Readers’ Note: On Oct. 27, Duke’s student newspaper, The Chronicle, published an editorial, “Blogger’s get point, miss complexity.”
The editorial and its comment thread are here.
Please read them if you haven’t already done so. See also The Chronicle's explanation of how it "writes" editorials.
The Chronicle editorial levels extremely serious charges at bloggers for, among other things, vilifying Duke President Brodhead, media and Durham DA Nifong. But The Chronicle offers not a single fact to support its many charges.
I’m responding to The Chronicle with a series of electronic letters which I’ll post at JinC. Each will be headed "To The Chronicle" and enumerated. A link to Letter 1 is here.
Letter 2 follows.
John
_________________________________________________
Editorial Board
The Chronicle
Duke University
Dear Editorial Board members:
Here’s my second letter responding to your Oct. 27 editorial, “Blogger’s get point, miss complexity.” A link to the first letter is here.
The letters are in posts at www.johnincarolina.com. I’ll email you links so you can respond on the comment threads. I hope many of you will.
In your editorial you say: “An informed-complex-understanding of the situation requires in-depth conversations with administrators, lacrosse players, lacrosse parents, defense lawyers, hundreds of students, alumni and many more.”
That’s true as regards some matters. For example: Why did so many at Duke embrace a vicious, wildly improbable hoax?
We’ve all read about the Salem witch hysteria and trials. We also know that in the not too distant past some newspapers, law officials and others inflamed issues of race, class and gender for their own malevolent purposes.
How, then, was such a hoax embraced and enabled by so many at Duke?
Why did that hoax lead to the “burning” of many innocent people, including Duke students and a taxi driver who did nothing more than a citizen's duty?
Why does the University continue to let the innocent suffer?
Tha answers to those questions do require study; they are complex.
But does The Chronicle Editorial Board believe a decent person actually needs an “informed-complex-understanding of the situation” to ask those questions? Or to ask why so many at Duke duck them? Or to begin examining them?
During the week of Mar. 27 Nifong publicly ridiculed Duke students for exercising their right to counsel.He also asked why they needed attorneys if they were innocent.
Nifong was engaging in blatant McCarthyism.
Board members, you’ve read about “the McCarthy period” and surely heard professors speak out and condemn McCarthy, his methods and those who use them.
But I can't find a single Duke professor quoted in The Chronicle at that time who condemned Nifong’s McCarthyism. And, although I live in Durham, am often on campus and have a number of faculty friends and acquaintances, I can’t recall meeting or hearing at that time any who were speaking out publicly.
Yes, understanding exactly why Duke faculty didn’t speak out against Nifong’s McCarthyism requires an “informed-complex-understanding of the situation.”
But just what does a blogger or an editorial board member need to know to say the faculty should have spoken out?
Or to say that Duke is in serious trouble if many faculty members failed to speak out because of fear of colleague censure, indifference to students’ rights, outright support for Nifong or some other reason or combinations of reasons?
I wish many MSM journalists would ask those questions, and report and editorialize on what they learn. And I wish The Chronicle would, too.
Do you recall what happened on May 18 to your school-mate, Reade Seligmann and Duke’s silence afterwards?
I refer to the threats racists shouted at Seligmann, first as he walked to the Durham County Courthouse (“Justice will be done, Rapist”), and then within the courtroom before the judge entered.
Because some readers at JinC may not be aware of what happened, I’m including an excerpt from The Guardian's account of May 21 :
Reade Seligmann, 20, sat in a suit at a court hearing. From the gallery one onlooker shouted: 'Justice will be served, rapist!' Seligmann largely ignored the taunts, but as he left came the call 'Dead man walking!' and he blanched.Decent people are outraged by what happened to Seligmann.
They also wonder why any university remains silent when one of it students – Black, White, Hispanic, Asian or otherwise – is subjected to the threats Reade Seligmann endured on May 18.
Bloggers and others have raised questions about Duke’s silence on May 18 and since. I’m proud to be one of them.
The silence of President Brodhead and almost all faculty on May 18 and since is a terrible thing.
Why do you castigate those who call attention to it? Shouldn't you instead be calling on Brodhead and the faculty to redress matters in so far as they can?
My next letter concerns your upset at what you see as bloggers vilifying DA Nifong.
I ask again that you keep my email adress in confidence.
Thank you for your attention to this letter.
Sincerely,
John
www.johnincarolina.com
3 comments:
Good work, John. We have witnessed some of the worst moral cowardice that one can imagine. But it says volume about Duke University that a sizeable and vocal portion of the faculty absolutely despises the students who pay their salaries.
I am a college professor, and I could never imagine doing what Peter Wood did to Reade Seligmann in outright lying about him. If I were to lie publicly about a student, my university would give me my walking papers. Instead, Wood is given a place of stature and honor.
Do the people at Duke have any idea what Brodhead and the Evil Gang of 88 have done to this university? The effects will be with Duke for many years, and it will be a long time before the university recovers.
What happens when alumni stop giving, as already is happening? Believe me, there are many Duke alums out there who are angry at what has happened, and look to do something about it.
You, John, just happen to be one of those alums who is doing something!
William L. Anderson
I have to remark here,that concerns over anyone vilifying Nifong are groundless. Nifong is vilification proof. One cannot say anything about that would sink to the level of his behavior. Ergo, even insults and statements that would, in other times, be cause for a duel are in Nifong's case a relegation of higher stature than he deserves.
So, it would seem the Chronicle in all their complexity claiming superior understanding, do not actually understand the simple.
John,
You have now written two reasoned, sober, and even eloquent letters in response to the Chronicle's "Bloggers Miss Complexity" piece of late last month.
They have been the subjects of some comments by your readers.
Yet I have yet to see any acknowledgement of the points you raise by the people you've addressed, the members of the Chronicle's Editorial Board.
Not in the comments here, and not in articles or editorials there.
That silence speaks very loudly. Student-journalists should not be proud as far as what it says.
Although it's late, it is not too late for them to take up your offer of dialog. I hope they do.
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