Dukies blogging from Copenhagen Climate Summit

14 Dec 2009, Posted by Emmeline Zhao in News, 0 Comments

It takes two college students to fix a Danish fuse, plus three others to help.

That was quite the problem for Courtney Shephard, a graduate student at the Nicholas School of the Environment, when a blown fuse killed power in half of her group’s Danish flat.

This account is one of many by Duke’s 18 students, faculty and staff attending the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or the Copenhagen Climate summit. Members of Duke’s COP-15 delegation have been blogging about their experiences since Dec. 6.

“Lately, I have been pleasantly surprised to see the term ‘Hopenhagen’ thrown around in the environmental blogs. I like it,” Shephard wrote in her first blog post. “The play on words may be a little cutesy, but positivity is absolutely necessary on the eve of the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference.”

She continues her post expressing hopes that President Barack Obama will expand strategies used in his presidential campaign last year to the summit in Denmark.

The blog also features updates and discussions about hot topics that arise at the conference, including reducing a carbon market and minimizing emissions as a result of deforestation.

Conference participants in Duke include Nicholas Institute Tim Profeta, Brian Murray, director for economic analysis at the Nicholas Institute and Jan Mazurek, senior policy adviser for the Washington Office of the Nicholas Institute

The conference opened Dec. 7 and will conclude Dec. 18, aiming to create a framework for a climate change mitigation plan that extends beyond 2012.

Police investigate sexual assault, robbery on West

25 Nov 2009, Posted by Lindsey Rupp in Crime, News, 0 Comments

A student reported Monday that she was robbed and sexually assaulted on West Campus Nov. 16.

The incident occurred between Wannamaker Dr. and Chapel Dr. last Monday at about 10 p.m., said Assistant Chief Gloria Graham of the Duke University Police Department. She said the student reported she was the victim of a strong-arm robbery and a second degree sexual offense.

The alleged attacker took an undisclosed amount of cash and the student’s DukeCard, Graham said. She described the suspect as a 5-foot-11-inch black male between 28 and 30 years old.

“We’re definitely going to investigate it because it’s not something that’s commonplace in our environment” she said, adding that the case is “high on [DUPD's] priorities list.”

The victim initially reported the incident to a different campus office, which brought the report to DUPD, and Graham said the student reported the incident anonymously Monday.

A DUPD incident report was not available for release Tuesday.

Although Graham said the report is under “very active investigation,” she said she does not think it has a high likelihood of being solved.

She said the delayed report, the lack of available information and the victim’s reluctance for DUPD “to do much with it,” will make it difficult for investigators to make an arrest. Graham added that the description is also not very helpful to investigators as it describes a large portion of the local population.

Still, DUPD has an obligation to investigate the report, Graham said.

“We’re trying to determine exactly what happened so if there’s something else that we need to be doing or be concerned about we can take those precautions and ideally find out who did it, but were at the mercy of the individual who reported it, and were trying to get as much information as possible,” she said.

Groups that can stay in their sections

12 Nov 2009, Posted by Zachary Tracer in News, Student Groups, housing, student life, 0 Comments

Campus Council has released the list of selective living groups that can squat, or choose to remain in their current sections.

The top 50 percent of SLGs in the small, medium and large categories—as determined by their scores on the Residential Group Assessment—have the option of remaining in their current dormitory section.

Those groups are:

Alpha Epsilon Pi
Alpha Tau Omega
Arts Theme House
Brownstone
Chi Psi
Languages
Maxwell
Phi Delta Theta
Psi Upsilon
Roundtable
Sigma Chi
Sigma Phi Epsilon

Tree Falls on Chapel Drive–Photo Slideshow

12 Nov 2009, Posted by Michael Naclerio in News, Photos, 1 Comments

11/12/09 Tree Falls on Campus Drive – Images by Duke Student Publishing Co. Duke Chronicle

Rain can be destructive. Late Wednesday evening, a pine tree fell across Chapel Drive, blocking traffic and effectively turning the main Duke traffic circle into a bus stop. Many cars opted to jump the curb to avoid the felled pine, but the Duke buses were not so fortunate. Students stopped to examine and even take photos of the barricade. Grounds keeping crews anticipate that they will be able to remove the blockage by Thursday morning. It’s still raining in Durham.

Publisher of “Muhammad: The ‘Banned’ Images” discusses his views on the Enlightenment and Islam

11 Nov 2009, Posted by Zachary Tracer in Academics, Faculty and Staff, News, 1 Comments

For much of our 30-minute interview, Gary Hull, a Duke lecturing fellow in sociology, and I discussed academic freedom, the challenges of self-publishing and the Enlightenment.

Toward the end of the conversation, I asked Hull, who recently self-published “Muhammad: The ‘Banned’ Images” and directs Duke’s Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace,” what he would say to Muslims offended by his decision to include controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

“Join the Enlightenment,” he replied.

He went on to discuss how different people are offended by different things. What matters, he said, is not that people are offended, but how they react.

“You don’t respond by saying, ‘I don’t like what you said, therefore I’m going to throw a grenade at you’,” he said.

He added: “If I were a serious Muslim, would I be offended by some of these images, especially the cartoons? Absolutely.”

Hull said he thinks the Muslim response will be guided by what he sees as a religion stuck in the past:

“The problem here is that of all the world’s religions, Islam was the one least touched by the Renaissance. It never had its maniacal attachment to faith and force—just using guns and swords against enemies—it never had that tempered by the Enlightenment. You know, Voltaire, the Jeffersonian view that the prioper response to opposing ideology is to present your own ideology and to have arguments. Judaism and Christianity both obviously were tempered by Enlightenment thinking. Islam never had that kind of Enlightenment element injected into it. And so today of all the world’s great religions… it is the most fascistic and terror-mongering because it doesn’t even have that semblance of respect for reasoned discourse… It’s no accident that worldwide terrorism is motivated by fundamentalist Muslims.”