Posted on 01/10/2007 6:31:28 AM PST by 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
I would hope that no parent would even consider sending their son or daughter to such a place.
As opposed to the decision by the university to suspend the players and to cancel the LAX team's season based on a case that now appears to have no basis in fact.
I see, Ms. Holloway. I see...
The sound of the double standard is deafening.
I just sent this:
Dear Ms. Holloway: I just read your comments on why you resigned for the race relations committee. Do you have any idea how hateful and prejudiced you sound? Do only blacks deserve to be considered innocent until proven guilty? Are whites guilty no matter what? Think what you are doing to the students you teach; you are indoctrinating them to harbor hateful presumptions against whites. That is a terrible thing to do. A little fairness and evenhandedness would go much further toward helping race relations than warped white-male-rich=evil/guilty theme you champion. You have a lot to answer for. Instead of simply resigning the committee, you ought to resign from Duke. That would go further toward healing the racial problems than for you to continue to put forth hateful anti-white racial attitudes.
Sincerely,
PS: And when you resign, why not apologize to the lacrosse players whose due process you have done your best to deny? Injustice is still injustice, no matter who it is perpetrated against--and a great injustice has been perpetrated against those three young men, in that people like you have attempted to convict them prior to their trial. Shame on you.
Would someone please tell me why "Black" is capitalized as in "Holloway, who is Black" and "The accuser was a Black single mother" ... ?
Her essay on the matter. Probably the saddest example I have seen yet on what is now considered scholarship from a professor of English. That this woman is also a professor of law is positively frightening.
http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/sport/printkho.htm
Obviously, this gal does not want to be confused with the facts. In his mind, these "animals" raped this poor working single mom student and it was a racial incident. I thought Duke was smarter than this and didn't employ morons.
"Too damn bad all the white students and alumni don't withdraw from Duke for employing @ssholes like this professor."
There was a time when people acted on principal. There is no consequence to biting the hand that fees you anymore.
"It's clear Holloway believes justice is exacted at the hands of a frenzied mob"
As do most liberals. Take to the streets to invoke change. It's their mantra.
Very well said,too bad it's taken white people over 30 years to finally start renouncing some of this one sided racial crap. Most of what whites feel today is white guilt. Get over it.
Dr. Holloway, do you not understand that you and the faculty hasn't received public support because they don't deserve it?
"http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/sport/printkho.htm"
That's what quotas get you.
I live up the road from Duke, they've got an abundance of her type. We never even considered Duke or UNC Chapel Hill when our son was looking at colleges 3-4 years ago.
Why would anyone want to go to Duke now?
Scary huh? She's a law professor.
Dr. Karla Holloway, the William R. Kenan Jr., Professor of English and Professor of Law at Duke
From Durham in Wonderland (http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/):
Holloway Leaves CCI
Karla Holloway has resigned her position as race subgroup chair of the Campus Culture Initiative, to protest President Brodhead’s decision to lift the suspensions of Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty. “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,” said she. “I could no longer work in good faith with this breach of common trust.”
Holloway had not always been so concerned with the significance of “judicial decision[s] on the case.” This summer, she wrote that “justice inevitably has an attendant social construction. And this parallelism means that despite what may be our desire, the seriousness of the matter cannot be finally or fully adjudicated in the courts.” Therefore, since the presumption of innocence “is neither the critical social indicator of the event, nor the final measure of its cultural facts,” judgments about the case “cannot be left to the courtroom.”
Holloway’s departure from the CCI is a welcome development. Holloway’s comments over the last nine months had shown little or no respect for a wide variety of groups on campus, and so her occupying such a prominent place with the CCI seemed a basic contradiction in its mission.
Male athletes? “The ‘culture’ of sports seems for some a reasonable displacement for the cultures of moral conduct, ethical citizenship and personal integrity,” reinforcing “exactly those behaviors of entitlement which have been and can be so abusive to women and girls and those ‘othered’ by their sports’ history of membership.”
Those who defended the players targeted by Nifong? They believed that “white innocence means black guilt. Men’s innocence means women’s guilt.”
Women’s lacrosse players who had worn armbands expressing sympathy with Seligmann, Finnerty, and Dave Evans? She denounced their “team-inspired and morally slender protestations of loyalty that brought the ethic from the field of play onto the field of legal and cultural and gendered battle as well.”
The sympathetic article announcing Holloway’s resignation from the CCI came in a publication called Diverse Online. Here’s how its author, Christina Asquith, described the scene last spring. “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.”
Apparently Asquith didn’t receive the memo on the new party line regarding the Group of 88’s intentions.
Labels: faculty
Her degree is not in English and she has no law degree. Her Ph.D. is in Black Studies from Michigan State.
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