The Chinese New Year, the most important holiday of the year in Chinese culture, begins today. This year for the first time, Duke University is joining the celebration by sending out digital New Year Greetings to thousands of Chinese students and alumni.

Duke has more students and alumni from China than any other foreign country in the world. The digital card, designed by a firm in Shanghai, is being sent out to Chinese students, alumni, academic partners and other supporters of Duke.

As public intellectuals, Duke professors speak their minds regularly in the nation’s top newspapers. For a sampling, check out Duke’s new Opinion page.

Today, Laurent Dubois and Deborah Jenson, faculty co-directors of the Haiti Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute, address questions of history, politics, economics, agriculture, development policies, humanitarianism in “How Haiti Can Be Rich Again,” an op-ed in the New York Times.

“HAITI wasn’t always the “poorest nation in the Western hemisphere,” though it’s almost impossible to read about the country today without coming across that phrase. In the two years since the earthquake that devastated it, Haiti has experienced political conflict and its first ever cholera epidemic; hundreds of thousands of the displaced are still living in makeshift tents strewn like dusty flags by the sides of highways. It is easy to forget that, for most of the 19th century, Haiti was a site of agricultural innovation, productivity and economic success. In the wake of the earthquake, many have talked about the need to lay foundations for a better future. To do that, Haiti should look to the past, and the system of small farms and the decentralized economy that once provided Haitians with dignity, autonomy and wealth…”

Choosing a major is an extremely important step in the undergraduate process, and Duke understands this is no easy matter. That is why Duke hosts a major fair, to help students become informed about what each major has to offer, its applicability to their interests and future goals, and how each major can be achieved. Check out some of these Duke undergraduates as they talk through their interests and the thoughts they have for choosing a major.

Through a signature fieldwork program of the Duke Global Health Institute, Duke students are working with low-resource communities such as this one in Uganda to address health disparities through health education, water sanitation, and much more.

Strenghtening the humanities, especially in undergraduate curriculum and research, is underway at Duke, thanks to a major new five-year, $6 million Mellon Foundation Grant . The FHI Humanities Lab initiative plays a key role.
The “Humanities Writ Large” initiative also will support visiting scholars and new faculty appointments, undergraduate research efforts, humanities labs, and focused support for interdisciplinary collaborations across departments and institutions.