PUBLISHED:January 13, 2017

From the Dean

Dean David F. LeviDear Friends:

This is that time of year when the spiritual and material realms seem to be in competition with one another. Yet they join together in happy collaboration when the topic is giving to Duke Law, where the material is an expression of the spiritual and in turn drives and makes possible a future that is the expression of our dreams and aspirations for this institution.

This is one of the last opportunities that I will have as your dean to address the Duke Forward campaign, which will come to an end in June 2017. We began this campaign almost seven years ago, in the midst of faltering financial markets and fears about the stability of our global economy.

And yet, thanks to the unprecedented generosity of donors around the world, the results have been spectacular. In the spring, with more than a year left in the campaign, the university reached its $3.25 billion fundraising goal. And at press time, alumni and friends had helped the Law School surpass our $85 million campaign goal by more than 33 percent. In fiscal year 2016 alone, we raised a record $41.5 million, with nearly $30 million of that in new campaign commitments.

To those of you who already have given generously, I thank you on behalf of the entire Law School community. Your giving makes possible our continued improvement, our ability to address new areas of practice and scholarship, and our enhanced support of our remarkable faculty and students. To those of you who have not yet made the commitment to Duke Forward, now is the time. We need you.

Achieving and maintaining excellence in higher education has always been an expensive undertaking, but it is particularly challenging today. We provide students with a rigorous educational experience. We give them access to a curriculum that prepares them to succeed in the legal profession and beyond. They learn from and are inspired by faculty who are leaders in their scholarly fields and areas of practice and dedicated teachers in the classroom.

We do all of that with an endowment that is considerably smaller than that of our peers, which means we must depend heavily on tuition dollars for our operating budget. That puts a burden on the same students we are trying to lift up, creating for many a debt load that can limit their career choices. This is why philanthropy is so important to Duke Law School, and why its benefit for our future is so significant.

Fortunately, many of you have stepped up to meet this challenge during the Duke Forward campaign. Your gifts have opened the doors of the Law School to students who might not otherwise afford it through 67 new scholarship and fellowship funds. Since I arrived at Duke in 2007, our total student aid has nearly tripled, to more than $14 million annually, surely one of the proudest accomplishments of my deanship.

Campaign gifts have also established 12 new professorships, which will help to attract and retain outstanding scholars and teachers for years to come.

And Duke Forward support has invigorated the work of our faculty in advancing understanding of the law and challenges to it here at home and abroad, and provided them the opportunity to share their research in collaborative efforts with our students. Gifts to fund the Center for Judicial Studies, the International Human Rights Clinic, the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, the Center for Innovation Policy, and many other academic endeavors have enabled our faculty to pursue research, writing, and speaking on important issues facing society and the potential for solutions, legal or otherwise.

These gifts make an enormous difference. At our annual Scholarship and Fellowship Luncheon in October, we heard moving talks of gratitude from graduate Nora Jordan ’83 and student Megan Ault ’18. Each described a path to Duke Law in which their own efforts and the dreams of their parents could not have succeeded without the critical help of Duke Law donors.

In this season of gratitude, I thank you for what you have done and will do for Duke Law and its faculty, staff, and students. We appreciate it, and we are inspired by it to do as much as we can for our school, profession, and country. Thank you and best wishes for the coming year.