Teacher Support for the Duke Players

Now the teachers are going at each other. Shortly after members of the Duke University Lacrosse team were accused of rape last March, 88 faculty members signed an open letter which appeared in the student newspaper sympathizing with the accuser. Now, after the case against the students appears to be falling apart, 17 members of the economics department faculty have sent a letter to the student newspaper expressing their support for the players, and stating in part, "We regret that the Duke faculty is now seen as prejudiced against certain of its own students.y´

The latest open letter comes after a lacrosse team member filed a lawsuit against the university alleging the school and his political science professor intentionally failed him after rape case was made public. The student, Kyle Dowd. was not charged in the case but had to take time out from class for meetings with his attorney. His teacher, Kim Curtis, a visiting associate professor who specializes in political and feminist theory, was one of the faculty members who signed the Group of 88 letter.

Until now, no faculty member at Duke had come out to support the players. Roy Weintraub, an economics professor at Duke, drafted this week's letter. "It was something that had been bothering me for a while, that the Duke faculty was being characterized as being hostile to its own students, especially statements by faculty members that have been construed that way," Weintraub told TIME. "I wanted to make sure that there was some expression that students are welcomed in our class, including lacrosse players, students in good standing."

The university this week reinstated in good standing two of the players — Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann — after rape charges were dropped. They are still charged with sexual assault and kidnapping. One player — David Evans — has already graduated.

As for Kyle Dowd's lawsuit, it alleges that Curtis purposely failed the student after the rape case was made public. Curtis told her students they would be graded on three class papers and class participation, with each counting 25% of the final grade. Dowd received a C-plus and C-minus on two papers before the case came to light. He received an F in class participation for missing the last month of class, according to an email Curtis sent to Dowd. Dowd says he had to miss five classes because he was meeting with attorneys in the case. Another lacrosse player in the class also received an F. They were the only two students to fail Curtis's class. Duke University has now accepted credits Dowd had earned at another university and allowed him to graduate; the school also changed his F in Curtis's class to a D, citing a "calculation error." Dowd and his family want the university to change the D to a P, for passed.

Dowd's younger brother Craig was expected to enroll at Duke last fall on a lacrosse scholarship, but he turned it down and will enroll at Georgetown University this spring. "We didn't feel like we could send him to Duke with everything that was going on," Tricia Dowd, his mother, told a local newspaper. "We love Duke ... but we didn't know what the professors would do."

Any white male who took that class in the first place either wasn't paying attention or was forced into it. The statement on the professor's web page made it perfectly clear that she was a man-hating, American-hating marxist feminist. Even if the rape case hadn't arisen, taking the course would have been an unpleasant experience for a normal human being, and would have taught him nothing worth learning. So it's not surprising that a male white athlete had a D in the course even before the blowup.

That doesn't excuse Duke from hiring such people and offering such worthless and destructive courses, but young people who go to college nowadays really need to learn how to pick and choose their courses. There are a lot of minefields out there, and the wisest course is to learn how to avoid them.

Duke University has waited FAR TOO LONG to put right their anti-Constitutional assault on the accused, regarding the players and their coach..

It is not only the Leftist/Feminazi/Radical 88 vocal Professors who came out and personally attacked the accused -- the entire faculty and administration MUST be held accountable for not coming forward and stating the OBVIOUS --- INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY.

Being "Duked" will come into disreputable use as did getting a "Lewinsky" or being "Borked".

Duke lost more credibility than did Nifong and the Justice system -- because as an institution of "higher learning" they are charged with TEACHING the meaning of the Constitution, Equal Protection under the law and INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY....

But Duke and its faculty took the normal academia low road and demonstrated their bias and leftist racist political correctness -- rather than INTELLECT.

Duke is doomed....as it should be...
I hope the parents of the accused - sue the sonsuvbitches into abject poverty forcing them to renege on financial obligations to the feckless imbeciles they call a "faculty"..

Semper Fi

That doesn't excuse Duke from hiring such people and offering such worthless and destructive courses,

Conservative professors are pretty much non-existent in "humanities" courses. Most colleges require a certain number of credit hours for humanities-related undergraduate work. The players probably looked at the course book and selected the classes that looked easy. I was in the same boat 15 years ago. All of my "humanities" courses are instructed by uber-Liberal professors.

but young people who go to college nowadays really need to learn how to pick and choose their courses.

That's like choosing between the lesser of two evils. None of the players could have predicted their infamous notoriety. They are guilty of being players on a lacrosse team that was subjected to an ill-conceived prosecution. They are not guilty of poor course selection.

I have been shocked to discover just how entrenched these man haters are at this college.

Take a look at this article about Houston Baker, one of the leaders of the Group of 88:

Baker: In His Own Words
The Vanderbilt Register is the “paper of record for Vanderbilt University.” An official publication, it appears once every two weeks.

It recently published a profile of one of Vanderbilt’s new professors, Houston Baker. The article highlighted Baker’s telling of his past achievements in “typically self-effacing fashion,” and offered a fawning tone throughout. The chair of the English Department, Jay Clayton, hailed Baker as “one of the most wide-ranging intellectuals in America today in any field of the humanities. He is prolific and writes to an audience far broader than academic specialties.”

Here’s how the article described Baker’s behavior last spring, in a tone and content that suggested admiration for his activities: “He also was the leading dissident voice inside Duke University regarding that administration’s handling of rape accusations against members of its lacrosse team.”

How did Baker become the “leading dissident”? The paper doesn't actualy tell people at Vanderbilt.

In late March, lamenting the “college and university blind-eying of male athletes, veritably given license to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech, and feel proud of themselves in the bargain,” Baker issued a public letter denouncing the “abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us.” To act against “violent, white, male, athletic privilege,” he urged the “immediate dismissals” by Duke of “the team itself and its players.”

Has Baker adopted a more tolerant attitude between last March and the penning of the Vanderbilt publication? It appears not. A mother of an unindicted lacrosse player recently wrote him, “asking for your help.” She noted,

Over the past eight months, much of the evidence has revealed that the three falsely indicted young men have been the victims of rogue DA Nifong. They have been denied due process and are the victims of a possible conspiracy. Whatever you believed in March, I am sure you must be questioning the actions of DA Nifong. Therefore, I respectfully request that you join Pres. Brodhead in asking for a special prosecutor. In addition, I respectfully request you petition Pres. Brodhead to allow Collin and Reade to resume classes this spring.

Our paths may have been different, but I am sure all of us seek the truth and justice. This can only be accomplished with an impartial prosecutor. Collin and Reade, along with Dave, have had to put their lives on hold due to a false accusation. I trust that with the filing of ethics charges by the NC State Bar and the Conference of District Attorneys calling for DA Nifong to recuse himself, we can all agree that justice can best be served with Nifong’s removal.

Here is the full text of Baker’s reply:

LIES! You are just a provacateur on a happy New Years Eve trying to get credit for a scummy bunch of white males! You know you are in search of sympaathy [sic] for young white guys who beat up a gay man [sic] in Georgetown, get drunk in Durham, and lived like “a bunch of farm animals” near campus.

I really hope whoever sent this stupid farce of an email rots in .... umhappy [sic] new year to you ... and forgive me if your really are, quite sadly, mother of a “farm animal.”

So speaks “one of the most wide-ranging intellectuals in America today in any field of the humanities.”

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