Instead of simply reading about the Declaration of Independence in textbooks, students in Trinity College and across Duke University are invited to experience it through movement, conversation, writing and reflection at the Nasher Museum of Art.
Through movement activities, Brooks Emanuel encouraged students to draw meaningful connections between bodily freedom and notions of political freedom evoked by the Declaration of Independence. “We were imagining a place where we felt free and comfortable,” one student said. “Then we were moving and seeing how our body felt.” Photo credit: Lei He.
Through January 3, 2027, the Nasher is home to one of the few remaining Stone copies of the Declaration of Independence, in collaboration with Duke Arts and as part of We the People: A Duke & Durham Initiative.
The Declaration’s arrival in September has already enriched classes across Duke, including those in the Political Bodies Constellation. The Constellation — a group of interconnected courses for first-year students that explore a core question from multiple perspectives — is led by Brooks Emanuel, Executive in Residence in the Kenan Institute for Ethics.
Duke students in the Political Bodies Constellation examine the ways political systems, ideologies and movements shape our world and question how politics becomes embodied and how bodies become politicized. To think deeply about those topics, Emanuel, in collaboration with other Constellation faculty, led students to the Nasher.
“We were really excited to have the opportunity to engage with the Declaration of Independence and all the questions that it raises about freedom and independence,” he said.
During their visit, the undergraduates engaged with the Declaration and its history through a series of six interactive stations designed by Constellation faculty members. These included the opportunity to do close readings on the document and write reflections and practice freedom through movement, all while being in the presence of a piece of American history.
Students in the Constellation were particularly interested in the nuance that the activities and conversations highlighted, including considering who was included in America’s declaration of freedom — and who was excluded.
For Emanuel, the combination of intellectual inquiry, immersive learning and interdisciplinary curiosity is at the heart of the Constellation.
This story was first published on the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences website. Story: Jess Abel, Trinity Communications; Video: Andrew Lam, Trinity Communications.
Enslaved woman Ona Judge made a daring escape from George and Martha Washington’s household in 1796. Now, nearly 250 years later, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar is telling her story.
Dunbar’s book, “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge,” was selected as the Common Experience reading for the incoming Duke Undergraduate Class of 2030. On September 25, 2026, the Duke and Durham community had the opportunity to hear from Dunbar at two events — one at the Nasher Museum of Art, hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Education, and one at the Durham County Main Library, hosted by the Kenan Institute for Ethics as part of its event series, The Ethics of Now.
Caption: Dunbar spoke with Duke history professor Tamika Nunley at the on-campus event at the Nasher. Photo credit: Gabrielle Stanfield.
As part of We the People: A Duke and Durham Initiative, an ongoing commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, these events offered attendees the chance to think about the nation’s evolving identity through its early history. At the Nasher event, Dunbar pointed out that Ona Judge is a key person to consider when we are reflecting on the meaning of liberty — both then and now.
Similarly, in her opening comments at the Durham County Main Library, Ethics of Now host and Duke history professor Adriane Lentz-Smith said that hundreds of years after Ona Judge escaped from slavery, “we are still reckoning with what it means to be free.”
Dunbar said she first came across Ona Judge’s story while combing through digital historical archives, where she discovered a runaway slave advertisement placed by the Washingtons after Judge fled their household in 1796. The Washingtons made several attempts to return her to their custody but were ultimately unsuccessful, and Judge lived the rest of her life as a fugitive in New Hampshire.
Dunbar recognized how Judge’s story could offer historians a different entry point to the Washingtons’ story. Historical accounts and narratives are often laser-focused on the Founding Fathers — a phenomenon Dunbar refers to as “founder chic.” But as a person who lived with the Washingtons during their years as the first “First Family,” and who experienced life as both an enslaved person and as a provisionally free one, Ona Judge’s story offers a unique historical perspective into the United States in its earliest years as a nation.
Dunbar was honest about the challenges of researching Judge’s life. Ona Judge did not make it into the historical archives in the same way that George Washington did — and, as an absconded slave, she did her best to lie low.
“An enslaved woman who spent 50 years in hiding is hard to find in records,” Dunbar said.
While Judge did give interviews to abolitionist newsletters later in her life, Dunbar had to make several inferences while writing her book, drawing from her extensive research into the lives of Black women during the same period.
