“The notion of leadership is that we have limited energy and capacity to make change. So we’d better be focusing on what we really care about . . . And it’s got to come from the inside out.”
"If you are serious about being a leader, then being engaged in the society you live in requires a commitment, and your determination to honor that commitment becomes a core value."
“I see leadership as the process of helping people confront their own most difficult challenges, so they can discover and come to trust their capacity to adapt, and learn new ways of doing business that will allow them to thrive.”
ESTD 1986
The Hart Leadership Program challenges students to practice the art of leadership in public life. What is the art? Lao-Tzu said it with minimal words: “With the best of leaders, when the work is done, the project completed, the people all say, ‘Amazing. We did it ourselves.'” It’s taking on challenging work in groups, organizations, institutions and social systems–the kind of work that usually takes people beyond their comfort zones. It requires courage, but it also builds it. It tests us and forms us. It helps us discover who we really are, and what we are capable of doing together, when we locate common purpose. It’s about learning to ask big questions, and then hard questions. It’s an art where groups become the unit of transformation, and where the right questions have the power to generate far more engagement and endurance than easy answers ever would.
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Explore our core programs
SOL is an intensive 12-month leadership program for Duke undergraduates that combines academic study, research service learning, mentoring, and leadership training.
The Hart Fellows Program offers recent Duke graduates ten-month fellowships with international humanitarian organizations.
ELI challenges undergraduates and alumni to make positive contributions to society and to pursue innovative ideas that enhance communities.
The RSL Pathway fuses research, service and critical reflection with core public policy courses.
“My constant concern with what was the right thing to do kept me in the domain of applied ethics, striving often to apply the ethical theories I had so studiously examined in my theological studies to real-life issues and dilemmas.”
FromSaved for a Purpose
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