“Pandering” (New York Times). “Clearly terrified of the racial and gender activists on his own faculty” (Wall Street Journal). “Did little, if anything, to defend the lacrosse players or to criticise the faculty for its lynch-mob mentality” (Economist). “Weak-kneed” (Newsweek). “Seemingly terrified of the protestors and a radicalized faculty with the power to turn him into another Lawrence Summers” (Weekly Standard).
The reviews on Duke president Richard Brodhead’s performance in the lacrosse case are less than glowing. Such a poor performance hadn’t been expected in 2004, when Brodhead arrived in Durham after serving as dean of faculty at Yale. In New Haven, he distinguished himself for his urbane, witty charm; clear intelligence; and ability to accommodate the faculty’s demands. Yet Brodhead also lacked experience dealing with a top-flight athletic program or with elite college athletes. Duke’s national reputation came from its ability to combine first-class athletics with first-class academics.
Brodhead set the tone of his lacrosse response in his initial decisions on the case. On March 25, 2006, the same day the egregiously biased News & Observer “interview” with Crystal Mangum appeared, the Duke lacrosse team was scheduled to play Georgetown. In a virtually unprecedented move for a Division I athletics program, Brodhead canceled the game with Georgetown already on the field for its pre-game warm-ups. He described the move as punishment for the team’s party - - even though, as AD Joe Alleva later admitted, the party had violated no Duke rule and Duke never before had canceled a game because of moral distaste about team members’ behavior.
Lacrosse parents believed that Brodhead’s actions conveyed an impression of guilt. But he spurned repeated requests to meet with a group of them, either on March 25 or any time thereafter.
As the crisis intensified, Brodhead’s statements increasingly minimized any reference to a presumption of innocence. On April 5, reacting to the release of a vile e-mail that administrators knew or should have known was not a direct threat, the president cancelled the entire season. In a 2,377-word statement explaining the move, he didn’t mention a presumption of innocence or the players’ denial of all charges at all.
Instead, in a passage that perfectly captured the race/class/gender mindset that dominated Duke’s public response to the case, Brodhead declared, “The episode has brought to glaring visibility underlying issues that have been of concern on this campus and in this town for some time—issues that are not unique to Duke or Durham but that have been brought to the fore in our midst. They include concerns of women about sexual coercion and assault. They include concerns about the culture of certain student groups that regularly abuse alcohol and the attitudes these groups promote. They include concerns about the survival of the legacy of racism, the most hateful feature American history has produced. Compounding and intensifying these issues of race and gender, they include concerns about the deep structures of inequality in our society—inequalities of wealth, privilege, and opportunity (including educational opportunity), and the attitudes of superiority those inequalities breed.”
This was Brodhead’s final public statement before the first two indictments obtained by Mike Nifong.
The president took a similar approach in his first public appearance after the indictments of Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty. Speaking to the Durham Chamber of Commerce, he stated, “If our students did what is alleged, it is appalling to the worst degree. If they didn’t do it, whatever they did is bad enough.” What, precisely, did Seligmann and Finnerty do? They attended a party they played no role in organizing, and they drank some beer.
A few months later, asked by an alumni group to speak out not on the players’ guilt or innocence but to demand that Nifong respect the rights of Duke students, Brodhead instead turned the American system of justice on its head. It would be improper, he suggested, to criticize Nifong in any way. Instead, he articulated Duke’s policy in the following way: “We are eager for our students to be proved innocent . . . which is all the more reason why we require the legal system to proceed in a fair-minded, even-handed, and speedy fashion.”
Between March and December 2006, Brodhead displayed a broad deference to the criminal justice process, implying that academic institutions should never criticize legal misconduct. He also compiled a pattern of actions that conveyed an impression that the administration believed that the lacrosse players were the kind of people who could commit the horrific crime that Nifong described. And, even as he was complaining that “the facts kept changing . . . every day we learned new things that no one knew the day before,” he spurned at least three offers from defense attorneys or the parents of indicted players to give the University Council unfettered access to the state’s discovery file, to prove that Nifong’s case was a fraud.
How to explain this pattern of behavior? A post this afternoon will offer some hypotheses.
It wasn't just "a party"; it was a party with strippers. I know it sounds quaint, but a few of us still are old-fashioned enough to attending such a party morally problematic. It doesn't merit a rape accusation, nor would it merit suspension of the team and firing of its coach unless the university had made its standards clear beforehand, but I wouldn't say it's morally blameless.
I know: preview is your friend.
The other guys "attended" the party.
There's no question that he retained that last quality.
He sure picked the wrong horse to ride.
Dean at Yale, had to go somewhere else to come back and be President at Yale, with a simple plan of doing nothing that would inflame radical faculty so no objections would be raised about his return.
