Posted on 01/20/2007 2:52:54 AM PST by abb
Of the three, Bem Holloway's sentence was the longest.
WASC, (credentialling "college")on west coast, is a joke as far as I'm concerned. It's just a middle man operating in defense and support of Unions who only hire, promote, and tenure marxist liberals and force conservative teachers into paying union dues, anyway.
College professors "certify" ourselves by publishing in peer reviewed journals.
Isn't this just then another Microcosm of hiring liberals to publish liberals? I sometimes visit the Chronicles of Higher Education and read some of the debates (based on "published" journal items). It's taken a while but at least there's a moderator.
Let me put this another way: I recall back in the 70s when the Marxists seized control of English and Psychology Departments. They've been trying ever since to seize control over the Math and Sciences departments. They failed to do so, but fathomed to invent "global warming" as a next attempt to take over the Math and Sciences Departments.
These departments are all composed of hard left neomarxists of some kind and all they hire is hard left neomarxists.
While claiming they are discriminated against; and banging pots while cracking hysteric to drive their claims of oppression home even more.
In NC, what can be done within the college, U, private system to remove crazy teachers?
He was also awaiting trial on two first degree murder charges.
I don't believe you. If you really are a Duke alum you might disagree with the actions of some associated with it but you would not say that you were ashamed to be an alum. If you went to Duke and had a bad experience, you had every opportunity to leave. Are you trolling here or are you so wishy washy as to let others define your experiences for you?
N.Y. law firm badgers DA's faithful aides
BY JOHN STEVENSON, The Herald-Sun
January 20, 2007 11:42 pm
District Attorney Mike Nifong conceded long ago that he had become accustomed to receiving nasty mail about his handling of the Duke lacrosse sex-offense case, but now even his assistants have been badgered with invective by a New York law firm that wants Nifong ousted from his job.
Anton J. Borovina of the Melville, N.Y., firm Borovina and Marullo wrote Durham's assistant prosecutors this month, saying that if they had any sense of decency and honor, they would ask their boss to resign.
Attached was a letter to Nifong himself, calling him a "corrupt and morally bankrupt prosecutor" and a "low-life, a racist and a despicable human being." The letter asked Nifong to resign as district attorney for alleged "fraud and deception" and "gross prosecutorial misconduct" in his work on the lacrosse case, which he recently handed off to two special prosecutors appointed by the state attorney general.
Assistant Durham prosecutors contacted by The Herald-Sun on Friday said they ignored Borovina's message.
"I threw it in the trash," said Jim Dornfried.
Assistant District Attorney Tracey Cline said she did the same.
"I just felt like someone from out of state has no idea what's going on here," she added. "What he has to say is irrelevant to me."
Nifong could not be reached for comment.
Under mounting public and professional pressure, Nifong withdrew from the Duke case this month after getting three former lacrosse players indicted on charges of restraining an exotic dancer in a bathroom and sexually assaulting her during an off-campus party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in mid-March 2006.
The defendants -- Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans -- originally were charged with kidnapping the woman, raping her and committing another first-degree sex offense.
However, Nifong dismissed the rape allegations in December after the accuser changed her story. Felony kidnapping and sex-offense charges remain.
Critics claim that Nifong rushed to judgment in the case, seeking indictments without sufficient evidence and despite DNA results that did not incriminate any lacrosse players.
The case has now been taken over by two prosecutors from the state Attorney General's Office.
"The press has given much attention to the bizarre antics of your district attorney," lawyer Borovina wrote in his letter to Nifong's assistants.
He said Nifong had obtained the sex-offense indictments "based on flawed, contradictory and noncredible statements made by the alleged victim."
"I can only imagine the shame and embarrassment you must be experiencing," he wrote.
Reached by telephone, Borovina said he became too worked up over the lacrosse incident to remain silent.
He said he wanted Nifong's assistants "to get off their butts, stand up and walk to Mr. Nifong and tell him to step down. Do I think that's going to happen? No. But in my view, he [Nifong] won his election by fraud and by playing the race card. I want him disbarred. I want him to spend time in jail. I want him to think about this for the rest of his life."
