Brodhead Remarks

April 27, 2004

Thank you very much, Nan. Let me start by saying how much I appreciate the courtesy the trustees showed in allowing the new President to participate in the selection of the new Chancellor. Next, I, too thank the search committee for taking its responsibility so seriously and identifying an outstanding candidate. Victor, it will be an honor and a pleasure to be your colleague.

Since I was named as Duke’s ninth president, I have considered no priority more important than learning the strengths and challenges of the Duke University Health System and assuring the quality of its leadership. There has been a lot to learn. Like everyone in the land, I already knew that Duke is a medical powerhouse, home of one of the nation’s and world’s top-rated Medical Schools. But from a distance I could not have begun to imagine what I’ve found here across the whole array of activities from basic science research through the study of how scientific discovery can be implemented in clinical practice to the training of skilled and caring medical practitioners – doctors and nurses – and on to the actual tending of many thousands of men, women, and children with medical needs, regardless of their financial circumstances, with the highest quality of care. Of course I have learned about challenges: the business challenges of administering quality care in an environment that has not figured out how to match the new possibilities of medical therapy with the support such care requires; the no less profound ethical challenges that biomedical discovery raises and will continue to raise together with its improvements to the quality of life: many more.

Duke will not be alone in needing to navigate these challenges, and one does not face them lightly. But my initial lessons here – drawn from my meetings with the outgoing chancellor, deans of the schools of Medicine and Nursing, chairs of the basic science and clinical departments, and administrative leaders in the schools and hospitals, plus my visits (among others) to the Duke Clinical Research Institute and the Durham Regional Hospital and the amazing children’s hospital among other facilities, have taught me at least two further things. They have shown me, first, the strategic advantage Duke has in facing inevitable challenges. We have all the pieces of the puzzle. Who is better positioned to realize the special potential of the academic medical center than a place like Duke, where the most abstruse cruxes of research form part of a whole with the most applied and immediate aspects of medical practice, and where the work of treatment and care is profoundly linked to the work of reflection and the creation of medical knowledge? And second, and this I take to be Duke’s ultimate advantage, my soundings have taught me that the work of medicine broadly conceived is carried out at this University by people of the most impressive intelligence, seriousness, creativity and heart.

You are coming to a great place, Victor; and as a person of outstanding accomplishment in each of these fields, you will be a strong leader for the remarkable team at the Duke University Health System and for academic medicine nationally. In my meetings with you these last weeks I have been consistently impressed by your passion about issues of medical research and education, how shrewd strategic sense and detailed grasp of the lay of the land, and your eagerness to engage with this place in all its strengths and challenges. As I reported to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees and want to emphasize here, as new chancellor you will be a key player on my own senior administrative team. Let’s do great things!

As your fellow newcomer who arrived in this new world a little before you, Cindy and I want to say to you and Ruth that you’ll find Duke to be a welcoming and stimulating place, a place of enormous ambition and energy, and a place that is committed to excellence in all it does – all qualities that people have described in you and your special brand of leadership. I am pleased to introduce you to the incredible team you will lead in the years ahead. Please welcome Victor Dzau.