Duke University Press Stays Woke

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | June 2, 2025 | John Staddon

[karpov]

I recently came across an alarming 2014 article on academic freedom in the Harvard Crimson. “Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice” was the subtitle. The author was an obviously very bright female student.

Academic freedom exists to allow a university to be unimpeded in its search for truth. It has been known since the 18th-century philosopher David Hume, if not before, that justice depends on first getting the facts right. A just conviction depends on true evidence. Academic freedom is necessary to achieve real justice.

But not according to then-Harvard student Sandra Korn, whose first target was the late Richard Herrnstein, author of a 1971 Atlantic article on meritocracy and IQ. Herrnstein told the Crimson: “The attacks on me have not bothered me personally. […] What bothers me is this: Something has happened at Harvard this year that makes it hazardous for a professor to teach certain kinds of views.”

Ms. Korn was rather scornful at the professor’s naïveté, responding:

Herrnstein seems not to have understood [that this] was precisely the goal of the SDS activists—they wanted to make the “certain kinds of views” they deemed racist and classist unwelcome on Harvard’s campus.

So some ideas, true or not, are unwelcome on Harvard’s campus.

How did Korn defend her attack on academic freedom? By a part-whole argument along these lines: “You want to be healthy, but no one is perfectly healthy, so why not drink, smoke, and take silly risks?” Korn again:

No academic question is ever “free” from political realities. If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of “academic freedom”? (emphasis added)

Why indeed? Why should any search for truth impede my quest for social justice?

[alternatives?]

Because not everyone defines social justice the same way.

[No name given]

Exactly. I don’t want America turning into a communist country.

[Savage Beast]

In my Duke University tee shirt (I love Duke University), I find it obvious that taking such nonsense seriously is part of the decadence of Western Civilization.

Its signs are everywhere, from humans defecating on San Francisco sidewalks to the "journalists'" defense of violent illegal invaders to political assassination to same-sex marriage to a "woke" AMA to educated morons spouting off nonsense. There's a common denominator to all of it.

[Savage Beast]

I love Duke University. I spent five wonderful years there, and the longer I was there the more I loved it. I was not brainwashed, but, of course, after the first couple of years I realized that I was much smarter than most of the other people there.

[bk1000]

There have been patterns of thought over the years that have been proven incompatible with a healthy and just society. Woke is the latest of these and will find it’s way down the drain after swirling the bowl a few times.

[Bon of Babble]

Did Duke University learn anything about false reporting and fall out from the rape hoax case of 2006?

“Duke University’s president warned in a school-wide e-mail of threats of gang violence against Duke students. Mobs protested outside the house that had been the site of the party, banging pots and pans at early hours of the morning.

Photographs of lacrosse team members were posted prominently around Durham and on the Duke University campus with accompanying captions requesting that they come forward with information about the incident.

The three students brought a civil lawsuit against Duke University, which was settled with the university paying approximately US$20 million to each claimant.”