The accuser in the lacrosse case is black, the defendants white.
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-811276.cfm
Nifong's out, but heat's still on
BY JOHN STEVENSON
January 20, 2007 11:50 pm
Although battered by mean-spirited mail about their boss, District Attorney Mike Nifong's subordinates continue to stand by him, while professors debate whether Nifong is subject to possible criminal or civil liability over his handling of the Duke lacrosse sex-offense case.
Nifong stepped away from the case earlier this month and handed it off to special prosecutors from the state Attorney General's Office.
But that did nothing to calm the debate, with some calling for Nifong to be sued on grounds that he violated the civil rights of three former lacrosse players by getting them indicted on sex-offense charges without sufficient evidence. Some contend he also should be charged criminally for obstructing justice by allegedly withholding DNA results favorable to the defendants.
One New York attorney even wrote to Nifong's assistants, asking them to urge their boss to step down. They have said they ignored the pleas.
With equal fervor, Nifong's supporters -- along with many neutral observers -- say that he has prosecutorial "immunity" against a civil lawsuit, and that there are no precedents for criminal action against him.
Nifong declined to comment for this article.
The accuser in the lacrosse case, an exotic dancer at the time, claimed she was sexually assaulted by three players during an off-campus party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in mid-March 2006.
As a result, former Duke students Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans were indicted on charges of kidnapping the woman, raping her and committing another first-degree sex offense against her.
However, Nifong dropped the rape charges last month after the woman changed her story. The other felony charges remain pending.
One of the main proponents of a civil suit against Nifong is Professor John F. Banzhaf III, who teaches law at George Washington University.
Banzhaf acknowledges that Nifong is immune to being sued for anything he did as a prosecutor.
But he theorizes that Nifong handled some aspects of the lacrosse case as an investigator or administrator rather than as a district attorney.
For example, when Nifong allegedly advised police to use what defense lawyers called an unconstitutional photo lineup, he did so in an investigative capacity and could be civilly liable for it, according to Banzhaf.
Anton Borovina, a Melville, N.Y., attorney following the case, said Friday there was yet another role in which Nifong might be liable: that of political candidate.
The lacrosse matter arose while Nifong was in a hotly contested, three-way Democratic primary last year. It continued to make waves through November's general election. Nifong prevailed both times.
"Prosecutorial functions can be separated from a function designed to get him elected," said Borovina. "If I make public remarks and bring false charges to aid my election campaign, a lawyer has the ability to persuade a jury I am not entitled to prosecutorial immunity."
Others disagree.
"I doubt that would hold water," North Carolina Central University law professor Irving Joyner said of the Banzhaf and Borovina theory on Friday.
"You would expect the prosecutor to consult with the Police Department," said Joyner, referring to the photo lineup. "That is a normal role and function of the district attorney. I haven't seen any facts that would suggest he crossed the line into some other role."
Joyner said he also saw no potential criminal liability for Nifong in connection with the temporary withholding of DNA results favorable to the defendants.
Under the law, any withholding of exculpatory evidence is remedied if the defense learns of it in time to fix the problem, Joyner noted.
Lacrosse attorneys learned about the DNA results long before a trial was scheduled. In fact, a trial date still hasn't been set.
Duke law professor James Coleman said Friday he thought Nifong withheld the DNA information because it discredited the accuser's version of events.
And when the information came to light, the accuser promptly changed her story and the rape charges were dropped, Coleman pointed out.
The professor said he had two questions about that sequence of events: Was the evidence deliberately concealed to keep the rape charges alive until December? And once the evidence was revealed, did Nifong coach the accuser to bring her story into compliance with the revelation?
"I don't know the answers," said Coleman. "I have no idea. But if the answers are yes, it appears there was at least an attempt to obstruct [justice]."
Other lawyers said they saw an obstruction charge against Nifong going nowhere.
Atlanta lawyer B.J. Bernstein, who was a Georgia prosecutor from 1988 until 1995, predicted in a telephone interview that Nifong would not be charged criminally.
