Two “88” classic posts

Johnsville News provides a very valuable service with it’s recent post: “Duke case: The ‘listening’ statement.”

JN’s post could have been subtitled: “A history and analysis of an irresponsible and exploitive document that a large group of Duke University faculty rushed to sign.” The post has many links, including one to a recent Chronicle article on the growing ridicule and scorn faculty who signed the listening statement are enduring and their various attempts to avoid responsibility for what they did.

Be sure to read The Chronicle article’s comment thread. Readers really sounded off when one of the 88 signers posted what I’m sure he thought would be a dismissal of his critics. O boy! Was he ever wrong.

JN’s post includes the full text of the 88’s statement as well as a link to it.

Another of JN’s links is to an April 23 KC Johnson post at Cliopatria: “The Duke 88.” That post was my first “contact” with KC.

Was I ever impressed? I kept asking myself, “Why isn’t faculty at Duke saying what this guy’s saying?” I still ask that question. There are many decent people on the A&S faculty who should be speaking up and countering the 88’s exploitations of students and misrepresentation of the University.

KC ended his April 23 post with these questions:

How many of the Duke 88 would affix their signatures to a public affirmation that they are “listening” to the exculpatory evidence of a student at their own institution, and expressing concern that local authorities could be veering toward a miscarriage of justice regarding Seligmann? Or do they “listen” only to versions of events that conform to their preconceived worldview, like the student at North Carolina Central, seeking “justice for things that happened in the past”?

So far he answer to KC’s first question is: “at most a few.” The answer to his second question seems to be: “Yes, they do quite a lot of that.”


I’ll be posting often in the next few weeks on the “88” and their “listening statement.” I’ll use this post as a reference for those needing background to my posts.

Congrats to JN and KC for their “88” classic posts.