camp us Coffeehous e re-opens with complaints drowned by music
||9w
lifestyles
-
Cruisin'with Kafi the cabbie Saturday night
sportswrap Blue Devils blow out FSU on the road to start ACC season 5-0
The Chronicle ml
MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2005
1
100th Anniversary
THE INDEPENDENT DAILY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
1
*
\ NS ®
/
ONE HUNDREDTH YEAR, ISSUE 79
1921 2005 -
DOUGLAS M. KNIGHT Duke's sth president leaves mixed legacy by
Kelly
Rohrs
the chronicle
Before Douglas Knight came
to Duke, he wanted to make it a
place “of high civilization and great service.” For six years, he served as the head of this University, but his quest to carve out a visionary future was stalled and ultimately cut short by the political unrest that overwhelmed American universities in the 19605. Not until 40 years later, when time and reflection had healed the shock of his Duke career, would Knight return to walk across campus. Now he never will again. Knight died Sunday afternoon at his home in Doylestown, Pa., of complications from pneumonia. He was 83. His family is still finalizing details, but a funeral service will likely be held Thursday in Pennsylvania. The University is also planning a memorial service in Durham. The path of Knight’s life was something of a maze to him, and at many turns he felt trapped by the forces changing around him. A visionary risk-taker in his administrative life, he found him-
.
self exiled from Duke and the academic community he considered a sanctuary during his first 50 years. Seeking away to combine his commitment to liberal education with his understanding of the need for active knowledge, Knight turned to industry, Time and continual reflection finally allowed him to find solace in a job as president of Questar .Qprp., a manufacturer of highprecision lenses that are used in medicine and astronomy, In his 1963 inaugural address, Knight imagined Duke’s future: “May men say of us in years to come that, every man according to his talent, we made it a place of wit, of wisdom, of high civilization and great service.” A poet throughout his life, Knight was an academic charged with leading the University as it became a battleground of cultural and political struggle. The racial turmoil on campus masked a behind-the-scenes power struggle between the Board of Trustees and The Duke Endowment, which largely supported the University. SEE KNIGHT ON PAGE 6
COURTESY OF DUKE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Douglas Knight, who sat at the helm of the University amid great uproar in the 19605, left Duke primed for the top. He died Sunday at age 83.
Friends remember Knight by
Skyward Darby THE CHRONICLE
Douglas Knight was a man caught in the tumult of an explosive era. As the University’s fifth president, Knight weathered the turbulent years of the a politically charged 1960 campus in transition, leaving behind a legacy marred by controversy and criticism. Following his death Sunday, however, critics and friends alike painted a picture of Knight as a devoted educator, academic and poet who, though unequipped to single-handedly steer Duke through a period of upheaval, translated his love for the institution into steps on the Univer-
s on
COURTESY OF DUKE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Criticisms aside, others recall Knight as a poet who tried his hardest, a cigar smoker who invited anyone over, a president who left the world with a "measure of peace."
sity’s path to greatness. Praising his work as a scholar and administrator at Lawrence College prior to coming to Duke, William Griffith ’5O, an assistant to the provost during Knight’s tenure, recalled thinking Knight was an ideal choice for president when he was hired in 1963. “He represented, at least in my mind, in the ’6os and ’7os the type ofperson that was great for a university,” Griffith said. But Griffith added that Knight became president of Duke at a time when, amid burgeoning social and political movements, “it was a graveyard for presidents.” Bridget Booher, administrative coordinator for the Sanford Insti-
tute of Public Policy and a friend of Knight’s, said the currents of the decade that permeated Duke’s campus ultimately shaped Knight’s career at the University. “His presidency really marked a turning point in Duke’s history and the history of this country,” Booher said. “The questioning of leadership at that time waspart of what the younger generation, or at least certain factions of the younger generation, were doing, and he was the president ofDuke University, so of course he was
questioned.”
Mark Pinsky, Trinity ’7O and a former student of Knight’s, was SEE REMEMBERED ON PAGE 7