Jewish Baccalaureate Ceremony: Class of 2023

All family members are invited and welcome! Please include your Duke graduate in your total RSVP count.

Dress code: Business casual attire suggested.

The Freeman Center for Jewish Life is located at 1415 Faber Street, Durham, NC 27705.
Limited onsite and nearby street parking available.
On the C-1 Bus Route.

Dr. Gavin Yamey, Founder and Director of the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health and Professor of the Practice of Global Health and Public Policy at the Duke Global Health Institute and the Sanford School of Public Policy, will deliver the 2023 Keynote Address.

A beloved professor and member of Duke's Jewish community, Dr. Yamey trained in clinical medicine at Oxford University and University College London, medical journalism and editing at the BMJ and public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 2009, he was awarded a Kaiser Family Mini-Media Fellowship in Global Health Reporting to examine the barriers to scaling up low cost, low tech health tools in Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya. Read more.

What is a baccalaureate?
A baccalaureate service is a celebration that honors a graduating class. Historically, baccalaureate services were Christian in nature.

Duke's Jewish Baccalaureate
The first Jewish Baccalaureate at Duke started as a walk-out protest by a handful of Duke seniors in 1983. It has since transformed into an annual ceremony to recognize and celebrate the contribution of the graduating students to Duke's Jewish community, taking place in the home for Jewish Life at Duke, the Freeman Center. Remarks by Jewish Life at Duke leadership and students, a keynote speech, blessings, and presentation of gifts are included.

"Jewish students today shouldn't take for granted a wonderful event in their collegiate lives for which my classmates and I had to fight." 
-Rob Satloff, T'83, one of the organizers of the first Jewish Baccalaureate at Duke

Read the whole story here.