Oops.
fwiw, my opinion is that hiring strippers is totally fine. im for it.
but that aside, we are talking duke university. a university that supposedly embraces all sorts of sexual diversity (same sex relationships, transgendered's etc.) and they are going to moralize about hiring strippers? iow, CERTAIN types of sexual expression are bad, when they are the ones that straight white males tend to dig. why, if other forms of sexual expression are all totally fine (consenting adults makes any sexual act morally fine theory), then certainly HIRING a person to perform a (apparently pretty weak) striptease should not get condemnation from the university.
yes, i know the puritan-feminist-mackinnon branch will say it objectifies women, blah blah blah.
but it's absurd for a "liberal university" that generally supports all sorts of sexual expression to start moralizing about hiring strippers.
ok. i just prattled that. NOW, i googled duke university and sexuality code of conduct, etc. guess what i found...? typical.
"Pornography is speech about women and sex which constructs a social reality of women as sex objects.28 This perpetuates bigotry and justifies acts of aggression against women.29 Pornography that appeals to "normal, healthy sexual desire" is not perceived as "immoral," therefore, it is not subject to government regulation. Instead, it is defined and defended as a form of freedom of expression, and thereby, is given legal protection under the Constitution.30 As Catharine MacKinnon noted, this legal protection focuses not upon the nature of pornography, but upon its medium: books, photographs, films, videos, television programs, and images in "cyberspace." Thus, pornography becomes a part of the "marketplace of life."31 Pornography has "fallen into a reality warp" and the detrimental impact which pornography has upon women is perpetuated under the guise of "freedom of expression."32 Evidence of the harmful effect which pornography has on women has led some communities to enact legislation or otherwise advocate for the restriction or banning of some pornography..33 However, community attempts to regulate pornography have been held to unconstitutionally injure First Amendment rights of the pornographers.34 "
Several possibilities come to mind. One, which I will call "simple avarice," is that the bandwagon accusers sought selfish ends--temporary fame, media exposure, approval by their peers, study grants, and an opportunity to castigate their political opponents. This is a disturbing possibility, for it suggests the bandwagon accusers exhibited a willingness to crush innocent individuals in pursuit of their own personal gain. A second possibility, which I will call "wilfull blindness", is that the accusations fit too perfectly into the worldview of the bandwagon accusers to be ignored; that is, it tapped into their preferences and beliefs in such a manner as to make is psychologically difficult, even impossible in some cases, to avoid presuming the truth of the matter asserted. This is disturbing because it highlights the personal weaknesses of the bandwagon accusers, exposing a belief system so blindly followed that they proved themselves willing to presume, and say, and do, just about anything out of their own blind faith in their assumptions, theories, and beliefs. A third possibility, which I will call "revolutionary evil," is that the bandwagon accusers were not psychologically blinded by their blind faith, but they nevertheless decided that the allegations (and potential destruction of innocent lives) would provide a useful object lesson in furthering their own agenda, no matter the factual correctness or costs associated with the pursuit. This is a vile possibility, for those who would pursue their own political agenda even if innocents must suffer, are the descendants of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot, among others--those are the sort of people who are more than willing to crack a few eggs to make an omlet, who believe that their political agenda is so imbued with righteousness that they happily turn a blind eye (or perhaps some gleefully imbibe the consequences) as innocent lives are ruined. How far, intellectually speaking, is such a person from those who would commit genocide to further their aims? A final possibility, one I shall call "cowardice", is that many of the bandwagon accusers thought the accusations were horrid and sought to exonerate themselves from any implication that they approved/condoned/defended the allegations by themselves accusing, or joining the rest of the bandwagon accusers. Such people did not necessarily take pleasure in seeing innocent lives ruined, nor were they necessarily blinded to the truth of the matter, nor did they seek to make corrupt gains from the ensuing media circus, but they are just as foul, morally-speaking: they were willing to allow, and indeed cause, innocent lives to be ruined so that they could preserve their reputations, their institutions, their jobs, and their pensions.
Thus we have four distinct types of people involved in the incident as bandwagon accusers: (1) the cynical avaricious/profiteering sort, (2) the naive but self-centeredly good-intentioned true-believers, (3) the revolutionary murderers/crusaders, and (4) the cowardly. Every genocide in history has depended on such people, and I suspect that every one of the bandwagon accusers (indeed, every one of the accusers in toto) belongs to at least one of these categories. Each was exposed when the truth came out, and many exposed themselves further by failing to offer even the meekest of apologies. Although it is unlikely that defamation actions can be brought against any of them, each will have to answer for their acts at the Final Judgment. But for today, each of the accusers should have their names recorded, their reputations ruined, and their future actions watched carefully.
Whit - I remember the "I know it when I see it" test. However, since you found this -- can you explain to someone never took philsophy (but did take English) classes -- what the hell does it say?
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention updated throughout the day…so check back often.
it's basically mackinnonism.
the anti-porn feminists basically claim to support free speech, but then proclaim that pornography is not "free speech", it's hate speech or even 'violence against women'.
some go as far as to say it should be outlawed.
don't get me wrong, there are also pro-porn feminists, and there are some feminist that while not being "pro" porn, are pro-free expression and think it should be legal, even if they don't like it.
the issue here is how they frame it. the statement accepts that pornography "perpetuates bigotry and justifies acts of aggression against women". it's, like most of this pap, ideology disguised as reality
My understanding of Flores is that he was charged with two offenses for the same criminal act. The lesser charge was ordered dropped after indictment and before trial but erroneously presented to the jury. The jury acquitted on the more serious charge but convicted on the lesser. No evidence has been presented that they wouldn't have convicted on the more serious charge other than OK's ambiguously biased and inflammatory posts. I don't see anyway that you get "a crime he didn't commit" out of that set of facts.
