they might.... just like
Posted on 06/18/2007 4:15:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
We know about Mike Nifong, and it looks like he's going to get his comeuppance. Yet the question remains: Why would a seasoned prosecutor like Nifong flout the rules in so many ways in the Duke case? Why would he publicly describe the Duke lacrosse players as "rapists" before that had been established in a court of law? Why would he suppress DNA evidence that the defense was entitled to see? Why, in short, did he go so far before the facts were in?
One of Nifong's public comments provides a clue. He says he wanted to protect the town of Durham from the reputation of being a place featuring "a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl." From this we see that Nifong suffers from delusions of grandeur. He sees himself as the Custodian of Durham's Reputation. He views his job as the White Protector of the Black Race. If he simply saw himself as a prosecutor doing his job in a difficult situation--with competing claims and counterclaims--he wouldn't have made such an ass of himself.
Nifong seems to be suffering from Recovering Southerner Syndrome. This is the ailment, first named on this blog, in which Southerners feel so guilty about slavery and segregation that they perform undignified backward somersaults to prove that they are "not really Southern." When they encounter something Southern--like white Southern frat boys at a party--their mind immediately conjures up images of segregated water fountains and they draw their swords and go into Crusader Against Racism mode. Viewed in this way, Nifong saw himself as a kind of white knight slaying the dragons of Southern bigotry. Nifong was not alone in this: dozens of Duke professors reacted to the incident in exactly the same way.
The only problem was that the facts didn't bear them out. The Duke players apparently weren't planning a rape or a lynching; they were merely misbehaving in the manner of "boys gone wild." That’s not how gentlemen are supposed to behave, but it isn’t discriminatory and it isn’t illegal. So the presumption of white bigotry was entirely wrong in this case. The world is different now and the old civil rights models don't necessarily apply. I suspect that MIke Nifong is not the only fellow who is going to learn this lesson the hard way.
So Nifong is going to resign, and maybe get his license taken away too. Now what about the mau-mau artists at Duke, influential figures on the faculty, who whipped the campus up into a racial hysteria? What happens to the people who helped to create a mob mentality against students, rendering their lives miserable for more than a year, when their guilt was never established, never even probable, and now they have been shown to be innocent?
From the time the first reports of sexual assault at Duke University surfaced, these intellectual vigilantes went to work. Houston Baker, a professor of English and Afro-American Studies, issued a public letter condemning the "abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence and drunken white male privilege loosed among us." He seems to have simply presumed the students guilty.
Shortly after that, 88 members of the Duke arts and science faculty--the so-called Gang of 88--signed a public statement praising campus demonstrators who had distributed a "WANTED" poster that branded the lacrosse players as "rapists." The Gang of 88 didn't use that term, but its statement referred to "what happened to this young woman." Ignoring calls to wait for the evidence, the gang instead went into full social-justice gear.
"What is apparent every day 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 every day...We're turning up the volume in a moment when some of the most vulnerable among us are being asked to quiet down while we wait. To the students speaking individually and to the protesters making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard." In other words, Go vigilantes go!
Now it is time to hold these folks accountable. I know it’s too much to expect that these politically correct vigilantes have their teaching licenses taken away. But perhaps it’s not too much to ask that they be officially reprimanded by the university.
Thank GOD the world is spared from another yankee liberal brainwashing. Kudos to him for choosing Rice.
he plans to go to BOTH to medical & to law school. (he's considering Baylor for both MD/JD. i think that is also a GOOD choice!)
free dixie,sw
what happened to this woman
Not "what allegedly happened to this woman..."
Not "what may have happened to this woman..."
Not "what this woman claimed to have happened to her..."
And if you think that ad was tame, exactly what would it take for you to find something inflammatory; and consider the gasoline soaked environment that this 'tame' match was thrown.
free dixie,sw
Do you have a link?
As it should...
I thought Ranjana Khanna was a character on Saturday Night Live?!
check out #3 by Brytani. I hope this helps
Congrats on your young friends scholarship....
but i was REALLY glad that my "brother" said, "NO, THANKS!" to Princeton. the thought of any "good dixie lad" heading to NJ for college makes me GAG!
free dixie,sw
Sounds like he's a bright young man.....if he can get an offer from Princeton...he could probably get other offers.
FRegards,
they might.... just like
Oh yes, I read about Antioch College going down the tubes. I didn’t know much about the university but sounds like it couldn’t happen to a better place.
How about bankrupting them and taking their homes?
Crush them in civil court.
I cannot believe that a tenured professor could libel both the university, its students and flunk students and that the university have no recourse to protect itself from out-of-control professors.
I do not expect the entire G88 to be released. But what about professors who flunk students unjustly, make up quotes for the “Wanted” poster and lie about current students. Surely they have crossed a line that Broadhead could use to take action, if he was more than a figurehead.
Yes, there are "good behavior" clauses (dismissal for cause) but today they can not defensibly be invoked even for egregious moral turpitude, sexual or otherwise (I suppose if a tenured prof robbed a bank or embezzled money she could be fired but she'd probably resign long before it came to that).
As you know, proving libel or defamation is difficult; in this case, the free speech lunacy that should be obvious to you would make it very difficult.
Yes, the teacher who unjustly manipulated grades is a different case, but that one was already being pursued. But it would be a matter of internal university discipline; it'd be very hard to get a firing for cause out of it. It might well be worth trying, but don't hold your breath. Dismissal for cause is very rare and when the case involves "political speech" it's hard to succeed in.
So the focus needs to be Duke University administrators where the buck stops for not following due process rules of their own making, etc. If the University then wants to try to take it out of the hides of the faculty, it can, but I'm just telling you that that won't happen retroactively. The reason you should be hoping that Duke gets sued as a university big time is not to punish the Duke 88--they are going to skate--that's just the way it is.
But the reason for suing the academic regalia off the Duke administration is to teach a lesson for the future that will be sent down the line to the faculty. If the university is not made to feel it in the wallet (which is the only place universities have any nerve endings whatsoever--they are run now as mere businesses, nothing else), then the faculty will think they actually won in the whole affair, just as Clinton took anything short of removal from office as a victory. (I remember a well-placed Republican advocate telling me the morning after the failure of the Senate trial that he was glad Clinton had not been removed, merely impeached--a wounded Clinton, he said, was a more valuable political football to kick around for 2 years. I told him he was a fool--Clinton would turn acquittal in the Senate into vindication and victory and emerge from it stronger, not wounded. That's the way the Duke 88 will be if the Duke administration is not sued down to the last billion of its endowment.
If I told you, I'd give myself away, but it's in humanities.
I went to an engineering school and found that, for the most part, my engineering profs were pretty apolitical. It was refreshing, as very nearly all of the other profs (English, Psyche, etc) ranged from Liberal to Radically Liberal and many weren't afraid to use their position as a bully pulpit from which to preach.>/i>
Yes, things are better in engineering, marginally better in the hard sciences and medical schools, though a lot of scientists are so poorly educated in philosophy of science that they claim scientific proof for philosophical positions without realizing it. A lot of doctors (and other scientists) tend to turn science into their god but think they are as pure from religious bias as the wind-driven snow. Politicization even of the hard sciences has increased dramatically since I've been in academia. Political science departments tend to be the most balanced among social sciences; humanities are a wasteland. Law and business have a better mix.
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