“None of the speculation I did was fictional,” Dunbar told the audience. “It was based on the experiences of other Black women who were either fugitive or enslaved or free who lived in the same space and time as Ona.”
In conversation with Duke historian Adriane Lentz-Smith (right), Erica Armstrong Dunbar spoke about her book “Never Caught” at the Durham County Main Library on September 25, 2026.
In the years following the publication of her book on Judge, Dunbar became involved in the production of the award-winning HBO show “The Gilded Age.” Originally hired as a historical consultant to help the show tell more historically accurate stories about Black women during the 19th century, she was later elevated to co-executive producer by showrunner Julian Fellowes.
“Sunday nights at 9 p.m. are my biggest classroom,” Dunbar said, pointing out that she is able to share her historical research with an audience of millions through “The Gilded Age.” Though she was originally worried people would think she had “sold out” or “gone Hollywood,” Dunbar says she now hopes that other historians will find ways to be creative without worrying about sacrificing their respectability or image in the field.
When offering advice to up-and-coming historians, especially Black historians, Dunbar recommended a thick skin and an open mind. She said that following your passion and honing your craft is the best way to keep your head up when telling underrepresented stories, especially ones that draw challenges.
Despite “Never Caught” receiving wide acclaim — it was named a National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction in 2017 and received the Frederick Douglass Book Award in 2018 — the work of commemorating Ona Judge is far from over. While Judge’s story was once included in an exhibit at the President’s House in Philadelphia, the National Parks Service removed the panels in 2026 as part of the Trump administration’s campaign against “negative” representations of the nation at historic sites. The community pushed back, painting murals and playing videos on mobile trucks to keep Judge’s story visible.
Dunbar’s work reminds us that the stories we tell about the past remain unfinished, and that every generation engages with history in different ways in order to better understand the present.
Part of commemoration is aspirational, Dunbar said. In other words, the stories we tell reflect the nation we want to become.
Dunbar poses with a fan at the book signing following the event at the Durham County Main Library. Photo credit: Lei He.
This story was written by Reese Ritter in collaboration with Sarah Rogers. Arka Kapadia Solanki and Catherine Angst contributed reporting.
How long do most visitors spend looking at a work of art in a museum?
Fifteen to thirty seconds.
And how long does it typically take for a physician to interrupt a patient?
Even less than that — eleven to twenty-three seconds.
This is one reason why the Re-Imagining Medicine (ReMed) program takes its Duke student fellows to the North Carolina Museum of Art every year. Through closely observing works of art and connecting them to their own stories, these pre-health students learn valuable lessons about taking the time to really listen to patients — better preparing them to slow down in a system that is constantly pushing healthcare workers to speed up.
ReMed fellow Runda Li talks about his connection with this work of art, “Pink-Face” by Susan Rothenberg. Photo credit: Victoria Yunez Behm.
Led by Duke professor and psychiatrist Warren Kinghorn along with program coordinator Victoria Yunez Behm, Re-Imagining Medicine seeks to foster the character, imagination, and practices needed to work effectively in contexts of human suffering and healing. It is a program of The Purpose Project at Duke, a collaboration between the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Divinity School, and the Office of the Provost, funded by The Duke Endowment.
Through ReMed, an interdisciplinary team of professors and professionals at the intersections of medicine, ethics, religion, the arts, and humanities helps students explore themes often absent in traditional medical education. The program begins with an immersive week at Duke and continues throughout the summer with weekly remote sessions, in which students continue to reflect on program themes as they complete an internship or another experience related to health care.
John David Ike asks students what they notice in“She Weaves White Gold” by Malaika Temba. Photo credit: Victoria Yunez Behm.
John David Ike knows the important lessons art can teach medical practitioners. Before earning his M.D. from Emory University and completing his residency at Duke, he studied Art History as an undergraduate at Davidson College. He also serves as the co-director of the Duke Internal Medicine residency program, which integrates arts into its curriculum.
During ReMed’s immersive week, Ike led the fellows through a series of exercises at the art museum, encouraging them to reflect on their own stories as well as the stories of the patients they will serve as healthcare providers.
