From Raleigh News & Observer reporter Anne Blythe:
Mike Krzyzewski, the face of Duke athletics, was virtually silent last spring as the lacrosse case put the school and its athletic teams under scrutiny.Actually the bloggers most of us read have been criticizing Duke for a lot more than “not standing behind the players as the judicial process unfolded.”
Now, a year after an escort service dancer alleged being gang-raped at a lacrosse team party, the men's basketball coach says the university should have shown more support for the players.
"The one thing that I wish we would have done is just out, publicly say, 'Look, those are our kids. And we're gonna support 'em, because they're still our kids.' That's what I wish we would have done," Krzyzewski told Bob Costas, a sports commentator who has a television show on HBO. "And I'm not sure that we did -- I don't think we did a good job of that."
For months, bloggers and others have criticized Duke, accusing the university of not standing behind the players as the judicial process unfolded.[…]
The players were savaged in media. Duke was silent. Public officials made statements about the players Duke officials knew were false. They remained silent.
When “Wanted” and “Vigilante” posters endangering the players' safety and that of others circulated at Duke and elsewhere, President Brodhead and the top administrators on “Dick’s team” all remained silent.
When President Brodhead did speak out it was to support Nifong’s plan to put the students on trial where Brodhead said they’d have a chance to prove their innocence. Brodhead spoke at a time when it was widely recognized Nifong was engineering a frame-up.
The N&O story continues:
One segment of "Costas Now," an hour-long sports program that airs tonight at 10, will be a one-on-one interview with Krzyzewski, according to Kris Goddard with HBO Sports media relations. According to excerpts from the transcript, Krzyzewski criticizes Duke professors for their criticisms of big-time sports at the university.In a future post I plan to return to Coach K and Professor McClain’s remarks about the attitude of faculty toward Duke athletics. For now I’ll just note what many of you know: there’s considerable individual variation in faculty attitude toward athletics at Duke. The range goes from strongly supportive and admiring to harshly critical and wishing for a major overhaul in Duke’s athletics.
"We had almost 100 professors come out publicly against certain things in athletics," Krzyzewski told Costas, "and I was a little bit shocked at that. But it shows that there's a latent hostility or whatever you want to say towards sports on campus. I thought it was inappropriate, to be quite frank with you."
Krzyzewski voiced similar feelings in June during his first extensive public comments about the impact of the case. He called those who used the occasion to attack athletics "very narrow-minded."
"I don't think there's a latent hostility," said Paula McClain, a political science professor who has questioned the role of big-time sports programs at top-tier research universities. "The questions about athletics are not just related to Duke. I'm sorry Coach K really feels like it's hostility toward athletics and such, because most faculty really appreciate Duke athletics." […]
What I think is Coach K’s most important statement comes at the very end of the article:
Krzyzewski, who also bears the title of special assistant to the Duke president, told Costas he did not speak out last spring because Brodhead did not ask him to do so.Dick Brodhead had a chance to bring in Coach K and didn’t.
"I met with my college president. I told Dick Brodhead, 'If you need me ... you tell me, and then put me in a position where I'm not the basketball coach. But I am that special assistant to you,' " Krzyzewski said. "Dick Brodhead did not bring me in."
Why not? Brodhead brought in just about everyone else from the Bowen-Chambers committee, African and African-American Studies professors, and on and on.
Why freeze out one of the most respected leaders in the Duke community? Especially why would Brodhead freeze out Coach K, when the coach holds the position of assistant to President Brodhead?
Folks, there’s still a great deal more we've yet to learn about the frame-up and its enablement by many at Duke.
6 comments:
I think the newspaper article is incorrect. I don't think that Coach K is a special assistant to Brodhead. Coach K said he would speak if Brodhead appointed him as a special assistant. If he was going to speak out for the University, he wanted to do so as a special assistant and not as the basketball coach.
DukieInKansas
Dear DukieinKansas,
Here's a link to a story noting Brodhead appointed Coach K a "Special Assistant to the President" in Dec. 2003.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=sports&s=zengerle070704
I think Coach K wanted to speak at Brodhead's urging and, of course, with Brodhead's agreement as to what he said.
But Brodhead didn't go along.
Instead, Brodhead and other members of "Dick's team" spoke in Duke’s name.
In those decisive days in late March and April, Dick and his “team” had nothing critical to say about the Raleigh N&O as it savaged their own students and promulgated Crystal Mangum's false witness. And they wouldn’t have anything critical to Mike Nifong for another nine months.
Can we agree Coach K would never have stayed silent in the face of the injustices inflicted on the Duke students?
Dear Dukeegr93,
Sorry about that. It was an inadvertent Nifong.
Give me another chance.
I promise next time I’ll engineer an better response.
