Host: Good morning, President Li, Good morning, President Broadhead.
It’s such a privilege and honor to have two presidents of world-famous university sitting at the same room.
Today is November 17th, 2014.
This day has been dreamed of for many years by many of us.
So I would like first of all ask you how do you feel at this moment.
President Broadhead: I feel great happiness.
DKU began as a dream.
It became as a dream of creating a new model of education.
China has excellent universities, excellent system of higher education.
But in every modern country, you need not just one model of education.
But it’s good to have several models, a choice for students and for faculty.
We have put our best thinking into the creation of DKU.
It has taken years and years of planning, longer than any of us knew.
But it will be stronger because of the planning.
But now today we are at the birth of the school.
When I went to Wuhan, it was very striking to me, Wuhan is older than Duke University, and you have your beautiful campus, up above the lake.
(President Li Xiaohong: You too have a beautiful campus.)
Yeah, we also have a beautiful campus.
(President Li Xiaohong: Maybe the history of both of us, may be almost one hundred and twenty years old.)
You are years older than Duke. And actually it is.
And the interest for me is, when you go to a great university, you never stop to think that someday was the first day that the school was open.
That’s the day we are at, we are at the moment of beginning. The moment of launching for DKU, very exciting.
President Li Xiaohong: Today, I feel very very happy and exciting.
Actually, we aim to establish an elite world class university.
Different from the other three universities of international cooperative education in China, we, first of all, emphasize on the elite education. Secondly, we intend to integrate the research into this university.
It will be a research-oriented world class university. The university will be a combination of education and scientific research.
This is probably the only way to become a leading university in the world that is worthy its name. And this is what we are dreaming of.
Host: So I would like to ask you how and why you choose each other the partner in creating a world-class university Duke Kunshan University in China.
President Broadhead: Duke began thinking about the possibility of DKU in the year 2009.
The city of Kunshan, new and it has many resources for successful economy and culture but they lacked a great institution of higher education.
And so we entered into a conversation with them.
But at that time we knew that in China for a foreign university to come here we need to have a Chinese partner.
Furthermore it was good for us to have a Chinese partner.
At the certain point we were introduced to Wuhan.
And right away you can see the advantages. Wuhan is a top 10 university, the same as Duke is.
Well we did not know then and could only learn from experience. What makes Wuhan a perfect partner is that they entered into the spirit of adventure.
They believed it, they gave their time, their trouble and became truly good partners.
President Li Xiaohong: The cooperation between Wuhan University and Duke University may be accidental but inevitable.
Accidentally, they were looking for partner in China and at that point they happened to touch base with Wuhan University.
And inevitably, we both hold a common vision, Wuhan University also holds the idea to push forward the internationalization, which means education for the world. These two universities share the same educational notion.
The second is the setting of our disciplines. We have many similar disciplines.
Their university is a comprehensive university. Our university is also a comprehensive university.
Their humanities and social sciences are very strong. So are we.
The third is that we share the same vision, which may be the key reason.
Duke had visited many universities in China, but eventually chose Wuhan University as the partner.
I feel, first of all, it’s both accidental and inevitable, as I mentioned just now. It’s also a great honor for Wuhan University. Furthermore, it’s a big step for Wuhan University on its way towards internationalization.
So we are brothers now.
Host: we want you guys to envision the future. Where the journey will go from now.
President Broadhead: Well, today is the beginning. We’ve worked very hard for years and years to arrive at the beginning.
But this is just the beginning.
The day the baby was born is only the beginning of the baby’s life.
Now the baby needs to learn to walk, to run, to talk all the things that come in the future.
What we want to create here is a place that will have at least three distinctions.
It will be a place with a strong model of undergraduate education, residential people living together, faculty and students living and learning together all day long.
That will take place in a research environment where the most important questions of the modern world, the most important global questions can be researched, questions of health, questions of environment, questions of the sciences, things we are starting together.
And the third it will be a place that will be conceived from day one as a global university located in China but created by international partners.
And we expect students to come here from China, from the US, and from other countries.
And all day long they will be learning how to interact with people across the boundaries of culture. That’s our dream for the future of DKU.
President Li Xiaohong: President Broadhead just described DKU’s perspective.
Actually I fully understand why Duke came to China for cooperative education.
As a developed country, it came all the way east to a developing country to seek cooperation opportunity. We are quite aware of Duke’s strategy in making DKU a successful model.
That’s why we fully support Duke’s concept and vision in running DKU.
As for WHU, we aim to build DKU, a joint venture between two top universities in China and the west, or rather in the east and the west, into a model for new world top universities and a research intensive university combining teaching and research.
That’s what we intend to do to support him to fulfil his dream.
Host: Could you elaborate a little bit on the purpose of establishing Wuda-Duke Research Institute and what are the priority areas for this institute?
President Broadhead: Modern universities have two main functions.
The places for training the talent of the future, that is education and the places for expanding the world of understanding and knowledge, we call that research.
Both will take place here.
But the interesting of DKU is, Wuhan and Duke were partners in the creation of DKU, but then DKU would provide a site of partnership between Duke and Wuhan, potentially other universities as well.
But when we have discovered when we signed our first agreement in 2011, we knew how to sign the agreement but we did not yet know what the substance of the relationship we turned into.
But that is the experience. We have to communicate on both sides to have an assured research partnership.
I would say over the last three years, people have discovered the mutual interest of working together.
When you were at Duke Campus two weeks ago, you brought colleagues in physics, you brought colleagues in global health, you brought colleagues in business, you brought colleagues in environment, and our deans and your deans sat together and talked all day long.
President Li Xiaohong: The establishment of the institute will strongly support the DKU in shaping itself into a research university.
I just talked with the Director of the Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges of the Ministry of Education of China.
He said the Ministry is quite interested to see we have established an institute in a university on its road to become a research university. It will entitle DKU a “Pilot Base of International Cooperative Education”, and makes us a model.
And experts with different backgrounds gather here to discuss and research on economy, education, health. The institute also sets up a goal of becoming a leading one in the future.
President Broadhead: We are having a conference at DKU in December where people in the physical sciences from Wuhan and Duke will attend.
President Li Xiaohong: Yeah, we will have a very big conference next month
Host: So what differences would you expect Duke Kunshan University will bring about to the global higher education as a result of your joint efforts.
President Broadhead: It is the very beginning，we have our hopes for this institution.
We think that we will contribute to the strength of higher education in China, also in the United States.
We think we will create closer intellectual collaborations between the two countries, also between the students for their future lives.
And we think that this is a chance to start from scratch and so we plan to create a model of education that is designed to encourage traits like curiosity, versatility, creativity and adaptability, problem-solving.
Those won’t be accidental by-products, those will be the goals of our education created from the very beginning.
My friend, my older brother, said a minute ago, or younger brother, said a minute ago we are not just trying to create one more school, we are trying to create a new model of education, new both for the United States and for China.
President Li Xiaohong: In fact, the question he answered is the same one that I want to talk about.
Education blended with western way of teaching and eastern way of culture, will cultivate students with new thoughts and thinking models.
The cooperation as such may in the future exert influence on the global higher education.
President Broadhead: We are trying to create the people who will be good leaders for our country and the world in the future.
Host: Thank you so much for your comments.
And we also share your dream. That is your dream for DKU. DKU is still a baby and we need the parents’ support in the future.
