Posted on 01/06/2007 10:46:32 AM PST by freespirited
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."
"A public apology seems to be in order here"
Screw the apolgy. I hope a big hole appears in everyone of the 88 teachers pockets after, I hope, he sues them too.
"Conservative professors are pretty much extinct at all public universities."
Time to establish a cyberspace interactive Conservative University.
No need for a building, dorms, tenure. Just create curricula, test by internet and post grades by email.
That will stop all the propaganda in the classroom. Students will not have to listen to daily garbage passed off as lectures or intellect.
IMHO
Even at Duke, I think there are a few good professors, as there still are at Princeton and Yale, and even at Harvard Law School.
I went to Harvard back in the 50s. Most of the faculty were liberals, but I chose my courses carefully and enjoyed almost all of them. Even the required courses offered a spectrum of faculty. I suppose things are worse, now, and it might be hard to stay clear of all the bad professors.
It could be. Certainly there are quite a number of egregious professors at Duke in the humanities. I know a few of them. I just can't believe there wasn't somebody better than this jerk, but maybe you're right.
KC Johnson, the brilliant Brooklyn College prof who's been blogging the case from the beginning, today read all three papers Dowd submitted for grade, and found the last one, which Curtis gave an 'F', to be the best of the three. He said he would've given it a B or a C.
There's more to the story. Apparently, Curtis was actively involved in suppressing a Duke student's account of harassment by a student at NCCC (North Carolina Community College, the school attended by the stripper). This was happening right about the time she was failing Dowd and another lacrosse player in her class. There's also quite a bit of internet posting by Curtis, some of it containing pretty controversial and strident points of view, that you can be sure Dowd's attorney saved to his own server long before the suit became public.
Unless Duke pays off quietly, the fireworks from this one should be interesting.
THE DUKE FANCY DANCING HAS BEGUN! The faculty that was willing to send innocent men to prison for their left-wing social agenda is now scurrying like rats to save their reputations from public rebuke. No matter what you do and say now, some of us will remember what you did and said then.
You should come over to the DUKELAX threads that are ongoing; I have been stunned at some of the stuff they are involved in.
And people wonder why this country is going to hell?
There was quite a discussion yesterday on the last DUKELAX thread about why this woman is still a visiting professor after ten years.
"Thin" is the word I saw used to describe her CV -- and the explaination of why she's still there seems to involve some sort of "slot being filled," if I understood what I read from the people who know about stuff like that on that thread.
My guess is this isn't liberals turning on each other, but conservative professors finally speaking up. Econ tends to be the only social science department with a fair percentage of conservatives (not surprisingly, since if one studies the subject seriously, one realizes that the left's ideas on it are at best hopelessly naive, at worst a deliberate snow-job perpetrated as a power-grab).
Not so, though most of us (not including myself on either count) are either folks who grew up under communism and know that the left is either evil or naive, or ag professors at land-grant universities.
Many observers have attributed Baker's angry black radicalism to the incident, and cut him some slack. But it's interesting to note that he seldom if ever mentions the race of the criminals who invaded his home. I wonder if that's because they're African-American.
Terry Teachout, probably the most emininent culture critic working today, has reviewed Baker's work, which deals in the study of inner-city, rap, hip-hop culture. He skewered him savagely, and basically called the work worthless.
"Conservative professors are pretty much extinct at all public universities."
is kjo's post.
This writer is not a product of USA University
I skimmed over that today, so thanks for the synopsis; did you read that email he wrote to the person who asked him to support the team now, in light of the revelations that have come out.
What a disgusting person he is; I wonder if Vanderbilt is thrilled to have him and her!
Oh yes, I read it, with jaw hanging open. What kind of person would call a woman the "mother of a farm animal?" Who would do that? Who could be that nuts, that angry, that insensitive, that plain nasty? Who would ever believe that a college professor could even think of saying something like that to the mother of a student?
Can you imagine the public outrage if a white professor called the mother of a black student the "mother of an...animal?"
Baker is obviously more than slightly off his rocker. Some have suggested he has a booze problem and was in his cups when the email was written. Be that as it may, the email discloses the workings of a sad, angry, diseased mind. Vanderbilt is the loser for accepting him on its faculty.
The change came during the 60's and 70's, much of it as a result of the various "Civil Rights Acts" and the Griggs v Duke Power Co decision, which made it far harder for tests that had "disparate impact" (ie, fewer blacks pass) be used in employment decisions.
After that, a college degree from a good school became more valuable as a way to get past the HR gateway, which means that to an increasing degree those who control the colleges, also control who gets a good job and advances into positions of power
Take away the Civil Rights Acts, allow employers to hire whom they please, and you would see a trend for employers to hire bright young people fresh out of high school, and let them persue the education on a part-time basis over the course of their careers. In such an environment, the power of the Left would be greatly diminished
The sore thumbs really stick out, though....I had a speech prof that informed the class that she hated engineers, especially hated male engineers, and that it would be a cold day in hell before she gave any of us an 'A'. It was a required class, the alternative prof's clas was hard to get into (obviously), so I got my 'C' and got out.
I hope that she's still there and making little-to-no pay, in her crappy little nowhere teaching job, while I've moved on to bigger and better things. In fact, I might go and try to look her up on the school's website. :-)
He'd be better off at Duke.
This is a copy of an email that I sent to this "professor" at kcurtis@acpub.duke.edu
Schadenfreude. I never really appreciated the nuances of this word until I beheld the burgeoning fallout from this incident. I LOVE to see liberals like you hoisted on the petard of Political Correctness, racial identity politics, gender determinint feminism and what I have coined as "Tawana Brawley Syndrome".
TBS exists when one takes a historical reality such as the marginalization of innocent blacks within a once overtly racist crminal justice syndrome or the past subjagation of women or any number of other offenses and attempts to apply that to a contemporary situation wherein the objective facts don't apply; ala OJ Simpson, Rodney King, Anita Hill etc.
Aside from the fact that petty tyrants like you have turned US college campuses into little ivy covered North Koreas, I suspect that you were seeking to appropriate PC bonus points and obtain instant moral authority by championing the cause of the "other" (marginalized black exotic dancer) against racist male chauvinist members of the privliged white elite. A case of cultural Marxist Class warfare that boomeranged. GOD how I love it so!!!!!
Even though I despise the racial identity politics that mindlessly multicultural cultural Marxists like you have fostered amongst my people to our ultimate detriment, I would like to state that I am a black man living in the heart of Chicago's South Side ghetto, who values the rule of law and truth as best as it can be objectively and humanly determined.
It would be fitting if he gets a pretty penny from you.
You are so right. I remember reading this; the complaint, buried amid the initial uproar of the "Guilty Until Proven Innocent" uprising.
And.. "Guilty Until Proven Innocent" is EXACTLY how this case has been run by Nifong. Bass-Ackward.
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