Tulip for Tebeau

Pioneers and their schools have long had a mutually beneficial bond. This symbiosis was eloquently articulated by a Duke University resident, Broadbent, at the dedication ceremony for the Samuel DuBose Cook Center for Social Equity: "You have led a remarkable life and we are today annexing your name to the fame of this school. Some might say we are honoring you by naming the Center after you, but everyone knows the truth - we are honoring ourselves and this Center by appropriating your enduring legacy."
Cook, a distinguished political scientist, made history in 1966 as the first Black professor to receive tenure at a predominantly White southern university in the United States. By affiliating themselves with his pioneering work, schools like Duke aim to share in the honor and social capital of civil rights icons. Yet as Broadbent suggests, the true beneficiaries of such naming opportunities are arguably the institutions themselves.

Edwin Driver received his B.A. from Temple University, his M.A., in 1947, and his Ph. D., in 1956, from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1948, Edwin at Massachusetts State College, Amherst, and Ruby Pernell at the University of Minnesota became the first Black faculty at a White land-grant university. He was a professor at the University of Massachusetts until retiring in 1987. He was a visiting professor at many schools, including Smith College, Brandeis University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Arizona, and the University of California, Los Angeles, several times. After retiring from the University of Massachusetts, he served as Visiting Distinguished Professor at the University of Vermont, from 1989-1991. He received three Fulbright-Hays grants to teach in India (Nagpur University and the University of Madras) and Trinidad-Tobago (University of the West Indies). His other professional employment was as a consultant to OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), Paris; and a United Nations employee to create a Center for Population and Economic Development for Iran and the Gulf States.