By Li Han
Staff Writer of the Tsinghua News Center
Professor Richard Brodhead, President of Duke University, was awarded Tsinghua University Doctorate on June 29.
Tsinghua President Gu Binglin attended the awarding ceremony held in the main building and awarded the diploma to Professor Brodhead. Tsinghua Vice President Chen Jining hosted the ceremony.
After the ceremony, Professor Brodhead delivered a speech titled “Toward a New University: Research and Education in a Global Society.”
“As we continue to train students in specialized disciplines, we must also work to cross-train them, to introduce them to other bodies of knowledge and methods of analysis and to challenge them in the arts of intellectual synthesis,” said Professor Brodhead. He noted that together with supplying more range to the expertise the teachers hope to impart, it is also important to promote the sharing or pooling of understandings, and teach the students how to combine their bits of knowledge with those of others in the service of larger goals. Professor Brodhead also stressed the importance of cooperation in his speech.
Professor Brodhead answered several questions from students after the speech.
Tsinghua President Gu Binglin met and had a talk with Professor Brodhead prior to the ceremony, exchanging ideas on cooperation between the two universities.
Richard H. Brodhead became Duke’s ninth president on July 1, 2004, after a 32-year career at Yale University. In addition to serving as president, he is a professor of English at Duke.
