“The facts kept changing. Every day we learned new things that no one knew the day before. Every day we were being urged to speak with certainty about facts that were full of great uncertainty at that point. Our policy all along was to act on the basis of the things we knew for sure and to withhold action and decision on the things we didn’t know for sure.”
Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead speaking to the late CBS newsman Ed Bradley during a 60 Minutes interview aired Oct. 15, 2006.
"Once the situation existed, it had to be dealt with. I'm really not immune to self-criticism in any way, I believe we've handled this as straightforwardly and honorably as we could have, given the extraordinary nature of the situation and the changing nature of the facts."
President Brodhead to Chronicle reporter Rob Copeland during Q&A published Jan. 22, 2007.
Those are two versions of President Brodhead’s basic alibi (BA) for his actions and failures to act last spring following false accusations by a hoaxer known as "Precious."
Now an excerpt from an N&O story today reporting on a panel discussion yesterday at Duke Law School:
[American University Law professor Michael] Tigar said, Nifong should not have derided the players for invoking their Constitutional right to counsel -- a hallmark of the justice system.No, Nifong shouldn’t have done that. All of us, including Brodhead, knew that at the time. But Brodhead decided in March to say nothing critical of Nifong.
Brodhead also knew the players had cooperated with police. But when Nifong, the N&O and others attacked the players with false charges of cover-up and stonewalling, Brodhead said nothing to correct the false charges.
When faculty-members, students and others swarmed about the lawn in front of his office the night of March 29 waving “Wanted” and “Vigilante” posters and targeting the players with threats of physical harm, Brodhead once again said nothing. Nor did he say anything when Duke’s faculty Group of 88 used a full-page ad in The Chronicle to, among other things, tell the protestors: “Thank you for not waiting”
Brodhead excuses his silences with his BA that includes:
“The facts kept changing. Every day we learned new things that no one knew the day before.”But fact’s don’t change. The Constitution’s been the nation’s law for more than 200 years. Brodhead knew the players had cooperated with police. And he knew the “wall of silence” lie was enabling hateful people and endangering the players. Yet he remained silent.
The protesters who targeted the players on Duke’s campus March 29 took over a previously planned event: Take Back The Night, an annual march against violence.
On Apr. 2 the N&O published a letter from one of the TBTN organizers who said in part:
As one of the organizers of the March 29 Take Back the Night (TBTN) march and speak-out at Duke University, I want to clarify that we did not plan, nor do we endorse, the distribution of names and pictures of members of the Duke men's lacrosse team.The letter writer, Geoffrey Lorenz, recognized he had a duty to speak out about the events on campus March 29. Brodhead had a much greater duty to speak out. Does anyone doubt Brodhead knew that then and knows it now?
The distribution of the pictures, the targeting of the lacrosse team, and the violence implicit in the defacement of the pictures are nothing less than violations of the space that TBTN exists to create. The event is neither a protest of the kind we've witnessed recently, a forum for accusation nor a place to target and defame. That some attendees tried to make it so is saddening and not at all in the spirit of the event.
I can’t accept Brodhead’s BA.
I think Duke needs a new president.
What do you think?
11 comments:
You already addressed the most flagrant falsehood of Brodhead's excuse above. So I won't do it again.
As to your question, Yeah, Duke needs a new president but only if he/she is a responsible adult. Think how refreshing that change would be. Also, they should come in with a very stiff broom. Tenure may be hard to overcome, but I will bet every tenured professor has a "....and other duties as assigned." clause. I believe I could make anyone leave with that power. If I had to put in a manual sewage treatment plant and assign
oh, I don't know,... maybe 88 professors to attend to its functions and prepare lesson plans and publish on what they think students could learn from their accounts. Or some such.
They shouldn't have any problem with sewage, they created enough of it.
John,
As the mother of a Duke lax player I read your excellent writing with a
heavy heart. So much pain and suffering has ocurred over these 10 months especially on the part of 3 families.
I will always believe that IF the administration had stood strongly for the presumption of innocence and civil rights of the players the Nifong media campaign would have been derailed early.
