Alumni & Development

Duke Law School donors, board members, faculty, named scholars, and fellows gathered on November 16 at the J.B. Duke Inn at Duke University for the 2019 Scholarship & Fellowship Brunch. Students had the opportunity to meet and thank the donors whose generous support of financial aid has helped make their Duke Law education possible.

Duke Law awarded named scholarships to 200 students this year, which were funded by 146 separate named scholarships. Forty-one of the endowed named scholarships and fellowships supporting 49 named scholars and fellows were funded in part by the financial aid matching funds established by Stanley '61 and Elizabeth Star. The Stars have also endowed a scholarship in their name, which funds three students this year.

Remarks

Welcome: Kate Buchanan T’92, Associate Dean for Alumni & Development  

Good morning, and welcome to the 2019 Duke Law School Scholarship & Fellowship Brunch. My name is Kate Buchanan and I serve as Associate Dean for Alumni & Development. On this day, we come together to celebrate our incredible students and the donors who generously support their educational pursuits.

What a tremendous group of law students we have at Duke. Not only do they have considerable intellectual firepower, but they are talented, interesting, and want to make a positive impact in the world around them.

Students like Juliet Park from LA. Juliet is interested in pursuing a public interest career in criminal prosecution. She is involved with the Wrongful Convictions Clinic, the Expunction Pro Bono Project and the North Carolina Disaster Legal Services hotline. She is fluent in Korean, a scuba diver and … most amazingly, mother to a young baby.

Students like Bennett Wright from Winston Salem, a member of the Duke Law Journal and Dean’s Award winner in both Civil Procedure and Business Associations. A bio-medical engineer studying law & entrepreneurship, Bennett is working with Professor Arti Rai on issues of trade secrecy around artificial intelligence-enabled health care.

Students like Garmai Gorlorwulu from Portland. Her family immigrated to the United States from Liberia when she was very young. She studied human biology at Stanford, loves to read African literature and play guitar. Garmai serves on a university-wide sexual misconduct policy committee and the Black Law Students Association.

This year, we welcomed 219 JDs and 96 LLM’s to our Duke Law family. Our student body includes military veterans, radiation oncology research scientists, Teach for America instructors, film producers, accountants, entrepreneurs, government staffers, and even a professional golfer on the LPGA and a contestant on the hit TV show “Survivor.” 

Some of our students are the first in their family to attend college, or the first to attend graduate or professional school. Some have disabilities or health challenges. Several identify as members of the LGBTQ community. In our 1L class, 38% identify as students of color and a whopping 59% are women, which is the largest cohort of women that has ever enrolled at Duke Law School! 

I’d like to take a moment here to pause and thank Bill Hoye, our masterful Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Financial Aid, for bringing such an amazing and diverse group of students to Duke Law School. Bill is the best Admissions Dean in the world, and spends countless hours and sleepless nights recruiting the best and brightest students, all while managing a complex and highly competitive financial aid matrix that includes more deserving students in need of financial aid than we currently have dollars to offer. Thank you, Bill, for your brilliant and important work.

Students, congratulations on your academic achievements to this point. You have worked so hard to be here, and we are excited about your future. I encourage you to get to know the alumni and donors in this room. Ask them to share their stories, and the stories of the people whose scholarships they represent. Their tremendous successes, but also their hardships and occasional missteps, are instructive. You may come to understand that they were once in your shoes and they may see themselves in you.

Think about the positive influence that their support is making in your life. For some of you, your scholarship offer was the deciding factor in selecting Duke Law… or even deciding if attending law school was a viable option at all. For many of you, the fact that you received aid frees you to make career decisions after graduation based upon what you want to do and where you want to do it, rather than what you must do in order to manage the burden of substantial debt.

Your tuition bill did not magically disappear or get reduced. Real people like David and Jan, Stanley and Elizabeth, Caroline, Kodwo and Phyllis, Glenn, Lin and others chose to invest in YOU.