Thank you both,
John
Unlike, I suspect, many who are appalled at Duke's response to the Hoax, I found Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons" to be very helpful in providing context to the scandal. One of Wolfe's themes is that big-time, big-money athletics has a powerful and corrupting influence on the academic enterprise. Others are that the social scene at campuses like Duke's have come to be dominated:
-- by a hedonistic, anti-intellectual culture among Duke's white, male, wealthy, prep-school-graduated students;
-- by casual, degrading sexual liasons;
-- by alcohol-fuelled lapses in judgment.
Since Wolfe is a polemecist (my kind of polemecist, granted) as much as an observer, I assume that his dyspeptic vision of Duke is a caricature. It's also likely that--as with his earlier novels--there are elements of truth in his portrait.
The same debate (and the same smug Leftist posturing that Wolfe also lampoons) has gone on at my own alma mater for some time now.
Where Duke's Leftist faculty ran off the rails was in their slovenly belief that the Specific must signify the General. For the Group of 88, every detail of the story of the Lacrosse Rapists and Accomplices proved that Wolfe's vision was correct.
Better still, the rape showed the world that the Left was on the side of the angels in their lonely battles against Charlotte Simmons' demons (as well as against gender bias, homophobia, secret racism, worship of Wall St., revival of the Antebellum, tacit acceptance of lynching, repression of female sexuality, and the universe of other sins of the white bourgeoisie).
The Hard Left Express rolled down the embankment and off the cliff when it became apparent to reasonable observers that the facts of March 13th all pointed to an entirely different narrative: one of prosecutorial and police misconduct and illegality, race-baiting electoral politics, and a scandal-crazed media heedless of injustice.
Closer to the academicians' towers, the fact-based timeline tells a depressing tale of self-interested prigs rushing to judgment on the strength of their grade-school view of the world as a morality play. Worst has been the expose of the bolshevist faculty's emphasis on Solidarity. This attitude and the groupthink it fosters have inhibited the "Something Happened" wrongdoers from re-evaluating their position. Not a single one has taken the first, halting steps towards making amends to the truly wronged parties.
The irony is that the ordinariness of the Lacrosse Team's conduct and their persecution at the hands of the State and Duke's Faculty say nothing about the merits of Wolfe's portrait--the vision that launched a good portion of those thousand (or is it eighty-eight?) ships.
I suspect that Wolfe's issues of substance will be somewhere on the to-do list of Brodhead's successor. But they may not rank very high, given the magnitude of the problems that the pestilential 88/87 will have bequeathed to him or her.
I am not going to give K a ride on this one.
For whatever reason, he kept silent.
And if there is one unfirable guy at Duke, then it is Coach K.
If there is one person at Duke who doesn't need the money, it's Coach K.
If there is one person at Duke who can call a press conference and get SI, NYT, and God and everybody to show up, it's Coach K.
Dunno why he was quiet, but he didn't have to be if he didn't want to.
-AC
The question is more about President Brodhead than it is about Coach K. The President is surrounded by very able people, not only K as special assistant, but also by Tallman Trask, the VP that supervised athletics, and Peter Lange, the Provost. Joe Alleva, the athletic director, is a figurehead, but a loyal one. None of them spoke out. The only logical conclusion is that they all got the same directions from the President -- be quiet. The question is why? Apart from whatever he was thinking, he does not seem to have been much of a leader and organizer, or he would have made use of his very capable team.
Coach K, where were you when the players/students needed you? The answer nowhere, and now when the Duke political environment is safe you break, what essentially, was your silence.
To me, you were a leader, with the opportunity for greatness thrust upon you and, much to my surprise and disappointment, lacked the courage, to make a difference. In fact, you more than any single member of the Duke University family could have made a difference.
Statements that President Brodhead did not invite you to do so are hollow and comes across for what ithey really are EXCUSES! Your position, as Duke Basketball Coach makes you the face of Duke to the general public. You had the opportunity to do so much good, if only exercised the courage of your convictions and said what you are saying now. Instead, like Broddhead, you abandoned the players and your friend, Mike Pressler, and played if safe. Likewise, just like your boss, President Brodhead you speak up now when the danger has passed and virtually everyone in America, who follows these events, know it was a hoax.
The student/athletes don't need you now. You had the opportunity to do the right thing and ran away. Unfortunately, you are such a hero to so many Duke follows that they will not recognize this failure of courage but somewhere inside yourself , I think you recognize it.
I ask you this; would two of your mentors, your father and Bob Knight, acted as you did? "Would they say, as you said, it is not my place or position to support the students ? Would they say, I can't act now because President Brodhead didn't ask me? Would they say it isn't my place, I'll just make it worse?
I've heard you speak of your family and their core values, from how you describe your father it's hard to imagine he allowing such an injustice. As for Coach Knight, perhaps the greatest mark of his character is loyalty, and he has always demonstrated his willingness to do what he felt right regardless of personal consequence.
I might be wrong about Coach Knight, as I was certainly wrong about your response and I don't know your father and you obviously do. However, I can tell you how disappointed I am with your actions and what I can only describe as lack of courage. Still, I believe you are a man of moral character and may yet find a way to help these kids and/or the university. But please speaking up now means almost nothing .
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