Starting in a private room at the museum, Ike first asked the students to reflect on their own identities. The challenge: they had to describe who they were in only six words. Students wrote their words on sticky notes and attached them somewhere on their bodies. They walked around, found someone they hadn’t talked to yet, and asked about one of the six aspects of their identity. After two minutes of sharing, they switched places, and the other student explained one of their words.
The group then travelled to the main section of the museum, where they received prompts — for example, “something that reminds you of your childhood” or “something that connects to your definition of community.” The students found a work of art that spoke to their prompt and examined it for at least five minutes. Afterwards, each student presented their selection to the group, explaining what they noticed and its connection to their prompt.
In their final activity, the students discussed “Isla (Tierra Prometida),” a mixed media work that depicts the ocean with thousands of fish hooks. The Cuban artist, Yoan Capote, relates the sea to the Iron Curtain of World War II and the separation between Cuba and its surrounding nations. Ike asked the ReMed students to reflect on a boundary in their life, either physical or metaphorical, and how they have dealt with it or are still dealing with it.
When the students discussed what they learned from their time in the art museum, their responses included active listening, the importance of stories and identities, viewing patients as a work of art, and learning to pay attention to the details instead of rushing to conclusions.
Aditi Avinash, a rising junior studying ethics and health policy, history, and medicine through Program II, says she’s loved her experience in the ReMed program so far.
“So much of the medicine is lost in the science,” she said. “Medicine isn’t designed to cure a disease; it’s meant to treat people.”
ReMed fellow Mary Yuhen Ho responds to the painting “The Garden Parasol” by Frederick Carl Frieseke. Photo credit: Victoria Yunez Behm.
Kenan program alum Claire Rostov recently received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching from Duke Graduate School. A Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies at Duke University who will graduate this spring, Rostov’s research centers around religion, media, consumption, and waste in the United States.
Rostov credits her involvement in many teaching programs, including Teaching on Purpose, in shaping her teaching style. Teaching on Purpose is a fellowship program that encourages doctoral students to reflect on their own professional identities — not only as scholars, but also as educators — and how their discipline connects to questions of meaning and purpose. It is part of The Purpose Project at Duke, a collaboration between the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Divinity School, and the Office of the Provost, which is funded by The Duke Endowment.
Teaching on Purpose doesn’t just equip Ph.D. students to teach in the classroom. Fellows learn how to incorporate interdisciplinary themes, practice communicating with other graduate students and faculty outside of their departments, and learn how to respond to students’ nonacademic as well as academic needs.
In this interview, Rostov talks about how she learned to prioritize her students’ curiosity by guiding them to develop their own relationship with the material. She discusses how the fellowship challenged her to relinquish control of the classroom and connect abstract concepts to her students’ daily lives. This interview has been edited and condensed.
Reese Ritter: Why did you choose to participate in the Teaching on Purpose Fellowship?
Claire Rostov: There’s lots of really practical parts of teaching, like “How do you make a syllabus?” and stuff like that, but I was excited to think a little bit more about the big picture: what are the big questions and the ways in which we are teaching in a broader college context. I know a lot of Ph.D. students don’t get that opportunity, and I think Duke is especially good at trying to help us be better teachers coming out of grad school.
RR: What were the biggest things that you took away from the fellowship?
CR: Teaching on Purpose really helps you think about how your role teaching your one class is such a small part of the just bigger institutional context, and also all of the things happening in students’ lives that really extend beyond your class that you’re teaching. Thinking more broadly about all the things that students are involved in, and all the classes they’re taking, and how those sort of mesh in that bigger context was helpful.
We spent a lot of time in Teaching on Purpose thinking about how to connect the course content that we’re teaching with questions and interests students have: how do we ask questions and make connections between the content we’re teaching and students’ lived experiences and things they care about. I’m in Religious Studies, so sometimes the things I’m teaching feel really relevant and timely, and other times we’re talking about 18th century sermons, and it’s like, how does this matter to a Duke student in 2026. Thinking about how to make those connections relevant was helpful.
RR: What was it like to work with Ph.D. students from other departments?
CR: As you get further and further on in graduate school, you get way more stuck in your little world, and so even students in your department are doing really different things. You just have way fewer opportunities to interact with other students. Teaching on Purpose is a good way to meet other Ph.D. students across the university and think about the sorts of questions and concerns that they are thinking about in the classes they’re teaching. Sometimes those are really similar across, for example, humanities and sciences. But sometimes those are really different.