Alumni and friends, you are in the company of future leaders and problem-solvers in the legal profession and in the world. Today, ask them about their path to Duke and their aspirations for the future. What legal issues pique their interest?  What wrongs in the world do they want to make right using their legal training?  How do they imagine themselves contributing to the profession? Your gifts to “financial aid” are not just deposited into a generic bank account. You have made a choice to invest your hard-earned dollars to lend a helping hand to students like Gerardo, Juliet, Bennett, Garmai and the students around the room today.

These connections among alumni, faculty and students are what make Duke Law so special. I feel privileged to be a part of it. I’m pleased now to introduce a very special member of our Duke Law family, an alumnus, Board member and donor who has made working in alumni & development at Duke Law a true honor -- David Ichel.

David is a 1975 graduate of Duke University, summa cum laude, and a 1978 graduate of Duke Law School, where he served on the Duke Law Journal. For 37 years, David litigated complex civil cases and advised corporate and individual clients at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York. When he retired in 2016, he founded his mediation and arbitration firm, X Dispute LLC. David teaches Complex Civil Litigation at both Duke Law School and the University of Miami Law School. 

David has been a member of the Board of Visitors at Duke Law School since 2002, and he served as Chair of the BOV from 2009-2014. In 2019, he began a term as chair of the editorial board of Judicature. Among David and his wife, Jan’s, many philanthropic priorities at Duke Law, they have funded a professorship, held by Professor Neil Siegel, and have established two large scholarship funds. We are delighted to have David and his wife, Jan, here today and I am pleased to welcome David to the stage now.

David W. Ichel ’78, T’75

David W. Ichel Duke Leadership Law Scholarship, David W. Ichel Law Scholarship

Thank you, Kate. Thank you Dean Abrams. Thank you to members of the faculty and staff, and thank you to all of you who have given Duke scholarships—or are even thinking about giving to Duke scholarships. And thank you to our current scholarship recipients for coming here--to give us all a peak at tomorrow’s great lawyers and leaders and to help us celebrate your accomplishments so far that have earned you a Duke Law scholarship. Thank you to my amazing wife and partner in life, Jan Ichel, for her commitment to the importance of scholarship giving. And a special thank you to our friends Stanley & Elizabeth Star—for whom the Star Commons is named, who have contributed to more than 40 separate Duke Law scholarship funds—many of those funds offered as matching funds that encouraged many others to set up scholarship endowments themselves. [The Stars couldn’t be here in person today, but in so many ways, they are always here at Duke].

The beauty of scholarship giving is the opportunity to give a precious gift that keeps on giving—first, by providing an endowment that will grow and continue to provide scholarship funds FOREVER—as Yogi Berra might have said “forever is a very long time.”  But, second, the gift also keeps giving by seeding a whole new generation of scholarship givers from those that have received the benefits of a Duke scholarship. Because when our current Duke scholarship recipients accomplish their many goals and have the kinds of means that we as scholarship donors now have—they will be the next generation of scholarship donors. And on and on, it will all increase.

I—like many of the donors here—was myself a Duke Law scholarship recipient. After completing my first year, I was given a scholarship that paid for more than half of my second-year law school tuition, and I never forgot it. Just like so many others who also benefited from Duke scholarship funds, and went on to achieve great success as lawyers, judges and community leaders across the country and around the world.

President Clinton famously said that “There is nothing wrong with our country that cannot be cured by what is right about our country.” And, in this room, we have something really right going on.

There is an opportunity gap that we all can help to mend by making Duke Law School available for all of our nation’s best and brightest students--regardless of their ability to pay. And the way we can do that is by each of us, as best we can, whenever we can, adding year-by-year, person by person, additional scholarship funds until there is no prospective Duke Law student who feels pressure to turn down coming to Duke because of funds. We can do this. And we very much should do this.

And we can all do this in our own way. I personally started down this road about 15 or so years ago with one general Duke Law scholarship endowment. And then a few years ago, I established another: a full tuition scholarship for a Duke undergrad to attend Duke Law School tuition-free. As a double-Dukie, I thought of this as a way to give back to both my undergraduate school--to help its graduates--and to Duke Law School to attract those graduates. I encourage those of you from Duke—or from other undergrad schools that you wish to support along with Duke Law—that you might consider a similar approach.

