Monday, October 22, 2007

Burness Leaving Duke

At Duke News today an announcement which begins:

John F. Burness, Duke University’s senior vice president for public affairs and government relations since 1991 and the guiding force behind the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership that helped strengthen Duke’s ties with the local community, will retire on June 30, 2008.

Duke President Richard H. Brodhead has appointed L. Gregory Jones, dean of Duke Divinity School, to chair a 12-person search committee of faculty, trustees, administrators and alumni to identify candidates to succeed Burness.
The rest of the announcement is here.

President Brodhead and Burness both say the retirement was planned two years ago, which means before Chrystal Mangum and Mike Nifong started lying about Duke students.

I’ll say more about Burness tonight. I’m off to a meeting now.

Hat tip: BN

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

John:

I was wondering how long long it would take before they cut him loose.

In the case of Duke, it may be too little, too late.

Ken
Dallas

Anonymous said...

They'll have to look long and hard to find somebody who can twist the truth so effectively.

Good riddance.

~J

Anonymous said...

Burness announcing his retirement that he planned two years ago within days after Mike Pressler lodged a civil suit on the basis of remarks that Burness made bears a striking resemblance, coincidence-wise, to the Listening Ad that its authors and supporters insist was addressing a general attitude of racism and sexism prevalent at Duke that just happened to be released within days after the lacrosse party and a specific claim of white on black rape.