When’s Duke’s Turn?

In yesterday’s New York Sun:

A weeklong hunger strike staged by five students at Columbia University could cost the institution $50 million.

Columbia officials said Wednesday night that, after a faculty committee grants approval, the university would spend the funds to pay for an expansion of the Office of Multicultural Affairs and a restructuring of Columbia College's core curriculum that would add faculty for courses on non-European civilizations.

The strikers are declaring the concessions by the Columbia administration as a partial victory, the fulfillment of a portion of their demands. . . .

Last week, five students started a water-and-Gatorade diet with a litany of demands on the administration. They asked for changes to what they said was a Eurocentric core curriculum, increased staff and funding for "ethnic studies" programs and more support on campus for minority students.

The students said they are also protesting the university's Harlem expansion plan, and a climate of "institutionalized racism" on campus.

In recent years, Columbia has amended its core curriculum to include a "Major Cultures" component, which requires students to take courses on Asian, African, and Latin American civilizations.

The strikers said the courses, which are held in lecture format, were marginalized because of the large class sizes, and that Major Cultures courses should be held in the same small seminar-style meetings awarded to courses on European history.

Calling the negotiations a victory for their cause, two of the strikers, a senior at Columbia, Bryan Mercer, 22, and a junior at Columbia, Emilie Rosenblatt, 22, yesterday ended their fast when health services threatened to place them on involuntary medical leave.

Two of the original strikers, who have been joined by a Barnard professor of political science, Dennis Dalton, and two more students said they would continue fasting until the university also made concessions on its Harlem expansion plans. . . .

You may be asking: How is Columbia going to justify this cave-in; and who’s going to be willing to pay for it?

The Sun tells us:

A task force on undergraduate education has been reviewing the core curriculum, officials said. The university, which is in the middle of a $4 billion capital campaign, has already earmarked $865 million to improve the undergraduate experience.

Spending $50 million on more faculty and resources for courses in "Major Cultures" was already accounted for in that fundraising goal, officials said

There’s more to the story including some students who object to the cave-in.

It’s all here.

Question: When’s Duke’s turn?

I don’t know, but I’m sure it will come very soon.

“Winning By Intimidation” is the college fight song of the Academic Left which dominates most campuses and routinely fleeces alumni and friends.

Duke’s alumni and friends, good people, are especially easy to fleece; and not just by faculty Leftists.

Have you watched the last year-and-a-half as Duke caved to Crystal Mangum’s and Mike Nifong’s lies so cravenly that its President, Richard Brodhead, proclaimed whatever the framed students did “was bad enough,” while refusing to say anything critical of Nifong even months after the NC State Bar launched an ethics investigation that led to Nifong’s disbarment?

Yet we’re told by Duke's Development Office that financial giving from alumni and friends is now higher than ever.

That’s why I say Duke alumni and friends are easy to fleece.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Just ask Professors Houston Baker, Kim Curtis, Stanley Fish, Wahneema Lubiano and Charles Piot how easy it is to fleece Duke.