Duke Fallout Continues as Top Black Professor Resigns From Race Committee

Diverse Issues in Higher Education ^ | January 10, 2007 | Christina Asquith

[TBBBO]

From Diverse Online

Current News Duke Fallout Continues as Top Black Professor Resigns From Race Committee By Christina Asquith Jan 10, 2007, 08:13

The Duke University professor heading a university-appointed committee to investigate race relations on campus in the wake of last spring’s men’s lacrosse scandal has resigned from that committee in protest against the recent decision to invite two of the players back on to campus.

“The decision by the university to readmit the students, especially just before a critical judicial decision on the case, is a clear use of corporate power, and a breach, I think, of ethical citizenship,” says Dr. Karla Holloway, the William R. Kenan Jr., Professor of English and Professor of Law at Duke. “I could no longer work in good faith with this breach of common trust.”

Holloway, who is Black, had agreed to head one of the four committees formed by Duke President Richard H. Brodhead late last spring. She says she’d hoped to improve the racial climate on campus after a Black exotic dancer accused members of Duke’s men’s lacrosse team of rape and racial slurs — prompting a media frenzy and nationwide accusations of racism against the university and its students.

Since that time, though, the prosecutor’s case has all but fallen apart, and public opinion has swung drastically in defense of the lacrosse players. Professors like Holloway — who had condemned the players — are now facing criticism for prematurely assuming the players’ guilt and, ironically, making racist charges against the White players.

In her resignation letter, Holloway criticized the Duke administration for not coming to her defense, as attacks in the form of blogs and letters to the university newspaper have mounted in recent months.

“The public support [the administration] has extended to these students has been absent in regard to faculty who have been under constant and often vicious attack,” she wrote.

University spokespeople did not respond to Diverse’s requests for comment.

Holloway’s resignation is the latest turn in a roller coast ride since last year for those representing Duke’s Black community. By 2006, the Black studies program ought to have been stronger than ever, since the university spent 10 years — from 1993 to 2003 — implementing it’s “Black Faculty Strategic Initiative.” The initiative doubled the number of Black professors, from 44 to 88, and poured millions into funding the Black studies program, which Holloway led for a time.

However, some professors have claimed that the lacrosse scandal shone a spotlight on underlying racism on campus. The accuser was a Black single mother, working her way through college at nearby North Carolina Central University, while the three defendants were all White and from wealthy families. Adding to the racial tension, a neighbor said he overheard the players slinging racial slurs at the dancer.

Initially, many at Duke supported the dancer. Students held candlelight vigils on campus and 88 professors, now known as the “Group of 88” signed an advertisement in the student newspaper calling for the administration to take a stronger stand against the players. The administration “failed to recognize the racial dimensions of this and failed to address it quickly,” wrote Duke political science professor Paula McClain in an article published in the summer of 2006.

Also during the summer, six Black professors left Duke, although most said their departures were unrelated to the scandal. A university spokesman said at the time that 10 more Black professors had been hired for the start of the 2006-2007 academic year, but Holloway claims that number is inflated.

In recent months, the pendulum of public opinion has swung in favor of the lacrosse players as controversy and criticism have dogged district attorney Mike Nifong’s handling of the case. Multiple DNA tests have found no link between the dancer and the players, and it has been revealed that Nifong never met with accuser and hid evidence that would excuse the players. Not long after the charges were filed, many Duke students could be seen wearing blue bracelets with white letters proclaiming “INNOCENT.” In an October editorial, a science professor accused those who had not supported the lacrosse players of abandoning the Duke family.

“The faculty who publicly savaged the character and reputations of specific men’s lacrosse players last spring should be ashamed of themselves. They should be tarred and feathered, ridden out of town on a rail and removed from the academy,” he wrote.

Holloway says she was deeply shocked by that editorial, and the administration’s failure to offer even a note of support to her.

Later in October, however, the board of trustees elevated the Black studies program to a department. While the program already offered undergraduate and graduate degrees, trustees said at the time that the promotion reflected Duke’s “commitment” to its Black students.

Although Nifong dropped the rape charges last month, the kidnapping case against the three players is set to go to court this spring. Many speculate, however, that the case will never make it to court given the seemingly weak evidence. But regardless of what happens in the case, Duke is already feeling some chilling effects from the tide of negative publicity.

Applications have dropped 3.3 percent since the scandal broke, from 19,387 in 2006 to 18,495 in 2007. The university also received 20 percent fewer early decision applications this year compared to last year.

“We must work together to restore the fabric of mutual respect,” said Duke president Brodhead in a recent letter addressed to the Duke community. “One of the things I have most regretted is the way students and faculty have felt themselves disparaged and their views caricatured in ongoing debates.”

© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com

[Enchante]

This babbling charlatan is typical of far too many leftist morons teaching on our campuses. Evidence, argument, and analysis are unknown to such fraud artists. All that's needed is a politically correct outlook and the rage of the demented. Intelligent thought would merely be a hindrance to the practice of politically correct academic life.

[Riverman94610]

True,but human nature often leads people to see the world through a distorted lens.
Lets say I had a child who was molested.Years later I was asked to serve on a jury who had a child molestation case.
I SHOULD NOT let me own experience stop me from being fair minded to the defendant.
Yet I'm afraid I would not be able to disconnect my child from the victim.

[KenmcG414]

Same mindset that acquitted OJ Simpson.

[Alia]

Remember the Echo Reporterette Kristiana Bennett who had early on heard "bad" things about Crystal from the local community and wouldn't report it.

Kristiana Bennett is a reporter for the Campus Echo, NCCU's student newspaper. Early on, Bennett went to the accuser's house to talk. The woman was not at home, but Bennett spoke with neighbors. One told of a barbecue where the woman behaved in an unflattering manner. Bennett could not bring herself to include the details in the article for her paper.

The more indepth article is here:

He asked Bennett if her sources would talk on the record. You want to use that? Bennett asked him. Do you know how that will look?

In the real world, you have to print the facts, dePyssler told her. You can't worry about how things will look.

Bennett disagreed. Not only did she and her fellow students instinctively trust the accuser, they understood the political implications of doubting her. This case was about much more than the facts, which were still in question. It was about the realities of being a black woman in America in 2006.

"I'm going to give it to you straight," 22-year-old Echo photographer Khari Jackson told dePyssler. "You are privileged because you're a white man, and everybody knows that white men rule the world."

"I'm not going to argue with that," dePyssler said. "But does that mean they committed a crime?"

The Echo staffers hungered for justice, but many in Durham's black community doubted the woman would get it. Already, defense attorneys for the lacrosse players were chipping away at her story. They pointed out that in the 911 call reporting the racial slur, the female caller three times gave the address of the house where the lacrosse party was taking place, even though the address is not clearly visible from the street. The caller said she and her friend were driving, then that they were walking, and finally that she was sitting outside the house..

[Anti-Bubba182]

"Top Black Professor Resigns From Race Committee.."

Why doesn't she RESIGN period! She won't want to lose the high paying secure platform for bogus outrage outrage.

I wonder if this one is in the local Jury pool? If this does go to trial there a conviction is still possible.

[The KG9 Kid]

I just read some of the professor's writings. It's confusing to me because it frequently uses terms that the author evidently expects the reader to be comfortable with through some previous left-wing indoctrination process.

Perhaps I'm just stupid, but I think that the professor is a pretentious assclown who distracts her readers with gobbledygook horseshit in order to appear to be an intellectual. People of her political bent who admire her (or at least want to be publically seen by others admiring her) probably haven't got any better idea what the hell she's writing about than I do. The difference between me and them is that I am not pretending to understand it in order to show that I'm smart enough to know what she's writing about. Terms like: Global-Feminism, 'otherness', and a whole litany of other code words that probably mean something to liberals who care about that stuff.

At least I have a name and face that answers a question I've had for some time, which is: 'Who writes this crap, anyway?'.

Side note: Her son 'Bem' was shot to death in 1999 while trying to escape Odom Correctional Institution in Northampton County, N.C. where he was incarcerated on a 95 year sentence for multiple rape counts, attempted murder, robbery, and kidnapping.

Professor Holloway then turned around a wrote a book on anguish and suffering in late 20th Century African-America.

[toldyou]

LOL!

[JustaCowgirl]

Her semi-crazed grinning expression reminds me of that lunatic grin that Cindy Sheehan always has on her face.

[gcruse]

I find the author's capitalization of White and Black offensive. It creates the impression of organized groups of each. MLK, may his street run through a better part of town, was the last honest commentor on the racial scene.

[SuziQ]

In her resignation letter, Holloway criticized the Duke administration for not coming to her defense, as attacks in the form of blogs and letters to the university newspaper have mounted in recent months.

Probably because her position was indefensible! She has done nothing to improve black/white relations on campus; only made them worse with her knee-jerk acceptance of the lies told by the 'exotic dancer' and her dismissal of the accused students as dirty white boys.

[Crawdad]

I agree.

[Ken H]

http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2007/01/jackie-brown-speaks-out.html

Jackie Brown, who managed Mike Nifong's primary campaign but then was a key player in the Recall Nifong-Vote Cheek effort last November, has given an interview to the Raleigh ABC affiliate. This is the first time that the public has received any behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Nifong effort, and Brown's revelations are fascinating.

[snip]

[billhilly]

"I know, but the word, "sharecropper", seems to have evolved to exclude whites.........."

Believe me, it didn't. I grew up in that environment, and where I grew up, in the late thirties and forties, most of the sharecroppers were white, and no black was poorer.

