I wonder if it covers the 88 Morons?
I doubt it includes the “88 Morons” because they were not formally a Duke group. I suspect the 88 will have thier respective socks sued off them which is great.
I would have told them to take their settlement offer, and shove it.
They can consolidate and change venue to NJ or NY since they are out of state residents.
According to a Duke representative, the settlement covers the actions of faculty up to that date. So the 88, if they keep their mouths shut, are cleared from being sued by the three.
I think the settlement was in the best interests of the three, but, unless Duke does an internal investigation of how its faculty and staff behaved during this “fiasco”, the 88 are free to go on their merry way spewing their poison to “minds full of mush”.
As far as getting more money out of Duke, at this point the 3 have the most bargaining power. If they continue and start depositions, then Duke lawyers would just put their heels in and fight (meaning the 3 may never see any money). It would be very difficult to prove damages (especially against the 88 who were only exercising their freedom of speech rights). The last thing Duke wants is to have the curtain further exposed as to what is going on in various disciplines outside of business, engineering, and hard sciences.
The people to go after would be the Duke governing board (ala the attempts made with Dartmouth). Also the strategy of bringing up questions that are unrelated to the settlement with the Duke president at recruiting functions may also be effective.
Some questions could be asked are as follows:
*Who paid for the original 88 ad?
*Why did the ad mention several departments which supported the ad even though no evidence exists of a departmental vote, and, in some cases the departments have later denied support for the ad. This appears to be a serious breach of academic truthfulness that should be investigated and punished if proved.
*Why did you, the President, say that whatever they did it was bad enough?