One other thing is clear. This “gift that keeps on giving” also pays big dividends on our investment. First, there are the psychic dividends that we scholarship funders receive in watching ever more impressive and diverse scholarship students join each year’s new incoming Duke class and then move into impressive careers. Then there are the dividends to Duke’s reputation as well, as our scholarship recipients with Duke Law degrees are achieving their dreams at the top of their fields. But our scholarships also pay monetary dividends to Duke as every year, our now ever greater numbers of successful former Duke Law scholarship recipients begin a new cycle of scholarship giving with their own giving.

I am very pleased that our incredible new Dean, Kerry Abrams, has made increasing scholarships one of her very top priorities. Please join me in thanking Kerry for this. I hope that all of us can help Kerry bring about a major step-change in Duke’s scholarship resources.

Thank you everyone for all you do for Duke—and for your friendship to Jan and me. We are very grateful to be part of all of this goodness.

Now, it is with especially great pleasure that I am given the honor to introduce one of our very impressive group of current Duke Law scholarship recipients, Gerardo Párraga. He is the recipient of a Judge Tjoflat Scholarship, which was created by the Judge’s former law clerks in the name of one of the most prominent judges in America, who is also one of Duke’s great friends and alumni. Gerardo was born in El Salvador, grew up in south Florida, and was a Duke undergraduate, where he majored in political science, philosophy and economics, was active in student government, wrote for the Duke Chronicle, and won a slew of leadership awards. And he is now just as active at Duke Law School. He is serving on both the Duke Law Journal and the Duke Law & Technology Journal, among many other activities. After his first year, he was a summer associate at Fenwick & West, concentrating on early stage start-ups, and this summer, I am happy to say that he will be joining my former firm of four decades, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. I looked Gerardo up on the web, and found on YouTube that while he was a Duke undergraduate, he produced a fantastic video titled OUR BLUE that encapsulates his Duke spirit . . . .But I was even more moved when I listened on Facebook to a radio chat he gave as the inaugural student guest on the Duke Catholic Center’s Friar Side Chats on the subject of forgiveness and reconciliation—a topic we all could use more discussion about these days. So—thanks to 21st Century technology, I felt like I was able to meet Gerardo even before we actually first met. And now, it is with great pleasure that I present Gerardo to you.

Gerardo Párraga ’21, T’18 

Judge Gerald B. Tjoflat Scholar

Thank you for that wonderful introduction and thank you all for being with us today. I was shopping at the Harris Teeter on Ninth Street the other day when I decided to give a homeless man ten dollars. Then and there, I realized that it is almost impossible to know exactly where your money goes. Most people automatically, at least in my scenario, assume the worst. But most people do not consider that the homeless man has a four-year-old daughter that he will hopefully feed with that money. We truly do not know where this money will go, but we must trust that it will be used intelligently. My ten dollars are a microcosm of the donations you all give to students like myself, many of whom are sitting here today. Yet, I can shed some light as to where your money has gone and how it has helped.

As you just heard, I was born in El Salvador. Single mother and a brother, we were, and still are, a force to be reckoned with. It was not until a couple of years later that my mom decided to move us to the United States on the promise that Mickey Mouse lives there… and some mumbo-jumbo about social mobility and more opportunities. Coming from El Salvador, we did not have much besides my fantastic looks and great humility. All jokes aside, we had very little. Yet, I believed I had the perfect childhood, and in many ways, I did. We had food on our table, played in every sports league, and got new clothing every August prior to starting the school year. Too young to understand the intricacies of life, what I did not know was that this all came at a great cost. Some of the food came from food stamps, getting us clothes meant that my mom never bought anything for herself, and while my mom worked endless hours to feed my brother and me, my grandmother had to abandon her life in El Salvador to come teach us English, so that maybe one day – we might be able to attend a prestigious institution like Duke University. My life was a beautiful lie until one day when my mom shamefully approached me, asking me to borrow some of my savings to pay a bill.

