Major Pledge to Duke U. Is Still Unpaid After 7 Years

At least a portion of a $72-million pledge to Duke University remains unpaid seven years after it was made by a former chairman of the university’s Board of Trustrees, The Chronicle, a student newspaper at Duke, reported today. The pledge, made by Peter and Ginny Nicholas and mostly intended for Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, was unpaid when William Schlesinger, a former dean of the Nicholas School, left in 2007, he told the newspaper. Mr. Nicholas told the paper that his family had paid a significant portion of the pledge and planned to fulfill the remainder in “due course.” Duke declined to say how much of the pledge had been paid.