[Riverman94610]

Thanks for the co-sign.
Everytime an issue like this comes up I think of that Aristotle quote someone posted a month ago-"The sign of an educated man is someone who can entertain an idea without necessarily advocating that idea"

[abb]

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18875

Stripper Lied ... White Boys Fried

by Ann Coulter
Posted Jan 10, 2007
About a month after members of the Duke lacrosse team were falsely accused of raping a stripper last year, 88 members of the Duke faculty fanned the flames of hysteria by signing a letter announcing that they were "listening" to students "who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism."

Maybe they should have been listening to the accused, several of whom had iron-clad alibis. Now the professors are going to need a new example of "racism and sexism" at Duke since their case in chief has turned out to be a fraud.

In lieu of a gang rape perpetrated by high-stepping white male athletes against a poor black woman, the Duke lacrosse case has turned out to be another in a long string of hoax hate crimes in which whites are falsely accused.

The lacrosse players denied that any rape had occurred and immediately submitted their DNA to the state, confident that the DNA would prove them innocent.

It did: Not a trace of DNA from any of the lacrosse players was found on the accuser, though this girl had more DNA in her than a refrigerator at a fertility clinic.

She had DNA from five other men, which ought to have raised suspicions about her story that she had not had sex with anyone for the week before the alleged gang rape. Well, that was one of the several versions of events the accuser has offered police to date, although my personal favorite was the one in which Elvis came back from the dead and sexually assaulted her. (I think that was version No. 3—I'd have to check my notes.)

This is the second time this woman has accused a group of men of gang-raping her. One more time and it's officially considered a hobby.

And yet despite the vast privilege, untold wealth and bright shiny whiteness of the defendants, they are still under criminal indictment in this case. Three of the players face up to 30 years in prison for a crime every sane person knows they did not commit. Ah, the life of the privileged!

Duke English professor Cathy N. Davidson recently wrote an opinion piece defending her signing of the "listening" letter, noting that it was "not addressed to the police investigation," but rather "focused on racial and gender attitudes all too evident" after the alleged rape. She explained that the letter had merely "decried prejudice and inequality in the society at large."

This would be like defending a letter written during the Dreyfus affair on the grounds that the letter did explicitly accuse Alfred Dreyfus of treason against France, but simply took the occasion of his arrest to decry the treasonable attitudes of the Jews in society at large.

If poor black women are constantly being raped by rich white men, then how about they produce one case?

Professor Davidson's column—written when it was clear to everyone except Nancy Grace that three innocent men were facing 30 years in prison for a rape they did not commit—notes that she remains "dismayed by the glaring social disparities implicit in what we know happened on March 13" and says the incident "underscores the appalling power dynamics of the situation."

OK, this one they made up, but the case still illustrates a larger truth!

If anything, our awareness of the "power dynamics of the situation" is too high. What we need is a little of that skepticism liberals bring to every single criminal case that is not a white-on-black crime or a rape case involving Bill Clinton.

The truth, as opposed to the larger truth, is that the allegedly powerful white males are at risk of losing their freedom at the hands of a lunatic accuser and a power-mad prosecutor. Meanwhile the allegedly powerless poor black woman has destroyed people's lives with her false accusations, for which she will walk away scot-free.

Don't liberals ever have to pony up at least one example of a powerful privileged white male trampling on the rights of a powerless black woman in order to keep droning on about powerful privileged white males? Every real-life example invariably turns out to be a hoax, among the most spectacular the Tawana Brawley case and now the Duke lacrosse case.

According to the Los Angeles Times—in an article about another hoax "hate crime" on a college campus—false reports of racist hate crimes on college campuses have averaged about one a year for 20 years.

Liberal professors believe that crying wolf is valuable for calling attention to the societal problem of wolves, even though there's never a wolf in any particular case. Evidently, awareness of an alleged societal ill—of which we have no actual examples—is worth ruining the lives of three innocent people. After all, they're just powerful white men.

At the next White Males of Privilege meeting, someone ought to bring up how they can use their vast power to win the right not to be put on trial for crimes they didn't commit.

[abb]

http://www.hendersonvillenews.com/apps/pbc...0/APN/701103439

Duke lacrosse players want more than just a return to the field

By AARON BEARD
AP Sports Writer

Forget all the talk about Duke's embattled lacrosse players being happy just to return to the field after their season was canceled amid rape allegations last spring.

With a goal that once seemed so distant now only weeks away, the Blue Devils are talking like any other team hungry to win a national championship. And the focus seems to be more on returning the program to its lofty perch than dwelling on the criminal case against three teammates.

"It's important to realize that we're not just out there sort of as a display of returning to the field," senior midfielder Ed Douglas said Wednesday, the first day of the spring semester at Duke. "We actually want to get out there and prove ourselves in terms of athletic competition as well.