RR: How did you feel when you found out that you received the award?
CR: It was really touching to receive the award. A lot of the course evaluations that students wrote were, I think, a big reason I got the award. Most of the students have graduated now, so it felt like a very sweet end; but also a little sad to not be able to share it with them.
So much of teaching is just experimenting. You try something in the classroom, sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t. There’s some value in just continuing to experiment and try new things in the classroom. It was nice to just get the award and have that be acknowledged.
“Teaching on Purpose inspired the confidence to just try some things, and to do something experimental or new. That made for a much better classroom experience and a better learning environment.”
— Claire Rostov
RR: How did Teaching on Purpose change your approach to teaching?
CR: If a class is an hour and 15 minutes, and you show up with an hour and 15 minutes of lecture notes, you know exactly how the class is going to go, and that’s easy in a lot of ways. It takes off the stress of the unknown. It’s much harder to relinquish that control and do interactive activities and group discussions, because you don’t actually know how it’s going to go. You don’t know if you’re going to have too much stuff or too little stuff until you’re doing it. Teaching on Purpose gave me the confidence to just try some things, and to do something experimental and new. That made for a much better classroom experience and a better learning environment. No one needs to hear me talk for an hour and 15 minutes; that’s not very exciting.
In Teaching on Purpose, we talked about having questions that help relate the course content to students’ own lived experiences and lives. Each day in my class, there was a question on the syllabus and students were discussion leaders to start class off, so for the first 10 minutes, different students would run discussion on those questions. Across the board, that was what students liked most about class — this moment in which their classmates were getting to run the discussion. That’s such a good example of ‘you don’t need to hear me talk for an hour and 15 minutes.’ That was what I took directly from something we’d done in Teaching on Purpose, having these questions that would relate the content to students’ lives.
I’d recommend Teaching on Purpose to any Ph.D. student, that’s for sure. I think it’s a good experience, and I think it’s helpful.
Professor Michael Rizk (left) works with a student on a project in the Duke Design POD, a designated makerspace for first-year students. Photo credit: Summer Steenberg.
Engineering courses are notoriously challenging, but what if they also challenged students to become better people? In Engineering 101, an introductory course for first-years that focuses on design and technical communication, professors Michael Rizk and Ann Saterbak challenge students not only to develop their STEM skills, but also their character.
This course is part of Character Forward, a partnership between Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering and The Purpose Project at Duke, a collaboration between the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Divinity School, and the Office of the Provost. Character Forward seeks to integrate purpose and integrity into the engineering curriculum.
Dr. Rizk says that he saw this course as an opportunity “to be a part of students’ lives as they figure out what they want to do in life and what’s important to them.” In addition to helping them develop good habits as engineers, he hopes to help them shape their values and aspirations in everyday life.
Rizk worked with the Character Forward team to emphasize valuable character traits during each stage of course projects, such as team formation, ideation, prototyping, testing and result-sharing. For example, team formation requires respect, especially when students come from different backgrounds or have different lived experiences. The instructors gave examples of how teams could foster respect before the phase even began. Students later created video reflections to share what they learned throughout their projects and how it applied to their personal lives.
A Kenan Institute for Ethics assessment team found that 80% of students had a positive view of the focus on character in their course. One student, Daniel Matten E’28, said that the character exercises were instrumental in bringing his group together.
Two engineering students work together on a project in the Design Cube. Photo credit: Summer Steenberg.
“Although I knew we were all smart people, I was initially concerned about the group dynamics given our various backgrounds and leadership styles,” he said. “The character reflections encouraged by the instructors and TAs sparked the conversations that we needed to have as a group and pulled us much closer together.”
Other students echoed that the communication and teamwork skills that they learned in the course would stay with them long after they received their final grade.
Rizk says that the Pratt School of Engineering is defined by the kind of people it sends out into the world. He is proud of the work he has done with the Character Forward Initiative and optimistic about the future of his Engineering 101 students.
Read the full story by Mahi Patel on the Pratt School of Engineering website here.
Imagine getting the chance to fix your biggest mistake. All you need is ten minutes of your life back.
