Posted on 01/16/2007 9:19:41 PM PST by freespirited
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 university student newspaper 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-mails.
"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 set the record straight and clarify that 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 unraveled.
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 they 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."
What a harsh way of portraying a group of 88 politically correct, left-wing professors who rushed to assume lacrosse players were guilty of rape.
Though I don't endorse the University of Phoenix and believe it doesn't yet command the respect of many employers, a great good would be done if parents started encouraging their high school-age children to consider it and other online programs while working part-time as an alternative to feeding more cash into grotesque Marxist monstrosities like Duke - at least for undergraduate study.
The false accusations against the LaCrosse players will not hurt Duke's reputation and registration numbers nearly as badly as this stupid ad.
Their interpretation - their letter is a reaction to racism/sexism on campus.
2 Kool's interpretation - racism/sexism on campus when and where it exists is often a reaction to the type of thinking that is alive and well on campus and is typified by this letter.
Who is right?
What a load of BS.
The "SOCIAL DISASTER" at Duke is that so many of their faculty are complete idiots.
You claim your original letter had nothing to do with condemning the players, yet go and read it, nothing but claims of racism by whites accross the board by blacks... the implications are very clear what this letter was about.
The letter directly implies the Lacrosse players are guilty of at the very least being racists... And that most of the campus is as well.
Every single quote is implying that whites are a bunch of racists, and the blacks are victims... to damned bad the facts don't support this. Too bad the facts suggest that this "poor black woman" is a liar and a fraud, like unfortunately others before her... and has been able to milk false accusations into a free ride for college and dragged others through the mud.
These professors are not "part of the solution" they are indeed themselves the "SOCIAL DISASTER". Turning their backs on due process, impartiality and logic, willing to simply buy wholesale the nonsense regardless of the facts, because their leftist white guilt world view says that the "poor black woman" must be a victim and the rich white guys must be predatory animals.
There is nothing more racist and condecending than the garbage coming out of their mouths.
How they expect to solve a "SOCIAL DISASTER" when they are living breathing perpetrators of it is beyond me.
By the peoples own quotes, they complain that whites don't see race... which I thought was the goal.. in another quote blacks admit to self segregation.... yet all of this still winds up being dumped on whitey??
You want to have a legitimate conversation about race relations on DUKE campus, fine, then have it centered around something based in reality.. not a lying black woman, found with pleanty of different DNA in her, but non related to anyone she accused, whos playing the race card to get her own benefit and a criminal DA whos playing politics for his own career.. and an Administration that lacked the intestinal fortitude to allow due process before tossing some innocent people to the wolves.
I won't condone holding drunken parties and ordering strippers for them by young men, but that is hardly a federal case. If anything it seems to me the "SOCIAL DISASTER" at Duke is the same "SOCIAL DISASTER" that hurts race relations everywhere.. that being if a bunch of minorities scream and accuse loud and long enough, they get pandered too like adults pandering to spoiled children just to shut them up, regardless of reality or facts. And if thats how races are going to deal with one another, you don't have a "SOCIAL DISASTER" you have children pretending to be adults.
"....issues of race and sexual violence on campus are real...".
And I'm sure all of it is black on white. The instances of white on black rape is so rare as to be statistically insignificant but the opposite is pandemic.
From this day forward, the Group of 88 will be known as THE CRAZY 88'S
"We thank the following departments and programs for signing onto this ad with African & African American Studies: Romance Studies; Psychology: Social and Health Sciences; Franklin Humanities Institute; Critical U.S. Studies; Art, Art History, and Visual Studies; Classical Studies; Asian & African Languages & Literature; Women’s Studies; Latino/a Studies; Latin American and Caribbean Studies; Medieval and Renaissance Studies; European Studies; Program in Education; and the Center for Documentary Studies. Because of space limitations, the names of individual faculty and staff who signed on in support may be read at the AAAS website:http://www.duke.edu/web/africanameric/ "
About 2/3 of these departments exist only to spread leftist propaganda to impressionable young minds, not to fulfill any valid academic need. They ought to be abolished.
I publish this, so my fellow Freepers don't spread the taint caused by this leftist prejudgment to other departments whose members did not participate in the ad.
Domain Name:CONCERNEDDUKEFACULTY.ORG Created On:13-Jan-2007 16:44:26 UTC Last Updated On:13-Jan-2007 16:44:29 UTC Expiration Date:13-Jan-2008 16:44:26 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:Go Daddy Software, Inc. (R91-LROR) Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED Registrant ID:GODA-026833457 Registrant Name:rodrigo dorfman Registrant Street1:2303 west knox street Registrant Street2: Registrant Street3: Registrant City:durham Registrant State/Province:North Carolina Registrant Postal Code:27705 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.9194756932 Registrant Phone Ext.: Registrant FAX: Registrant FAX Ext.: Registrant Email:rodrigo@melloweb.com Admin ID:GODA-226833457 Admin Name:rodrigo dorfman Admin Street1:2303 west knox street Admin Street2: Admin Street3: Admin City:durham Admin State/Province:North Carolina Admin Postal Code:27705 Admin Country:US Admin Phone:+1.9194756932 Admin Phone Ext.: Admin FAX: Admin FAX Ext.: Admin Email:rodrigo@melloweb.com Tech ID:GODA-126833457 Tech Name:rodrigo dorfman Tech Street1:2303 west knox street Tech Street2: Tech Street3: Tech City:durham Tech State/Province:North Carolina Tech Postal Code:27705 Tech Country:US Tech Phone:+1.9194756932 Tech Phone Ext.: Tech FAX: Tech FAX Ext.: Tech Email:rodrigo@melloweb.com
It's not just accreditation that is threatened. Government funding is contingent on equal opportunity.
Any institution that is shown to be racist, as Duke appears to be, is not eligible for government funding.
BTW, what happened to the Claremont Professor, Keri Dunn?
I stand by my statement and apologize to nobody.
A review of Gottlieb's record published in the Durham News & Observer showed that, in the previous year, when he patrolled an area that included both a "crime-ridden" public housing project and Duke off-campus housing, he arrested 20 Duke students and only eight nonstudents. During that same period, the three other officers in that district arrested two Duke students and 61 nonstudents.
I really object to this kind of letter being published now by the leftists on the Duke faculty.
Its really stinking up the jury pool for the inevitable civil suits the lynch mob of 88 will undoubtably face when the libel cases eminating from this incident come to trial.
If they have something to say to defend themselves, that's the time to say it.
These left wing profs viewed the Duke lacrosse (phony) rape incident as an opportunity to "educate the community" about the "issues of racism and sexism". Both of which run rampant in the "Duke community"
That's their neo Marxist phraseology
I don't know that there's much of a libel case to be made for the signers of either ad. Other legal theories would seem to hold more weight.
On the other hand, you do raise an interesting point. Given a jury of reasonable people, the recent ad would magnify rather than diminish the harm from the earlier one: while the profs may claim that they didn't intend for the ad to lead to harassment of the lacrosse players, the fact that the profs completely fail to offer any condemnation of such harassment would lead a reasonable juror to scoff at the claim.
A Durham jury, however, might see things very differently. They would more likely perceive that any dissatisfaction with the "apology" was purely a result of arrogance and pigheadedness on the part of the players.
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