Dear Professor Wiegman

Readers’ Note: On Oct. 26 I posted “Why at Duke …”

The post included an email I sent to Duke University Professor Robyn Wiegman.

I’ve not heard from Wiegman so I’m sending her a second email with the first included.

The second email follows. I’ll keep you posted.

John
_______________________________________________

Dear Professor Wiegman:

I’ve not received a response to the email (see below) I sent you on Oct. 26.

Perhaps it dropped off your screen before you could respond.

In any case, I hope you'll respond since the matters raised in the email are, I’m sure you’ll agree, important and have generated considerable interest and discussion on campus, at blogs and, no doubt, elsewhere.

Thank you for your attention to my emails.

Sincerely,

John
www.johnincarolina.com
____________________________________________

(First email sent to Professor Robyn Wiegman on Oct. 26.)

Robyn Wiegman
Margaret Taylor Smith Director Women's Studies
Professor, Women's Studies and Literature

Dear Professor Wiegman:

I hold two degrees from the university and blog as www.johnincarolina.com

In your Chronicle letter of Oct. 25 you write:

“[M]y colleague Steven Baldwin …finds the faculty response to the Duke lacrosse scandal one that warrants their being ‘tarred and feathered, ridden out of town on a rail and removed from the academy.’”(bold mine)

But that’s not true, Professor Wiegman.

Baldwin didn’t say anything about "the faculty response." He spoke about responses by some individual faculty members who engaged in certain despicable conduct which he described.

Read Baldwin’s words:

I do not believe that a faculty member publicly describing any student in pejorative terms is ever justified. To do so is mean-spirited, petty and unprofessional, at the very least. The faculty who publicly savaged the character and reputations of specific men's lacrosse players last spring should be ashamed of themselves.

They should be tarred and feathered, ridden out of town on a rail and removed from the academy. Their comments were despicable. I suspect they were also slanderous, but we'll hear more about that later.

Surely you didn't miss the fact that Baldwin's remarks concerned only certain faculty whose conduct he described. Not all faculty, thankfully, engaged in such despicable conduct.

Why did you fail to acknowledge that, and instead say: "Baldwin ...finds the faculty response ...?"

You'll find enlightening the following information from The American Heritage Dictionary of Idions:
"tar and feather"

Criticize severely, punish, as in The traditionalists often want to tar and feather those who don't conform. This expression alludes to a former brutal punishment in which a person was smeared with tar and covered with feathers, which then stuck. It was first used as a punishment for theft in the English navy, recorded in the Ordinance of Richard I in 1189, and by the mid-1700s had become mob practice. The figurative usage dates from the mid-1800s.

On another matter, I'm told that Women's Studies has made no statement condemning the threats of physical violence and death threats hurled by racists on May 18 at Reade Seligmann, both outside the courthouse and within the courtroom before the judge entered.

Is that true?

I'm also told Women's Studies has no plans to honor a group of outstanding women who constitute the only large Duke group who to date publicly acknowledge it was a hoax and have spoken out on behalf of the three wrongly indicted innocent students.

Is it true Women's Studies has no plans to honor the Women's lacrosse team and its coaches?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

John
www.johnincarolina.com