At that moment, I developed a resolve to do something to help. I was 14 when I decided to start working at a student-run tutoring company. By 15, I had co-created my own tutoring company and after a very successful fiscal year of contracting 45 tutors (with likely very unenforceable noncompetes) and expanding across four different cities, I was convinced that college was not for me. I mean, I made around $17,000 that year! I was a millionaire!

It was not until Ms. Simon’s AP English class in the eleventh grade that my life began to change academically. Appalled by my decision not to apply to college, she made my grade that semester dependent on filling out the application to one university. Because my best friend’s brother went to Duke and because of their stellar basketball team (shout out to Coach K), I decided to complete Duke’s application. Once completed, Ms. Simon personally made sure that it was free for me to apply, so that I had no excuse but to submit it.

Fast forward a couple of months and I was not only accepted, but between a generous scholarship and financial aid, I was able to attend Duke for free. A bit better of a deal than my $17,000 per year! Since coming to Duke, I have been surrounded by the best and the brightest. I have made great friends, served on a couple of executive boards and the Board of Trustees, traveled to eight countries and over 25 cities, and most importantly, I have been able to grow as a fellow human being and become a double Blue Devil.

You see, I would not be up here speaking to you all were it not for the magnanimous hearts of the people that surrounded me at all times. My move to the United States would not have been possible without my mom’s love and vision. My success in school would not have been possible without my grandmother’s tenacity. My acceptance into Duke University would not have been possible without Ms. Simon’s persistence. And my coming to Duke and growth since being here would not have been possible without you. Without your generosity. For me, the decision was binary: either I go to Duke or I do not go to college. Now I am standing in front of you all, thanking you for being the catalyst of my journey. Your donations have transformed an immigrant, from a low-income and single-parent household and made him into a first-generation top-10 college and law student. Most flatteringly, your generosity has made me a Gerald B. Tjoflat Scholar.

I cannot even begin to articulate what an honor it is to hold this scholarship. Coming up on 50 years on the federal bench, Judge Tjoflat is an example to me and all my fellow scholars. His relentless fight for justice, unprecedented search for the truth, and grit is something worth emulating. Oh, and he also desegregated the Jacksonville, Florida school district! The Judge gives back to Duke in many ways. He serves on the Board, named one of his dogs “Duke” and has taken in many Duke Law students as clerks and helped them begin successful careers practicing law.

As you can imagine, being a Tjoflat Scholar is no easy task. I remember meeting the Judge last year for the first time. After nervously shaking his hand and answering what my name was and where I was from, the Judge asked me what I thought the meaning of life is… who does that? Regardless, I answered. I told him that I thought the meaning of life was to find out why we think what we think. If we do not learn to control our thoughts, we will forever be at the volition of our environment. Slightly taken aback, the Judge fired back with endless wisdom about how life is a cylinder. And that we see life through the cylindrical slit in which we were born into. Though we see life through different slits of the cylinder, we both share at least two important truths – the fight for justice and our love for Duke. And do those two things not perfectly exemplify what makes Duke Law so special?

Since enrolling last Fall, I have partaken in and been witness to some amazing things here at the Law School. The beauty of this law school is in the diversity of its efforts. Like Professor Ichel, there are people here who have been partners at firms for over 25 years. I feel the need to mention Professor Ichel here because he is both a double Blue Devil and worked at Simpson Thacher, which is where I will be spending part of my summer. Alternatively, we have professors who have never seen the inside of a big law firm’s office and went straight through into teaching, with maybe a little break to clerk for a Supreme Court justice. Analogously, I have seen my peers, alongside professors, free Dontae Sharpe after spending 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. That same day, I sat in a symposium with Professor Jeff Ward about the coming “fight” against technology and what legal ramifications we have to deal with them. The beauty of Duke Law is in its diversity – whether that be racially, economically, professionally, or academically.

My mom came to this country with a vision that did not guarantee future success; it merely moved our family forward towards the possibility of it. Because of her bravery and your generosity, I have the opportunity to go into the field I love and to work in a practice that impassions me. A stark contrast from the less than 20% of single-parent, low-income, and immigrant Latinos who attain a college degree.

