Duke is facing a $108 million federal funding freeze and multiple federal investigations.
Duke University file photo
As Duke University navigates a $108 million federal research funding freeze and multiple investigations by the Trump administration, administrators want faculty to avoid talking to the media about institutional operations, The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper reported Monday.
According to an August email obtained by The Chronicle, Jenny Edmonds, associate dean of communications and marketing at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, encouraged faculty to “continue to engage with the media to disseminate [their] research as [they] have always done,” while also cautioning that “media attention to institutions of higher education and discussions about institutional responses to policy changes have become more prominent than ever.”
“In this moment in particular, questions about Duke and current events are being answered by Frank Tramble and his team,” Edmonds wrote. “If you are contacted by the media about overarching issues confronting the University, please forward the requests to [Sanford’s Senior Public Relations Manager Matt LoJacono] and me.”
Although it wasn’t a universitywide directive, The Chronicle obtained emails that show some other departments also gave their faculty similar instructions to route media requests through the university’s central communications channels.
At an Academic Council meeting in October, Duke’s president, Vincent Price, and council chair, Mark Anthony Neal, commended faculty members for not speaking to a New York Times reporter; the reporter had visited the campus while working on a story about the Trump administration targeting Duke’s diversity, equity and inclusion program.
“It was pretty amazing that [the reporter] actually got no commentary from Duke officials and Duke faculty,” Neal continued. “Even if it wasn’t overtly communicated to the community, the community understood the stakes of that mode of inquiry.”
At that meeting Price also called Trump’s higher education compact—which would allegedly give universities preferential funding in exchange for making sweeping institutional policy changes— “highly problematic,” according to The Chronicle. Despite public pressure, Duke hasn’t officially rejected the terms of the compact.