Duke Provost responds to professor’s prejudicial letter

In the midst of the charged, complicated and very dangerous situation engulfing Duke University and Durham, a Duke English Professor, Houston A. Baker, Jr., stepped forward into the media spotlight and released an open letter to the Duke administration.

The letter has gotten Baker much attention from media anxious to hammer the lacrosse team and the university, and to play up “white privilege,” “ male jock,” “ poor black” and other stereotypes that resonate with many, and perhaps especially strongly with the academic and media left.

But the media have not given much attention to Duke Provost Peter Lange’s response to Baker.

That’s unfortunate. Lange’s letter is noteworthy both because of the position he holds (at Duke the Provost is the chief academic officer) and because of its directness, brevity, and affirmation of the standards of decency and justice most Americans cherish.

I want to give you a few examples of what’s in Baker’s letter; make a few brief comments concerning it; and then move on to Lange’s letter.

Baker castigates the university for its “ timorous piety and sentimental legalism.”

He declares: “ Young, white, violent, drunken men among us - implicitly boasted by our athletic directors and administrators - have injured lives.”

He thunders: “There is scarcely any shame more egregious than one that wraps itself in the pious sentimentalism of liberal rhetoric as though such a wrap really constituted moral and ethical action.”

I think by “ liberal rhetoric” and “pious sentimentalism” Baker has in mind those old ideas about presumption of innocence and so forth. You know, the ideas pased on to us by those dead white males we sometimes call The Founders.

Professor Baker makes sure to tell his letter readers: “There is no rush to judgment here about the crime.”

You knew the part about “no rush to judgment” was in there somewhere, didn’t you?

But I’ll bet we’re all at least a little surprised that Baker gave himself away by leaving that phrase at the end of the sentence.

If he had just said, “There is no rush to judgment here,” left it at that and moved on, things would be fine right now.

Baker’s supporters, who assure us he and they are fair-minded and would never descend to prejudgments, would be using the sentence to help them defend Baker from the many on campus, including faculty colleagues, who say his letter is an embarrassment to him and the university.


Let’s leave Baker and those like him and go on to Provost Lange’s letter which I’m publishing in full.
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Monday, April 3, 2006

Houston,

I have delayed responding to your letter until now to provide me the time for a measured response. That time has now transpired.

I cannot tell you how disappointed, saddened and appalled I was to receive this letter from you. A form of prejudice - one felt so often by minorities whether they be African American, Jewish or other - is the act of prejudgment: to presume that one knows something "must" have been done by or done to someone because of his or her race, religion or other characteristic. In the United States our sad racial history is laced with such incidents, only fully brought to light in the recent past and undoubtedly there are uncounted numbers of such incidents not yet, or ever to be, known.

We do not know much about the worst of what may have happened in the incident that has inflamed our community; this is acknowledged even by you. If these things did occur, they are of the most heinous nature and will deserve to be punished to the fullest that the law and our own judicial procedures allow.

It is also the case that the leadership of the University in whom you claim to have no confidence, has acknowledged the seriousness of the things that are known and is seeking through many venues, conversations and efforts to take measure of the deeper issues that are revealed by those known events and what they say about the values in our community. Many urge on us faster action, greater efforts, intensified passion. We are hearing these voices, because we recognize that there is a hunger in our community for fuller understanding and for action. We are responding by multiplying our conversations, accelerating our search for the right actions to be implemented now and into the future, speaking out more clearly.

That our pace will still disappoint some is undoubted, but we will not rush to judgment nor will we take precipitous actions which, symbolically satisfying as they may be, assuage passions but do little to remedy the deeper problems. These problems will certainly be easier, but not easy, to understand than they will be to repair.

The latter will take less rhetoric and more hard work, less quick judgment and more reasoned intervention, less playing to the crowd, than entering the hearts and lives of those whose education we are charged to promote and who we must treat as an integral part of the community we wish to restore and heal.

Sadly, letters like yours do little to advance our common cause.

Since you shared your letter more broadly, I feel compelled to do likewise. My response speaks for itself and I have no intention of elaborating on it further.

Peter

Peter Lange
Provost Duke University
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What a wonderful letter. I hope you share it with friends. You can find a link to it here. Immediately following Lange’s letter is a copy of Baker’s letter. So you get two for one.

And isn't it sad that media who tell us they want to present "both sides" give so much attention to Baker's letter and so little to Lange's.

Because so many in the media have been tilting one way regarding various aspects of what was already a complex and tragic situation, that situation has been made much worse.