Duke’s faculty gets an “F”

I often talk with Duke A&S and Trinity faculty. Most of them are quite upset about what’s happened the past year since Chrystal Mangum made her false witness which so many of them embraced.

What upsets most of them, including some senior faculty I’ve spoken with yesterday and today, is not the grossly unjust treatment David Evans, Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and their families have received from Duke, DA Nifong and certain Durham Police officers.

No, it the criticism they’ve received from alums, parents, some pundits, and even, many report, from academics at other colleges and universities. Most faculty believe the criticisms are unfair. In the words of one: “They outrage us even as we try to stay calm.”

Well, in that case I’ve some advice for the faculty: Don’t read today’s Rocky Mountain News editorial by editorial page editor Vincent Carroll. If you do, you’re likely to go from mere outrage to irreversible apoplexy.

For the rest of you Carroll begins:

The most remarkable fact about the Duke lacrosse fiasco is not that it took nearly a year for obviously flimsy charges to be dropped against the players….

Nor is it the fact that District Attorney Mike Nifong would so crudely exploit stereotypes of well-to-do white male athletes in order to entice black votes in a re-election campaign. …

The most remarkable feature of this legal debacle isn’t even the cheerleading for the prosecution that could be found in such major media as The New York Times….

No, the most astonishing fact, hands down, was and remains the squalid behavior of the community of scholars at Duke itself.

For months nearly the entire faculty fell into one of two camps: those who demanded the verdict first and the trial later, and those whose silence enabled their vigilante colleagues to set the tone.

Carroll goes on to cite KC Johnson:

“In late March (2006),” Johnson writes, “Houston Baker, a professor of English and Afro-American Studies, issued a public letter denouncing the ‘abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us’ and demanding the ‘immediate dismissals’ of ‘the team itself and its players.’

A week later, on April 6, 88 members of Duke’s arts and sciences faculty signed a public statement saying ‘thank you’ to campus demonstrators who had distributed a ‘wanted’ poster of the lacrosse players and publicly branded the players ‘rapists.’ By contrast, no Duke professor publicly criticized Nifong’s conduct.” …

Carroll notes a “few Duke professors did acquit themselves well or eventually locate some semblance of a spine.”He ends with this:

But for the most part the faculty either supported the branding of three athletes as racists and rapists, didn’t care enough about their plight to speak out, or were cowed into suppressing any call of conscience.

Would those athletes, facing a similarly dubious claim of rape, have fared any better at America’s other elite universities? The idealist yearns to answer yes. The realist, sad to say, knows better.

Carroll’s editorial is here.

I hope Duke faculty who see this post will comment on the thread.

I also hope academics at other institutions will weigh in.

I think Carroll’s assessment of Duke’s faculty is fact-based and on the money.

How about you?

Hat tip: Mike Williams