

forum: Duke profiteers are setting a poor example
Herald-Sun, March 10, 2005

Duke University official John Burness spends most of
his February 17 column describing, presumably
accurately, Duke's good citizenship with respect to
the environment and the local economy in managing Duke
Forest. He explains in particular, the history of
Duke's record with regard to the 'piece of the puzzle'
land in Orange County that is so controversial these
days. This is welcome information, as far as
self-congratulations go. However, the last few words
of his column go like this:

"[Duke]... also [has] a fiduciary responsibility to
generate revenue from those limited portions of the
Forest that are not essential and important to the
mission of the university, [emphasis added] so that
revenue so generated can support our academic
mission."

I suppose we can thank Mr. Burness for his brutal
honesty. But this declaration is alarming to those of
us who feel the effects when this 800-pound gorilla
flails about. If you presume that Duke's leadership
has the same attitude about the entire Duke enterprise
as Mr. Burness has articulated here about the Forest,
the quote amounts to a declaration that they are open
for business, that they will use all assets they own,
not merely the fundraising they do based on their
performance and good reputation as a school, as
investments to be made to further pile up money. This
is the worst-case scenario to those of us concerned
with the University's ongoing threat to use
tax-advantaged dollars, received on the basis of a
non-profit educational mission, to compete with local 
private enterprise (see the Central Campus retail
controversy).

We give tax-exempt status to educational institutions
precisely to support their academic mission, and to
ease financial pressure so that they can focus on that
mission, since an educated citizenry is in everyone's
interest. So why should we allow these advantaged
dollars, that come at the expense of a community full
of increasing needs and increasingly desperate for
revenue sources, to be used to compete with local
business? What about a fiduciary responsibility for
citizens to see that all members of a community
contribute their fair share to society's overhead? 
I'm afraid the answer to those questions could be that
Duke has better lawyers, a public relations team
(read: spin doctors) and enough sheer influence to get
away with it -- the might-makes-right, 800-pound
gorilla scenario.

How will this policy play out in other issues? As the
largest employer in the county, Duke has a chance to
set the progressive pace on paying a living wage for
example. But with the "Burness doctrine" as
articulated above, the quality of life of Duke’s
frontline work force would simply lose out to any
number of other projects, since paying people more
that you absolutely have to doesn’t directly and
demonstrably contribute to any bottom line numbers. So
instead we are likely to have Duke leading the race to
the bottom on that issue, literally putting the
community further into poverty.

For better and for worse, the fiduciary responsibility
of soul-less corporations that exist in perpetuity to
turn a profit, is, we all must admit, the economic
engine that drives American life. While this is
ultimately a problem for the entire society, indeed,
the entire world, it's a particular shame to have such
thinking invade the area of education, where the rules
seemed to be relatively clear.  

One would hope that the educational mission of Duke
would include teaching by example. Are Duke officials
teaching their students to grab all they can get and
only give back when there's a quantifiable monetary
advantage to doing so? Or do they acknowledge that
sharing the collectively made good fortune is the only
way to sustained collective prosperity?

The question really is: Who's running the show over
there, the educators or the bean-counters?


Tom Clark is a longtime neighborhood activist.