The excellent
Durham-in-Wonderland blog came to a close Friday. Some readers may remember that is the blog that closely
followed the Duke Lacrosse case. I
read and linked to it frequently.
I commend to you Dr. Johnson’s closing and reflective post.
This case is one reason my
enthusiasm as a Duke alum has greatly diminished through the years. The university conducted itself
horribly in spite of numerous rebukes from alumni. And the administration has learned little from the episode
judging from their once again showing little concern for the rights of the
accused.
With Dr. Johnson, I
particularly find egregious the conduct of the Group of 88 and their lack of
consequences for the same.
And yet for dozens of Duke faculty, this evidence
appeared irrelevant. Eighty-eight of them rushed to judgment, signing a
statement (whose production violated Duke regulations in multiple ways)
affirming that something had “happened” to false accuser Crystal Mangum, and
thanking protesters (“for not waiting”) who had, among other things, urged the castration
of the lacrosse captains and blanketed the campus with “wanted”
posters. As the case to which they attached their public reputations
imploded, Group members doubled down, with most issuing a second statement
promising they would never apologize for their actions. (Only three Group
members ever said they were sorry for signing the statement, and two of that
number subsequently retracted those apologies.) For months, the Duke administration
was either in agreement with the faculty extremists or cowed by them—or some
combination of both.
The lacrosse case provided a rare opportunity to glimpse
inside the mindset of an elite university—and the look was a troubling one.
There is no evidence of any accountability
at Duke: the university has the same leadership and the same hiring patterns it
had in 2006. Several members of the Group of 88 have gone on to more prestigious
positions, their
efforts to exploit their students’ distress causing them no problem in the
contemporary academy.
In fact, a leader of the
Group of 88, Cathy Davidson, has since been appointed to the National Council of the Humanities by Obama.
By the way, I was among those alumni who urged consequences for the Group of 88.
But Dr. Johnson is one
person who shone during this sorry episode. He did yeoman work in reporting on this case (for which he
eventually was greatly hassled by Duke).
I salute him and his blog as he brings it to a close.
1 comment:
Obama's weaponized IRS is still after one of the accused Lacrosse team members...to the tune of 6.5 million dollars.
The unholy triad Obama/Holder/Sharpton are relentless and spiteful to say the least.
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