Brodhead needs to do the best thing
for Duke and resign. He has become the problem and his leadership was the root of it.
I hope Duke is forthcoming about its initial response to the hoax. One question is whether Duke's behavior emboldened Nifong.
Some clues are in the March 28 press conference available at . I cannot get the version at Duke to play nor does there seem to be a transcript.
I transcribed a few lines of Brodhead's statements about 8:20 into the videoconference.
Brodhead: I met with the students today, and I urged on them the notion that they should come forward. I was pleased to the extent they had, in their statement, given some, given some, account.
All I can tell you is I have to assume that they have legal counsel, and that legal counsel has foreseen complexities associated with speaking out. ... And so I have to say they are exerting a right that is a very important part of our process, even if I question how good their judgement has been in exerting that right in this case.
======
That was March 28, the next day Nifong seemed to connect those dots when he told ESPN:
"And one would wonder why one needs an attorney if one was not charged and had not done anything wrong."
Absolutely. Mr Broashead had a duty in his position of autority to speak out on behalf of unfairly treated Duke students. He stood by, likey out of fear he, like the recent Harvard president, would loose his job. In that respect, he and Nifong may have had very similar concerns that lead the to poor decisions.
Out with Broadhead. Duke deserves better.
On numerous occasions, Brodhead was asked to speak to the matter of Nifong's prosecutorial misconduct.
With infuriating regularity, Brodhead would dodge the issue by stating that it would be improper to speak to questions of guilt or innocense.
On March 30th, the NC Bar opened its case AGAINST Nifong, based on obvious instances of prosecutorial misconduct.
IMO, the fact that Brodhead could not bring himself, prior to mid-December, to speak out in defense of the civil rights of the lacrosse players, Duke students all, and against Nifong's outrageous behavior, is proof positive that Brodhead does not have the strength of character to be the president of Duke University.
Fire Brodhead now!
Brodhead is a weak man. He commands no respect. Duke cannot afford to have such a person at the helm of such a great university. He must go. However, it must be remembered that there are others in the administration that bear much responsibility for Duke's tremendous failure on so many fronts of this terrible situation and they must also resign ASAP.
I have said this elsewhere but I will repeat it here: the board is not going to fire brodhead. That would mean that they agree with most other sane individuals that brodhead is grossly incompetent with a public personna of a slug. This of course would add a few bucks to settlements and they are in deep enough crap already. Besides, board chairman Steele is the reason brodhead is where he is instead of teaching English at Yale.
What a collossal joke!!!!!!
Is there a concerted drive to pressure the Board of Trustees to assess formally President Brodhead (and others)in regard to the dismal handling of the lacrosse matter? When and how does one support such a push?
You're right, John. Brodhead must go. In addition, he owes all of us an honest explanation why the Duke administration had the unmitigated gall to initially urge the players not to inform their parents of the criminal investigation when the story first broke. He also owes us an honest explanation of why he failed to come to the defense of the lacrosse players, in light of the fact that their case for their innocence was at least as strong as the foreign Duke graduate student on whose behalf Brodhead intervened to the president of the eastern European country where the student had been arrested.
Like other posters here and elsewhere, I urge my fellow Duke alumni to channel all of the money they otherwise would give to Duke to the players' defense fund. NO money should go to Duke until Colin, Reade and Dave and their families have been made whole.--Bob Hyde, Duke '67
I have to agree with 11:43. The Duke board won't cashier Brodhead. Bob Steel will protect Brodhead. Moreover, firing him outright would be a stunning admission of the board's poor stewardship.
I suspect Brodhead's contract won't be renewed. By that time, the acute phase of the lax mess will have passed, making Brodhead's departure less radioactive for all concerned.
I think Brodhead should have taken a leadership role to squash the drama early on. I think he should have also offered the most basic support for the presumption of innocence and right to due process.
That he didn't, says a lot about the culture at Duke.
However it could have all been a blessing in disguise. Brodhead stayed quiet, Nifong kept babbling, and now the tables have turned somewhat in the direction of reason.
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