Education: Duke’s Lincolns

Duke University (Durham, N.C.) has used the late Tobaccoman James Buchanan (“Buck”) Duke’s millions to build one of the architectural, if not intellectual, wonders of U.S. higher education. It is hardly a place from which would be expected to come the theory that Gothic palaces do not a university make. Yet last week in Duke Forest, about five minutes’ walk from the Gothic campus, 32 Duke Law School students celebrated their return to a simple life. Like Abraham Lincoln, they began to study law in log cabins.

The theorist responsible for this Duke retreat is the Law School dean, tanned, pipe-smoking Hugo Claude Horack, a hunter and fisherman. Dean Horack used to be investigator of legal education for the American Bar Association, and he concluded that the best place for barristers to learn law and social responsibility is in a quiet, simple atmosphere. Last summer he had five log cabins built as an experiment. One is a recreation centre. Eight students live and study in each of the others. But students are spared Abraham Lincoln’s handicaps. They study not by firelight but by electric light, and they have steam heat, modern plumbing, maid service. They go to classes in the Law School with other students, retire to their cabins for reading and bull sessions. By their fellow undergraduates, who went last week to their housewarming, Duke’s Lincolns already have been nicknamed “future Presidents.”