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Published: Jan 17, 2007 12:30 AM
Modified: Jan 17, 2007 05:25 AM

Duke post seeks to defuse '88' ad
Jane Stancill, Staff Writer

Dozens of Duke professors have posted "an open letter to the Duke community" on the Web, explaining an ad last spring that has been widely criticized as a condemnation of lacrosse players.
The new letter, signed by 87 faculty and posted at www.concerneddukefaculty.org, refuses to apologize for the ad and reiterates concerns about issues of race and sexual violence on the Duke campus. It says the so-called "Group of 88" ad published in the Chronicle last April has been grossly misinterpreted. That ad has been a subject of heated debate on blogs, and its signers have received angry and sometimes racist e-mail messages.

"The ad has been read as a comment on the alleged rape, the team party, or the specific students accused," the letter said. "Worse, it has been read as rendering a judgment in the case. ... We reject all attempts to try the case outside the courts, and stand firmly by the principle of the presumption of innocence."

The letter was signed by "concerned faculty," many of whom endorsed the original ad. The ad, entitled, "What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like?", included anonymous statements by students talking about racism and sexism on the campus. The ad also thanked "protesters making collective noise."

The letter this week has backed off that a bit, saying, "We do not endorse every demonstration that took place at the time."

William Chafe, a history professor who signed both the ad and the letter, said the bloggers' interpretation of the ad has become the version people accepted. And that's wrong, he said. "We're trying to simply set the record straight and clarify we never claimed the lacrosse players were guilty," Chafe said.

No matter what happens with the lacrosse sexual assault case, the letter said, issues of race and sexual violence still exist on campus and should be addressed.

The "Group of 88" has been portrayed as politically correct, left-wing professors who rushed to assume lacrosse players were guilty of rape. The professors have been harshly criticized as the sexual assault case began to unravel.

The rhetoric has been heated on the Duke campus, where President Richard Brodhead has called for a restoration of the "fabric of mutual respect." Two weeks ago, a group of economics professors signed a letter saying the professors supported lacrosse players and all student-athletes, and expressing regret that Duke professors were viewed as prejudiced against some students.

That prompted an online petition signed by more than 450 Duke alumni and Duke supporters, standing behind the economics professors. Many of the petition signers targeted their anger at the "Group of 88."

In the online letter, concerned faculty say they won't apologize despite the fury.

"There have been public calls to the authors to retract the ad or apologize for it, as well as calls for action against them and attacks on their character," the letter said. "We reject all of these. We think the ad's authors were right to give voice to the students quoted, whose suffering is real. We also acknowledge the pain that has been generated by what we believe is a misperception that the authors of the ad prejudged the rape case."

Excerpts

Original ad published in Duke Chronicle ad in April -- http://listening.nfshost.com/listening.htm

"We are listening to our students. We're also listening to the Durham community, to Duke staff, and to each other. Regardless of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism, who see illuminated in this moment's extraordinary spotlight what they live with everyday. They know that it isn't just Duke, it isn't everybody, and it isn't just individuals making this disaster.

"But it is a disaster nonetheless. These students are shouting and whispering about what happened to this young woman and to themselves."

Letter from Concerned Faculty -- www.concerneddukefaculty.org

"In the spring of 2006, the Duke community was rocked by terrible news. We heard that a woman hired to perform at a party thrown by our lacrosse team had accused members of the team of raping her. Neighbors, we were told, heard racial epithets called out at the woman as she departed the party. The criminal proceedings and the media frenzy which followed are perhaps beginning to wind down. For us at Duke, the issues raised by the incident, and by our community's responses to it, are not.

"In April, a group of Duke faculty members published an advertisement in The Chronicle. The ad, titled 'What does a Social Disaster Sound Like?' was mostly a compilation of statements made by Duke students in response to the incident and its immediate aftermath. This ad has figured in many discussions of the event and of the University's response. It has been broadly, and often intentionally, misread."

