I think the silver lining, if there is ever a silver lining to this kind of thing, would be a new crop of young conservatives from Duke and other universities. Duke was the type of place conservatives were openly mocked without recourse. Rational young men and women, silently outraged by the pot-banging feminists and race baiters, will acquire their own, independent perspectives.
Justice Alito became a conservative because of the shameful activism of Princeton during the VietNam era. The Ivy Leagues (Summers incident in Harvard; Taliban in Yale) and wannabes are unwittingly cultivating a new generation of conservative thinkers.
They ain't all Conservative going through there!