Two longtime Duke faculty members are behind an anticipated $2 million in art sales that raise questions about the ethical use of public-domain images, power imbalances within academia, and a university’s thorny role as a gatekeeper of information and access.
August 2021
Posted inEssays
The Afghanistan Papers
Craig Whitlock got his start scouring North Carolina for stories. Today, his seminal work on Afghanistan is a must-read for a nation trying to understand what went wrong in its twenty year war some seven thousand miles away.
Posted inHigher Education
The Archivist for the Lost Cause
J.G. de Roulhac Hamilton built UNC-Chapel Hill’s renowned Southern Historical Collection. He was also an apologist for the Ku Klux Klan and taught that Black people were inferior to whites. As the university debates removing the professor’s name from Hamilton Hall, his complicated legacy lives on in the archive.
Posted inPolitics
North Carolina Aims for a Deal
An extraordinary state budget surplus puts a historic deal within reach. But that would require the Governor and legislative Republicans to put an acrimonious history behind them.
Posted inPolitics
The Governor of Rural North Carolina
The gregarious, popular agriculture commissioner, Steve Troxler, won re-election in a landslide. But as the communities he champions shift around him, is he changing with them?