A Duke “Rogues’ Gallery”

That’s what National Journal columnist Stuart Taylor offered readers last May 22.

Right at the start Taylor said no Duke Men’s lacrosse players were part of his Duke Rogues’ Gallery. He was 85% certain the three indicted players – David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann – were innocent. What’s more, he said they and their teammates had been slimed by many in media and at Duke.

Today, Taylor wouldn’t need to alert readers they’d be “no lacrosse players” in his Duke Rogues’ Gallery. But on May 22 a lot of people were expecting DA Mike Nifong to produce “the smoking gun any day now.” KC Johnson wasn’t a familiar name to those following the case. Professor Coleman’s letter wouldn’t appear for another three weeks.

Who did appear in the rogues’ gallery. Well, Professor Houston Baker, now at Vanderbilt, led Taylor’s list. Taylor explained:

I'll start with Houston Baker, a Duke professor of English and of African and African-American studies. In a public letter dated March 29, he assailed "white ... male athletes, veritably given license to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech" and "sport their disgraced jerseys on campus, safe under the cover of silent whiteness." He all but pronounced them guilty of "abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white, male privilege loosed amongst us" against a "black woman who their violence and raucous witness injured for life." And on he raved, oozing that brand of racism which consists of falsely smearing decent people as racists.

"And on he raved, oozing that brand of racism which consists of falsely smearing decent people as racists.”

Isn't that a finely crafted, absolutely on point sentence? The first time I read it, I wanted to cheer. I'd the same reaction the second time. I bet I'll feel the same way the third time.

Remember President Brodhead’s chums, William Bowen and Julius Chambers?

Brodhead brought them to Duke so they could tell us what a good job he was doing although he didn’t quite put it that way. He said they'd assess how well Duke's administration had reacted to lacrosse case issues.

Bowen and Chambers' report earned them places in the Duke Rogues' Gallery. As Taylor explained:

The gallery also includes former Princeton University President William Bowen and civil-rights lawyer Julius Chambers. They went out of their way to slime the lacrosse players in a report on the Duke administration's handling of the rape scandal -- a report that is a parody of race-obsessed political correctness. […]

A curiously unbalanced team to evaluate the handling of this case, both have spent much of their careers peddling preferential treatment of racial minorities and women at the expense of white males. Not to mention Bowen's two books blasting college athletic programs.

So what remedy did they prescribe in their May 4 report for wounds caused by what they had ample reason to know was a probably-false rape charge victimizing innocent white males? You guessed it: more "diversity"! More racial and gender preferences in doling out top administrative jobs!

The report unsurprisingly commended Duke President Richard Brodhead, who had appointed Bowen and Chambers. They especially liked Brodhead's "eloquent" statements implicitly associating the lacrosse players with rape and "dehumanization," with "memories of ... systematic racial oppression," with "inequalities of wealth, privilege, and opportunity ... and the attitudes of superiority those inequalities breed."

The two did criticize some Brodhead subordinates -- for inadequate "sensitivities" toward minorities, of course. These sins included giving credence to the Duke campus police report that the accuser was not very credible because she had initially said she had been raped by 20 men and then revised it to three.

A number of others appear in the “rogues’ gallery” before Taylor ends with:

[H]ow likely is it that the more than 40 kids described by [Women’s lacrosse coach Kirstin] Kimel and the Coleman report could have maintained an airtight cover-up since March 14 of a gang rape in a small, crowded house, with not one heeding pleas by parents and lawyers to protect himself by fingering any guilty parties?

And what of various team members' handing over evidence sought by police three long days after the alleged rape, such as the accuser's fake fingernails? And of offers to take polygraph tests (which Nifong spurned)? And of other conduct inconsistent with any cover-up?

"Being at an elite university," adds Kimel, "where every side of every issue is debated, my kids were shocked, disillusioned, and disappointed that their professors and the university community were so one-sided in their condemnation of the lacrosse players."

Something is rotten at Duke, as at many universities. I don't think it has much to do with lacrosse.

Taylor wrote a superb column last May. Read it if you missed it. If you read it back then, I hope you give it another read. Great columns, like great books, are worth rereading.