Ready for your first Duke Now quiz?
Good. Let's begin.
On March 29, 2006 The Chronicle published a story headlined:
Police release 911 tapes, players deny sex of any kind with dancer at partyThe story included this:
Donna Lisker, the director of [Duke’s] Women's Center, said Duke is reaching out to its neighbor school, inviting NCCU students to Wednesday night's Take Back the Night march-an annual rally intended to bring awareness of sexual assault and empowerment to women.On April 2, 2006 the Raleigh News & Observer published a letter to the editor which included this:
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 “pictures” the letter writer refers to were copies of the “Vigilante” poster containing the face photos of 43 white Duke students who were targeted by Duke and Durham “activists.”
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.
The “activists” had previously rallied around a “CASTRATE” banner and made threats against the Duke students.
Duke’s faculty Group of 88 subsequently thanked the “activists” for “not waiting.”
Now our quiz question:
The letter writer condemning the “activists” and making it clear what they did had no place at the TBTN rally was:
1) Women Center director Donna Lisker, whose appointment as associate dean of undergraduate education has just been announced.
2) Dean of students Sue Wasiolek
3) Vice president for student affairs Larry Moneta
4) None of the above
If you answered 1) Lisker, 2) Wasiolek or 3) Moneta, you don’t understand how things are now at Duke.
The letter writer was Geoffrey Lorenz who’s not a Duke administrator. I suspect he’s not even a Duke employee.
Would you like to learn more about Donna Lisker and her work as a member of Duke president Richard Brodhead's "team" following Brodhead's and BOT chair Bob Steel's embrace of Crystal Mangum’s and Mike Nifong’s lies?
Then take a look at an ourstanding post by KC Johnson here.
KC’s post tells us all a lot about Duke now.
5 comments:
Lisker wouldn't be moving up the pole if she hadn't "been loyal to Dick,"
That was the game everyone at Duke had to play to keep their jobs and have any chance of prpmotion.
Believe me. I was one of them. Everyone has to march along in lock-step.
If I don't give my name, you'll understand.
Nobody's dared to speak out publicly although you can sometimes have lunch off campus with a friend you trust but you whisper.
Maybe I'm naive but I never thought working for Duke would be like this.
It's like I'mm told things were in the old Soviet Union. Group think and don't dare defy commissars Dick Brodhead and Bob Steel,
"Maybe I'm naive but I never thought working for Duke would be like this.
It's like I'mm told things were in the old Soviet Union."
So why do you stay?
As a graduate student I observed the far-less-miserable life of an engineering professor at MIT. I decided that the payoff of getting to do "pure science" if I happened to find someone interested in funding what I was interested in studying was not sufficient recompense for the many downsides of academic life (most associated with tenure, none requiring kowtowing to political cultists or kissing the backsides of administrators, who seem to have much less power relative to faculty at MIT than at Duke). So I went into private industry, where I've worked for both sane people and for a wide and interesting variety of dysfunctional nutcases, rather than working for the same damned dysfunctional nutcases for decades on end.
What do you get at Duke that's worth the psychic cost of living in an intellectual dictatorship?
Pay? Job security? "Prestige?" Only employment in your field in Durham?
John,
Forgive me for being really frank here. For this one time, you will simply have to forgive my tone.
I am the parent of a Duke student. Based on what I am reading from these "Vagina monologue" professors at Duke, I am beginning to think that perhaps the greatest rape/assault threat to my kid is from one of these professors and not from affluent Duke athletes (as they would like us to believe). Now, that's real food for thought, isn't it?
Do we have any statistics on inappropriate relationships between these professors and their students or other Duke employees? These people sound perfectly capable of justifying and rationalizing any, and every, action on their part. In view of the extreme ideas they are advancing, why should we trust them not to molest our kids? More specially, what types of incidents one might find in the records of Duke’s "disciplinary committee" that may shine some light on this issue?
"More specially, what types of incidents one might find in the records of Duke’s "disciplinary committee" that may shine some light on this issue?"
There recently was a post on a Duke Chronicle comment thread, later withdrawn, hinting that the answer to your question would be "SAY WHAT?!?!?!?!?!"
Found it (This letter was later withdrawn by its author, but the text was reposted by other users of the Duke Chronicle comments system.)
So, anonymous commenter #3, here's asomewhat better answer to your question from a more knowledgeable source:
---------------------------------------------
Dear Editor: I was surprised to read Emeritus Professor Holsti's letter yesterday, and Chemistry Chairman Warren's e-letter of support. Castigating Duke students for underage drinking, the only
possible illegal act that occurred at that off campus party held in March 2006 (aside from the filing of a fraudulent rape complaint) should also I suggest be balanced by their public recognition that some of their colleagues and former colleagues in their departments and in Arts and Sciences have in the past taken, manufactured, and sold illegal drugs, illegally smuggled alcohol into North Carolina, sexually harassed and assaulted undergraduate students, graduate
students, and staff members both male and female, mishandled and misappropriated federal funds, published student research as their own work, committed adultery, cohabitated(!), attempted to murder a
sitting judge, etc.. A conversation with the University Counsel, who keeps some of such records (associated with verified complaints against current faculty members), might lead faculty to a bit more
unwillingness to cast (as President Brodhead termed them) "ill-advised" stones.
E. Roy Weintraub
Professor of Economics
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