DURHAM, N.C. — Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead will step down on June 30, 2017, at the conclusion of his current term, the school announced Thursday.
Brodhead spoke to the Board of Trustees and the Academic Council on Thursday to share his plans.
In a subsequent message to all Duke faculty, staff, students and alumni, he wrote, “When I first came to Duke, I encountered a school that was clearly in the top rank of universities but that had a distinctive spirit within this group. Duke has an unusually strong sense of community, and what binds people together is a vision that Duke is still being created, still reaching for the further thing it could become … It is Duke’s nature to keep pressing to live up to its highest potential, and we have made striking progress in the past 12 years.”
Brodhead, born in Dayton, Ohio, graduated from Yale and received his Ph.D. there as well. A dedicated teacher, he rose to the position of Dean of Yale College in 1993 and stayed in that role before moving to Duke.
Brodhead arrived at Duke in 2004 as a brilliant scholar and accomplished academic, but one stepping into a larger glare at a major ACC university with significant sports teams. Shortly after he arrived, basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski flirted with taking a massive offer from the Los Angeles Lakers.
Two years later, Brodhead entered a tumultuous period in the school’s history, as members of the Duke men’s lacrosse team faced rape allegations that were later dropped. Brodhead canceled the remainder of the 2006 lacrosse season. Duke later settled a lawsuit from the three players who were charged for an undisclosed sum.
“With many critical initiatives nearing completion,” he added, “it seems the right time for Duke to recruit a new leader to guide the next chapter of its progress. Meanwhile, there will be plenty to do in the year ahead. Nothing in a university is the work of a single person, and in the year to come, I’ll look forward to chances to thank and celebrate with each of you who have helped build the Duke of today.”
“Dick Brodhead is one of Duke’s transformative presidents,” said David Rubenstein, chair of the university’s Board of Trustees. “The entire Duke community is therefore very much in his debt for the leadership he has provided over the past 12 years — and no doubt will continue to provide. That Duke will have another year of Dick’s commitment, vision and energy is our good fortune.”
Brodhead, who is also the William Preston Few Professor of English at Duke, will take a year’s sabbatical before returning to teaching and writing, “the passions that lured me into the academic life in the first place,” he noted in his message.
Under Brodhead’s leadership, undergraduate education at Duke has undergone a significant transformation, with new opportunities for internships, faculty-mentored research and academic collaborations such as Bass Connections projects, as well as changes in housing and student life. Brodhead also launched the signature program DukeEngage, a fully funded summer service program that has given 3,600 Duke undergraduates the opportunity to apply their classroom knowledge in the U.S. and in 79 countries on six continents.
In addition, Duke’s culture of interdisciplinary research and teaching has expanded with the successful launch of new initiatives that include the Duke Global Health Institute, which works to translate research findings to address health-care inequities and improve the health of people around the world, the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, and Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke.