Claremont Professor Keri Dunn vandalized her own car and then, before she was exposed as the vandal, led campus "anti-hate" rallies. The Duke professors are no better than Dunn.
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."
Oh, er, except in that ad we put our names on a few months ago. We were just kidding! Ha ha! What it was was, er, um, actually a parody of a bunch of old hippies running an ad! Ha ha! Humor is such a good thing! Ha ha! So there's really no need to put our pensions into jeopardy by filing any sort of legal action here! We've worked hard all our lives sipping green tea in various faculty lounges and, really, we're super-good people so please -- it was just a parody! Ha ha! Now move along! Thanks! Phew! That was close!
From the original "ad":
"I can’t help but think about the different attention given to what has happened from what it would have been if the guys had been not just black but participating in a different sport,like football, something that’s not so upscale"
I can answer that easily. If it were the basketball team, the coach would not have been fired by the University President based on unproven allegations, the season would not have been cancelled by the University President due to unproven allegations, and the players involved would not have been kicked out of school by the University President based on unproven allegations. In other words, the presumption of innocence of the accused would not have been cast aside by the University and its President based on the unproven allegations of a prostitute who had never even been interviewed by the District Attorney or his staff.
NOW it is an "alleged" rape. In the original ad it was "what happened to this young woman".
The whole ad is based on the presumption of their guilt. If you don't have a racially motivated rape, then the things said in the ad about racism and sexism don't make sense.
"We think the ad's authors were right to give voice to the students quoted, whose suffering is real."
Oh, puhleeze .. whose suffering is real? I'm going to take a wild guess and assume it's students who probably didn't fit in the highly competitive environment that is Duke. Maybe it's those students who should transfer to another school. Together with the faculty who gave them voice.
Hmmm... what disaster, then, did the signers of the original letter believed happened? The letter plainly calls the events of that night, "a disaster," yet somehow, given their definition of the disaster, I don't find it plausible that they considered a black woman from NC State's accusation against white Duke lacrosse players to be a disaster. Their quite plain that the disaster is part of a continuum of ongoing racism and sexism at Duke.
The whole idea of shielding the identity of rape "victims," while publicizing the identity of the perpetrator, implies presumption of guilt. If the guy isn't guilty, then the victim isn't really a victim, and may very well be a false accuser guilty of a serious crime herself.
Yet the procedure is hardly ever questioned.
And don't get me started on the media and public attitude that the heinousness of a given crime somehow implies the guilt of the person accused.
How is that not a request for people to rush to judgement without ensuring they have all the facts?
It looks like the faculty is in big time damage control. Maybe they feel Duke will let them swing on their own.
JerseyHighlander... Seems Jersey folks are who the NC folks are trying to keep out... Nevermind them, though, right?
I hate to say it, but if I were 18, I'd be tempted to give Duke a try. Every campus is dominated by liberal sh*theads, but how many colleges do the liberal sh*theads actually sign a statement so you can identify them (and thus steer clear)?
J/K... at least partly...
Left-wing professors and anonymous statements, that sorta taxes the believability factor.
While I don't particularly doubt that Timothy McVeigh was in significant measure responsible for detonating a large bomb outside the Murrah building, I do think he was railroaded. Despite repeated sustained objection, the prosecution kept on introducing testimony from people who had lost loved ones in the blast/collapse. To be sure, such testimony would be appropriate in the sentencing phase, but unless the defense is contesting the fact that people died the testimony of the decedents' loved ones has nothing whatsoever to do with whether Timothy McVeigh was responsible for the bombing. So what was the purpose of that testimony, if not to unjustly inflame the jury?
Oh really? You want to do something positive about race relations? How about not automatically jumping to conclusions about the guilt of some 'rich white boys' based on your presumptions about the way you assume they would treat black women, then issuing some 'gosh isn't it terrible how some white people treat black people' letter to make it look like you're not judging anyone?
Buncha maroons.
There is a distinct new trend in the social agenda of the Left: it no longer matters who is innocent or guilty: charges are made, and they take the ball and run with it, because of the OPPORTUNITY it presents to "air" an "important issue"---one like this must have seemed irresistible: jocks, sexism, racism, monetary exploitation
(they probably didn't even pay her enough), etc.etc. Nifong proved to be the ideal engine that drove this "case":
it has been going on FOREVER, giving everyone the chance to jump on the bandwagon, and wring every ounce of social
significance out of it: or, on the other hand, jump off once it starts to look really bad and mishandled. This one is coming to a head, finally, rather quickly, after, what, 91/2 months? But the important thing is, the Left and people like Nifong, who twisted the case into nothing but a springboard for his own political ambition without even looking at its details, have been willing to simply let their version of what happened circulate out there in the public at large, because it served a political agenda. The fact that 99% of it will be proved UNPROVABLE if not a total lie, is irrelevant. The Left's contention is that IT COULD HAVE BEEN TRUE, IT MIGHT AS WELL BE TRUE, BECAUSE THESE THINGS HAVE HAPPENED BEFORE, AND AT LEAST WE GOT IT THE THING PUBLICIZED AND DISCUSSED AND THAT IS THE IMPORTANT THING. The fact that they put a bunch of young guys through the ringer and ruined their lives doesn't matter to the Left. It never did---for a hundred years they have been playing with people's lives like this.
Ouch! Now that hurts!
A Draino enema is the only thing that is guaranteed to clean out their brains.
The fake indian proved you can't fire these clowns. The liberals are running the show.
"Left-wing professors and anonymous statements, that sorta taxes the believability factor."
sounds like your typical CNN reporting.
A whole lot of backtracking weasel words from these pathetic clowns.
Suffering at Duke? Puhleaze.
Claremont Professor Keri Dunn vandalized her own car and then, before she was exposed as the vandal, led campus "anti-hate" rallies. The Duke professors are no better than Dunn.
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