Don't you see? It's a SYMBOLIC rape, since it establishes the traditional system of gender relations. So we SYMBOLICALLY act by ACTUALLY punishing people accused of a METAPHORICAL crime.
One other point. Johnson and Taylor quite rightly criticize several Group of 88 people, emphasizing their weak academic credentials and sometimes wacko views. That's fine with me, but there is an implication that large parts of Duke are left-wing breeding gerounds. My view is different. Duke is a very conservative place socially and politically if the entire campus is taken into consideration. Look at who these students are and what they do after graduation. The place is way too much like the Short Hills Mall or Scarsdale or Lake Forest for my taste. This complaint about a "rich kid campus," of course, was a trope used by the very irresponsible journalists who lambasted the team. I disdained that , but somehow the Johnson-Taylor view of Duke, though not central to the thesis of their very good book, misses what is a pretty valid criticism of the place---though not in the context of the Nifong charges.
Seligmann and Finnerty didn't plan the party, and most of the younger players didn't even know that strippers were going to be there (toward the end of the party). Seligmann and Finnerty left soon after the dancers arrived.
The thing is that there are those "left-wing" pockets which are anything but inconsequential, and they can prove a formidable force as they proved in the LAX case and on other occasions.
We have heard about the women LAX players supporting the men's team, but not much about attitudes of the general student body as distinguished from those in league with the Gang of 88. Can you cite evidence that the student body for the most part supported the LAX players, e.g., reporting and editorials in The Chronicle, letters to The Chronicle, rallies or other expressions of support for the LAX players, petition drives calling on the Duke administration to support the LAX players? I am not challenging what you have said in this regard, since I have no knowledge of the matter, just asking you to tell us how confident you are in your report about the student body response.
But the focus on Brodhead is entirely appropriate given the important role he played. Now, if you want to say that many other university presidents might have done no better, I wouldn't dispute you, I would just say how disturbing that is.
Anything to say about the place of basketball and basketball players at Duke. Is your son part of the basketball mania there, camping out with others in order to get seats in Cameron?
There is that vulgar characterization of some as believing their own excrement does not stink. How apt where the NYT is concerned.
As for student support of the players, I do believe there was a very long petition put together as well as rallies that were pro-defense. My son attends Duke and he regularly told me very few students believed there was any guilt on the deft's part. If there was student-type harassment, i have never heard of it.
As for Brodhead, I don't defend him at all. But I wonder what was going on behind the scenes. I am no Duke insider by any means, but I do know how universities work and I am sure Brodhead was listening to a great many voices during all this. Why didn't the right people break through and set him straight? The case looked very weak as early as mid-may of 2006. Brodhead needs to write about this in due course.
Finally, re the Group of 88, some of these folks are first-class scholars and are very much worht taking classes from. We should remember what Duke was like only 40 yuears ago. The racism and sexism of that time was very strong and some good scholarship has been done on those topics by SOME---surely not all---of the 88. That doesn't excuse Houston Baker, for one, regarding the Nifong matter, but I thnk a lot of these folks are very good people to have on a faculty.
Our older daughter was accepted at Duke, but she had hardly stepped out of the car before she said it wasn't for her. I don't know what exactly caused that reaction, but speaking of his own son a psychiatrist friend of mine maintained that kids know in their gut whether a school will be a fit for them or not. More than once we heard that though Duke students were smart and hardworking, it was decidedly uncool to be let it on or be perceived as "intellectual" by ones peers. I wouldn't call it "conservative," but I think we probably see the same things there, and though we would apply different labels to it, we generally agree on the significance. Duke alumni strike me as notably loyal to the school (a basketball effect), even to the point of overlooking serious problems there.
Our daughter was also accepted to the University of Chicago. Never visited it with her though, because of her younger sister's opinion of the place, that based on a video the school sent out. When that video arrived at our house, the older one watched it in the presence of the younger one. The video showed students in black turtlenecks, and one girl was saying how on some Friday nights she liked to curl up with Nietsche. The younger declared it a school for geeks, nerds, or whatever, and so the U of Chicago was dismissed. (A foreign born physican visiting us didn't know how any kid could rule out a school that had produced so many Nobel laureates and was so pre-eminent scholastically. He hadn't seen the promo tape and undoubtedly would have reacted to it quite differently from our daughters.)
Have you ever read Dan Golden's articles in the WSJ (I think he put it together in a book), which had a lot about Duke's admissions policies? If you haven't, you really should. The development office doesn't wait years for money to come in, they go out and identify wealthy families willing to make upfront donations of big $$$ to see their kids go to Duke, some of them who had never thought they could get in until the school approached them.
I hope your son has a great college experience at Duke. (Growing up in California, moreover circa Palo Alto, then spend 4 years in Durham?! Duke has a very nice campus to be sure, but the city isn't very appealing.)