To me, success is less about placement, and more about displacement. Thanks to you all, I am where I am today. My classmates are where they are. There are 200 named scholars, 100 of which are with us here this morning. I am willing to bet that not a single one of us has the same path towards the law or vision for where to go with it. I repeat, this is the beauty of Duke Law and what will keep us ranked among the best.

I once read a book, believe it or not. It said that you know you have changed someone’s life when you do something for them that they could never repay you for. That is the reason we are here today. On behalf of all the named scholars, thank you. You have not only changed our lives for the better, but that of our families, our children, and so on. These scholarships spur generational change. And because of that, I will forever be loyal to Duke and all of the great people that make it what it is. Thank you all for coming today and investing in us – the students. Thank you for believing in us. I assure you that we will not disappoint.

Now, I have the privilege of introducing Professor Laurence Helfer. Professor Helfer is the Harry R. Chadwick, Sr. Professor of Law, and has been teaching at Duke Law since 2009. He is not only an expert in the areas of international law, adjudication and dispute settlement, but also the co-director of Duke Law's Center for International and Comparative Law and the co-Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law. Prior to coming to Duke, Professor Helfer taught at other amazing institutions such as the University of Chicago Law School and the Duke of the North, Harvard Law. Please join in me in welcoming Professor Helfer.

Laurence Helfer, Harry R. Chadwick, Sr. Professor of Law

Professor Helfer spoke from notes, and his remarks can be viewed on the full event video.

Closing Remarks: Kerry Abrams, James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke Dean and Professor of Law

Good morning. Thank you to Larry, Gerardo, David and Kate for lending your distinct perspectives to the celebration we are sharing today. It is wonderful to come together as a community – faculty, staff, alumni, friends and students – to honor all of the people that make Duke Law School extraordinary. I hope you can all feel the spirit of intergenerational commitment and generosity that is palpable in this room today. It is at moments like these when our Duke Law community feels most like a family. – We care and support one another throughout our lives.

One thing that is especially important about our Duke Law family is that we are a family of lawyers. That seems obvious, but it’s really very special. Those of you who are 1L and 2L students may recall – because I’m sure you were listening very carefully!—some of what I told you on your very first day of law school. On that day, I observed that you have chosen to study law over many other compelling alternatives, like medicine or science or business. I surmised that one reason you may have decided to study law was that you had noticed that our institutions are critical to our flourishing as a society. The institutions we take for granted—a free press, the integrity of the justice system, the structural checks and balances embedded in our constitution—are continually being tested. It is the job of lawyers to protect and preserve them.

Being a lawyer puts you in a position of great power. You will be able to persuade other people to see the world in a different way. You will become skilled problem-solvers. You’ll be able to see situations from multiple perspectives. And you’ll change the course of history, by changing the law in all sorts of ways, great and small.

Finally, I cautioned you that your job as a lawyer is not only to obtain this amazing power, but to learn to exercise it carefully, ethically, and wisely. I used a Star Wars metaphor, that at Duke Law we aim to train Jedi knights, not Sith lords.

If that seems like a lot to take on, rest assured you are not alone. The same people who have helped you to develop your skills as lawyers by supporting you through scholarship or fellowship aid are also part of our broader Duke Law family. Students, look around you, because alumni, faculty, donors, and friends in this room are the people to whom you will turn throughout your careers as you seek to develop the wisdom and judgment to use your skills and talents for good in society.

This sense of mutual support, this sense of “family,” starts the moment you arrive at Duke Law but will not end when you leave the building. There are many reasons why Duke Law School draws some of the most brilliant, passionate students from around the world. As one of the nation’s best law schools, Duke Law excels in teaching, scholarship, and service, and I’m sure you chose Duke Law with those factors in mind. But the prevailing reason students and alumni love the Law School is for its culture. Few law schools combine intellectual rigor with extraordinary collaboration and camaraderie the way Duke Law does. This collaborative spirit creates a uniquely participatory environment in the classroom. It also encourages a collective commitment to serving others.