Staff writer Jane Stancill can be reached at 956-2464 or janes@newsobserver.com.

January 17, 2007
Duke Faculty: Too Smart by Half
By Kathleen Parker

When Woody Allen said, "The brain is the most overrated organ,'' he must have had in mind North Carolina's Research Triangle, home both to the scandalous Duke lacrosse team "rape'' fiasco -- and to more Ph.D.s per capita than just about anywhere else in America.

Rarely have so many smart people behaved so dumbly.

Last week, the case took yet a new turn when discredited district attorney Mike Nifong, under pressure from the state prosecutors association, relinquished the case to the state attorney general.

In another development, the stripper who initially claimed she was beaten, raped and sodomized by three Duke University lacrosse team players -- Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann -- has changed her story.

Again.

This time she says Seligmann didn't participate in the alleged assault after all, though she still insists he was there when the others did. She also changed the time of the alleged assault so that it no longer coincides with time-stamped receipts Seligmann produced months ago indicating that he wasn't at the party house when the incident supposedly took place.

A bit earlier, the dancer also decided she might not have been (children stop reading here) vaginally penetrated by a penis, which is required for a rape charge in North Carolina. Nifong dropped the rape charges, but intended to pursue the remaining charges of kidnapping and sexual assault.

And so it has gone for almost a year now. A new day, a new story.

Of all the questions still unanswered in this shameful saga, among the most perplexing is: How did so many smart people allow things to reach the level of hysteria we've witnessed in the past several months?

The answer is implicit in the question. Notwithstanding the rich brain trust created by the three points of North Carolina's "Triangle'' -- Duke in Durham, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University in Raleigh -- university communities are fertile breeding grounds for the totalitarian mindset known as political correctness.

Between a perverse form of liberation feminism that sanctifies strippers, prostitutes and porn stars -- and a dogma of victimology that places blame for all things at the feet of the white patriarchy -- the players were instantaneously presumed guilty by virtue of their being white males and privileged jocks.

By the same reasoning, the dancer was assured victimhood by her status as a black single mother/student, reduced by centuries of white-male oppression to stripping for food and tuition.

What happens next depends on the attorney general's review of evidence. In the meantime, members of the university community who participated in the demonization of the lacrosse team might examine their own souls.

The past year has not been exemplary for the keepers of the flame. Before any charges were brought against the three players, students produced a "wanted'' poster with photos of team members and demonstrated with signs reading, "It's Sunday morning, time to confess.''

Higher up the food chain, Duke faculty formed the "Group of 88'' -- a coalition of 88 faculty members representing 13 departments -- and ran an ad demanding that the lacrosse team players confess.

It's been quite a spectacle. It also has been a damning indictment of an intellectually dishonest culture that pretends to the virtue of enlightened tolerance, but only for a select few. White males are the last remaining group approved for public vilification.

In a March 2006 letter to the Duke administration just days after the alleged rape, English professor Houston A. Baker Jr. brought clarity to the anti-white male, anti-jock bias that is today entrenched on many college campuses. It reads in part:

"How many more people of color must fall victim to violent, white, male, athletic privilege before coaches who make Chevrolet and American Express commercials, athletic directors who engage in Miss Ophelia-styled 'perfectly horrible' rhetoric, higher administrators who are salaried at least in part to keep us safe, and publicists who are supposed not to praise Caesar but to damn the unconscionable ... how many?''

Got that, white-male-capitalist-pig-jocks of the world? Guilty. To Duke's credit, Provost Peter Lange responded to Houston with an eloquent reprimand against prejudgment.

Under pressure from feminist groups, college administrators long have sponsored lectures about date rape and sexual harassment, directed at young males, all of whom are presumed to be potential predators. In light of events at Duke, they might consider adding a new seminar to the roster -- one to review the rules of due process, the evil of mob rule, and the art of apology.

They might invite their faculties to attend.

kparker@orlandosentinel.com
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group

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