"The fall was a great opportunity to sort of prepare ourselves, and our mentality was very much about rehabilitation. Now it's really about proving ourselves."

The team began fall workouts on Labor Day, its first practice since March 27, the day before the university suspended the team from play following the rape allegations. The Blue Devils begin spring practice Jan. 27, scrimmage a week later and open the season against Dartmouth here on Feb. 24.

And while some of his players sound eager to get going, coach John Danowski - who left Hofstra during the summer to take over here - is still watching closely to make sure the Blue Devils don't put too much pressure on themselves.

"You can't make somebody want to be great," he said. "You can't make somebody want to win. That's something that's got to come from them.

"I just want to take it one day at a time. I want to do the things that will help them and put them in position to be successful, but I don't want to make this an all-or-nothing, a 'Gee, we didn't win so we weren't successful.'"

Before last season, the Blue Devils were coming off an NCAA-record 17-win season and an appearance in the NCAA championship game in 2005. They were a favorite to return to the finals on the way to becoming one of the sport's perennially elite programs.

That ascension, however, ended abruptly. A woman told police she was raped at a March team party where she had been hired to perform as a stripper and within weeks a grand jury indicted lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans on charges of rape, kidnapping and sexual offense.

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong eventually cleared the rest of the players of wrongdoing. But by then, the school had canceled the rest of the season and coach Mike Pressler resigned. In addition, the university faced widespread criticism of the program and the players' behavior, which included alcohol-related criminal charges.

But in the months since, defense attorneys, bloggers and legal experts have criticized Nifong's handling of the case, which has numerous problems including a lack of DNA evidence, an apparent alibi for Seligmann and the accuser's shaky credibility. That intensified after she wavered in her story last month, prompting Nifong to drop the rape charges.

Nifong has also been charged with ethics violations from the North Carolina State Bar, which said his numerous early comments - including referring to the players as "hooligans" - were misleading and inflammatory.

Still, senior defenseman Tony McDevitt said the team doesn't feel vindicated since the remaining charges could carry more than 30 years in prison for his teammates.

"In the beginning, everybody just kind of wanted to find out anything possible that we do wrong and why we are like this terrible bunch of 'hooligans,'" McDevitt said. "We just sat back and we knew what we were about and we weren't talking at the time. Now you get back, you're playing lacrosse and the case is kind of moving along as we thought it would."

That's why Douglas, McDevitt and senior attacker Matt Danowski - the coach's son - sound so determined to get back on the field and win right away.

"I think (the spotlight is) completely on us," Danowski said. "I think it's going to intensify because the season's starting now and everybody wants to follow the story and 'How are the Duke guys going to do?' We know that and we're prepared for it. We're not worried about it. If we play like we can play, it will be a good thing for us."

Danowski, Douglas and McDevitt said they would follow the case as much as possible, but they also want to focus only on what they can control: the sport they were recruited here to play.

Regardless, they know the scrutiny will be inescapable.

"It would be lying not to say I pay attention," McDevitt said. "You open up our school newspaper and it's - boom - right across the front cover: 'Tide turns in lacrosse case.' And you see it on the news and on 'Saturday Night Live.' You see it everywhere."

[maggief]

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1132301/

Police Look at Possible Ties Between Student, Suspect

Posted: Today at 11:08 a.m.
Updated: 18 minutes ago
Greensboro — Police remained tight-lipped Wednesday about any relationship between a Guilford County 911 dispatcher, a North Carolina Central University student she is charged with killing and the slain woman's fiance, a Greensboro police officer.

Shannon Elizabeth Crawley, 27, was arrested Tuesday evening and charged with murder in the Jan. 4 shooting death of Denita Monique Smith, 25.

Smith, a graduate student from Charlotte, was found dead at the bottom of a stairwell in the Campus Crossings Apartments complex on East Cornwallis Street in Durham.

Crawley, a single mother with two elementary school-age children, lives blocks from Jermeir Stroud, an N.C. Central graduate who got engaged to Smith last month.

"We're still trying to determine the relationship of all three," Cpl. David Addison of the Durham Police Department said.

Crawley's neighbors said she and her children moved in a few months ago and kept to themselves.

"I never saw anybody coming in or out of the house or anything. I'm just in total shock," one woman said.

Stroud's neighbors said he also kept to himself. Some said they had no clue the suspect in a murder case lives so close.


(snip)

[Mr. Mojo]

The [Duke] administration "failed to recognize the racial dimensions of this and failed to address it quickly" wrote Duke political science professor Paula McClain

Iow, the administration failed to immediately and unequivocally declare that the players were guilty of all charges leveled against them.

[Enterprise]

Heads up, Shep said there is a new order from the Judge to the accuser. Coming up soon on FOX.

[Howlin]

It's the paternity test that just got ordered, isn't it?

I figured he could only order it after she actually had the baby, right?