Letter from the Lemur-in-Chief

I feel I should address the lemur in the room. That is to say, before you flip a page further, I feel I should justify the rather silly-seeming name of this rather serious-seeming magazine. Why on earth is a magazine with aspirations of “thought leadership,” (whatever that means), whose founding goal is to foster a more vibrant intellectual community at Duke through the discussion of “big ideas,” named after an beady-eyed treehopper with opposable thumbs? What could that possibly have to do with those amorphous “big ideas”? The answer, dear reader, is everything.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once wrote, in an influential essay on Leo Tolstoy’s view of history, about the “Hedgehog and the Fox.” Extrapolating from an obscure quotation from a since-lost Greek play, Berlin hypothesized that the hedgehog “knows one big thing, whereas the fox knows many little things.” Berlin’s thesis was a transformative one—historians and sociologists alike used his paradigm to explain both everyday human behavior and the psychology of history’s Great Men (the colossally ambitious Napoleon was a hedgehog, the slyly calculative Machiavelli a fox). Berlin’s idea is elegant and profound; it certainly changed how I see the world. Nevertheless, he made a glaring omission and left one creature out. It is now the duty of this magazine to answer Berlin’s unasked (but assuredly implied) question: what does the Lemur know?

After some preliminary investigations—or at least as this first issue hopefully indicates—I’m happy to report that the Lemur might know quite a lot, in fact. Lemurs come in many stripes and astound the world with their sui generis, biologically miraculous qualities.

Denizens of the island of Madagascar (itself a geographical oddity of astonishing biodiversity), lemurs vary remarkably in size, color, and habits. Madagascar is home to dozens of species of lemurs, each more fascinating than the next. And despite their provenance in a secluded corner of the globe, lemurs have made a big splash in the rest of the world, which has taken note of their unique wonderfulness: these curiously endearing primates have entered the American popular imagination, for one example, through characters in children’s TV and movies, from Zoboomafoo to King Julien.

But there’s a sad side to the lemurs’ story. Due to habitat loss and deforestation, lemurs are endangered. As it watches its natural home disappear, the lemur all of a sudden becomes tragically familiar. The lemur, then, is not unlike a free-thinking individual in contemporary society, endangered by the pressures of technocracy, corporatism, and declining cultural literacy. Just think about how the craven fossa of preprofessionalism swoops in to poach the lemurs from their swinging freedom much as McKinsey and Bain arrive on our campus to poach many a thoughtful Blue Devil in their sophomore and junior years.

Fortunately, all is not lost for the Lemur. Big-hearted lemur lovers have created a sanctuary to save this wonderful animal. That sanctuary, of course, is right here in beautiful Duke Forest: the Duke Lemur Center. Our little research university happens to boast the largest lemur population in the world outside of Madagascar. Should this magazine succeed in its goal, it will be like the Lemur Center: it will help protect the endangered (and metaphorical) lemurs of Duke to develop and share ideas and to comment and care about the world. And then, just maybe, the population of lemurs will grow again. So, please, do the world a favor and embrace your inner lemur. We hope you enjoy.

Best, 

The Lemur