Students are also drawn to Duke Law because the remarkable education and experiences offered here help graduates launch extraordinary careers. Our alumni hold positions of influence in all levels of government, private practice, nonprofits, business, academia, and the judiciary. They are actively changing the world for the better as counselors, problem solvers, defenders of the rule of law and leaders in their communities. Many of these leaders are in the room today. You give of yourselves not only to your communities but to your Duke Law family as well.

We want to continue to bring the world’s best aspiring lawyers and problem solvers to Duke Law. I would like to personally thank you for helping me, my predecessors and my successors do just that. A legal education of the quality we offer is expensive. To mitigate the financial burden this puts on students, we spend more than $17.4 million on student financial aid, which is three times what we spent just a decade ago. Your scholarship endowments help us fund this considerable expense. In fact, donors have established 61 new scholarships during this same timeframe. This is remarkable progress, but we are a relatively young school compared to our well-established peers and the majority of our scholarship funds are just starting to grow. It will take many years for them to mature sufficiently enough to provide robust income.

Students should come to Duke Law School if what we offer best matches their interests and passions. Period. We do not want cost to be the driving factor, but we are not there yet. Together, we can get to a point where everyone who is admitted to Duke Law School, and wants to attend this wonderful school, can do just that. All of us can help make this happen, whether it is through support of the Annual Fund, which subsidizes financial aid, or by establishing a scholarship endowment, or giving to student aid through your estate. I hope those of you in the room who are so inclined and able will join people like David and Jan who are “doubling down” on their investment in financial aid. Thank you, David and Jan, for leading the way.

I’d like to take this moment in time to thank two very special members of the Duke Law family who could not be here today - Stanley and Elizabeth Star. The Stars are singularly responsible for helping make this surge forward in our financial aid program. Stanley and Elizabeth Star are the largest individual donors to Duke Law School in the history of the school, and are committed not just to helping the school through their individual gifts, but to doing so in a way that motivates other members of the community to give generously. Through an extraordinary matching program during the Duke Forward campaign, Stanley and Elizabeth matched the gifts of six generous donors who established professorships that support our faculty. They also matched forty-one gifts that establish or enhance scholarship endowments. They did so in the most selfless way – by adding to endowed scholarships that did not bear their names. Stanley and Elizabeth are catalysts for philanthropy at Duke Law who inspired a new generation of donors. They are the ultimate exemplars of what it means to be a part of the Duke Law Family.

To fully understand the enormous impact Stanley and Elizabeth have made on our family, I want you to take a moment to look in your program. You will see that many of the scholarship funds listed have an asterisk – a “star”—next to them. These are scholarship funds that were created or enhanced with matching money from the Star Financial Aid gift. Look to see if you are the recipient or donor of any of these 41 funds. If you are, please rise.

Stanley and Elizabeth, this is your philanthropy at work. This is your generosity multiplied 41 times over. And it is only just beginning. The impact of your investment will grow exponentially over time as these scholarship endowments grow and as scholarships are awarded to future generations of students. Your generosity will also inspire many people in this room – even people who, standing here today, cannot imagine endowing a scholarship, to give back to our Duke Law Family in the future, and make this remarkable education and community available for generations to come. We applaud you for your generosity and we thank you – deeply – for helping usher in a new standard of philanthropy at Duke Law School.  

In addition to the enormous impact made by the Star family, Duke Law has, over the years, generated 108 other scholarship endowments. Each of these endowments represents a commitment, whether by an individual, a couple, a family, or sometimes a group, such as a class at Duke Law School, colleagues and former students of a retired professor, or the faculty at large, to giving back to our community and helping new students achieve their dreams. At this time, if you are a donor of a scholarship fund, please rise and be recognized. [Lead applause]

Finally, this celebration is ultimately about you, students, who hold so much promise for the future of this school and the legal profession. We have so much optimism and hope for your futures, and we will be cheering you on every step of the way. Would all student scholarship and fellowship recipients please rise to be recognized?

You are all very deserving of our gratitude and admiration, and you bring great pride to our law school. Thank you for coming, and enjoy your weekend.