Universities: New Duke

With its gaunt Gothic spires surrounded by vast reaches of dark green forest, North Carolina's Duke University wears the look of a wealthy medieval fief—and in the '50s it was the scene of a power struggle that would have done credit to a Teutonic duchy. That was the reign of a lanky, brush-browed Tennessean named Arthur Hollis Edens, Duke's third president, and it should have been a time of peaceful expansion under an ambitious $80 million, ten-year program approved by the trustees. Instead, Edens came into conflict with his vice president and...