Jens Ludwig says that 80% of the people incarcerated for gun violence would not be in prison if they had that chance.
Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. His research shows that most deadly shootings in the U.S. aren’t premeditated acts of murder — instead, they’re due to conflicts escalating in the moment.
At the Ethics of Now event at the Durham County Main Library, Ludwig recounts being in the passenger seat of a cop car for his crime research. He remembers the adrenaline of zooming through red lights with the siren blaring. Photo credit: Summer Steenberg.
As part of the Ethics of Now, an event series from the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Ludwig visited Duke University and Durham, North Carolina to talk about how he analyzes gun violence through the lens of behavioral economics, a branch of economics that seeks to better understand human decision-making. He spoke to students at Duke Law School and the Department of Economics before joining Ethics of Now host, history professor Adriane Lentz-Smith, for a public event at the Durham County Main Library on the evening of January 23.
In his book, “Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence,” Ludwig writes about two Chicago neighborhoods, Greater Grand Crossing and South Shore. These communities are right next to each other. They are indistinguishable in terms of demographics and economic conditions. Yet, despite their proximity, Greater Grand Crossing has twice as many shootings as South Shore. Why?
Located by Lake Michigan, South Shore has more commercial development, which means there’s more foot traffic and what Ludwig calls “eyes on the street.” Since most shootings are the result of split-second decisions in moments of high stress, Ludwig says, bystanders have a deescalating effect.
Additionally, according to research from the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago, which Ludwig directs, neighborhoods plagued by gun violence keep losing residents, because they leave to find safer places to live. So the cycle of violence deepens and the problem only gets worse.
Ludwig discussed his research with a group of Duke undergraduates in the Social Sciences building — the same building where he earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Duke Graduate School over 30 years ago.
Students listen to Dr. Jens Ludwig discuss his research into gun violence and behavioral economics in the Ethics of Now student conversation. Photo credit: Summer Steenberg
Ludwig said that while the gun violence problem is much bigger and more complex than national policy would have you assume, there are much less costly solutions than what is proposed.
Since 90% of shooters and 80% of victims have prior records, Ludwig said, training detention guards to teach behavioral intervention methods is an effective way to curb violent crimes. Empowering high-risk people to make smarter decisions instead of escalating conflict to the point of no return is an inexpensive but practical solution.
“As we learn more about how the world works, it turns out that you can really reduce violence without having to incarcerate lots of people,” Ludwig said.
When a student asked whether these interventions would have similar outcomes in different regions, Ludwig said yes. “Policy-makers assume absolutely nothing generalizes,” he said, but “the things that work are much less context-specific than policy-makers assume.”
A Community Violence Intervention (CVI) worker asks Ludwig about the efficacy of CVI’s work in mediating gun violence. Photo credit: Summer Steenberg
Ludwig later visited the Durham County Main Library to speak to the Durham community about gun violence. He reiterated his point about the importance of behavioral interventions while diving deeper into the psychological mechanisms of these life-altering decisions.
When the brain is under stress, like the stress of intense interpersonal conflict, Ludwig says that deliberate “System 2” thinking turns off and automatic “System 1” thinking takes over.
“System 1 is designed to be very fast…choosing between two options: ‘fine’ and the ‘end of the world,’” Ludwig explained. These instant decisions can lead to the heat-of-the-moment violence, especially in vulnerable communities.
“There is a second group of people that is often engaging in high-stakes situations where misconstrual and catastrophizing also turns out to be important, which is law enforcement,” Ludwig said.
He described how a University of Chicago research colleague delivered behavioral training to a thousand Chicago police officers, “then looked at their administrative activity data six months later.” In comparison with a control group that didn’t receive the training, there were reductions in their “use of force, low public safety value arrests, and black-white disparities in low public safety value arrests as well.”
In the Q&A session, Durham County Commissioner Michelle Burton asked for practical steps that she and her fellow policymakers in Durham could take to fight gun violence. Ludwig mentioned training detention guards to provide behavioral intervention education, but also focusing on city planning. Creating vibrant neighborhoods entices people to go for a walk or drive around the block, which decreases the likelihood of violent crime by 30%.
Other questioners led Ludwig to emphasize the importance of a good social safety net, education, and a variety of policies that can target different aspects of the gun violence problem.