"In terms of criminal liability, it would be very difficult," she said. "The standard of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt. I can't think of an instance where a prosecutor has been tried for something like that. It would be a tough sell. If that happened, it would be a new area of law for the entire country. How could you show it was a direct decision [to withhold evidence] as opposed to a mistake?"
If Nifong were charged with a criminal offense, the state Attorney General's Office presumably would prosecute him.
But some believe the state agency lacks clean hands.
"How are they going to prosecute [Nifong] when their own attorneys have done the same thing?" lawyer Mark Edwards asked last week.
Among other things, Edwards referred to a State Bar finding that then-assistant attorneys general David Hoke and Debra Graves withheld evidence favorable to murder suspect Alan Gell during a 1988 trial.
Gell was convicted and spent nine years behind bars, half of them on death row.
But when the withheld evidence subsequently was uncovered, Gell won a new trial and was quickly acquitted.
Hoke and Graves, who said they made an "honest mistake," received only reprimands.
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-811279.cfm
http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/534648.html
Published: Jan 21, 2007 12:30 AM
Modified: Jan 21, 2007 02:40 AM
Winstead thrust into spotlight
Low-profile second-in-command in lacrosse prosecution known for dedication
MARY DOMBALIS WINSTEAD
BORN: Dec. 25, 1956
FAMILY: Married with three children. Her parents are Floye Dombalis and the late John Dombalis, owners and operators of the Mecca Restaurant in downtown Raleigh. She has two brothers. Her older brother is also a lawyer, and her younger brother runs the Mecca with their mother.
EDUCATION: Associate in arts, St. Mary's College; bachelor of arts, Wake Forest University; J.D., Wake Forest University.
WORK EXPERIENCE: Assistant district attorney, Wake County, from October 1981 to December 1986; assistant district attorney, Durham County, from April 1987 to March 1994; has worked in the special prosecutions section of the Attorney General's Office since April 1994.
Benjamin Niolet, Staff Writer
Mary Dombalis Winstead has kept a low profile throughout her 25-year career as a prosecutor. That's over now.
A week ago, Attorney General Roy Cooper appointed Winstead, 50, as a special prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case. She will work with the lead prosecutor, Jim Coman.
Winstead's friends, family and colleagues say she is an ideal choice to handle such a case.
"She is a very competent and able lawyer," said Bill Thomas, a Durham lawyer who represented an unindicted lacrosse player and knew Winstead when she was a Durham prosecutor. "I found her to be most professional in her dealings with other lawyers and would certainly think with her expertise, she would be well-qualified to assume responsibility for the prosecution of a case like this."
Through a spokeswoman for the attorney general, Winstead declined requests for an interview. Associates, friends and family members described Winstead as a competitive person who was headed for the life of a prosecutor early on.
They also say she is a compassionate person who bakes a serious pound cake and can run people out of a room with her overenthusiastic cheering for Wake Forest University sports.
When she was 5, Winstead was already talking about being a lawyer, said her mother, Floye Dombalis. Winstead was one of three children born to Floye and her husband, John Dombalis. The couple ran the Mecca Restaurant, the downtown Raleigh institution that for 76 years has been popular with lawyers and justices of the state Supreme Court.
At home, the Dombalis children followed a strict set of rules. Their mother typed them out. Bedtimes were absolute -- Mary's was 8:30 p.m. in 1964. TV was forbidden on school nights. Failure to abide by the rules, Floye Dombalis wrote, would result in revocation of privileges. There weren't any to revoke, her children would later joke.
Young Mary, the middle child, was concerned with the rules. She documented the times her brothers would get home and gave the information to her parents. Later, at St. Mary's College in Raleigh, she was chairwoman of the Honor Board, the organization concerned with campus discipline.
After receiving an associate's degree from St. Mary's, she enrolled at Wake Forest. After graduation in 1978, she enrolled at the university's law school.
Marilyn R. Forbes, who has been friends with Winstead since law school, said Winstead is a gifted lawyer who could easily pursue a lucrative career in private practice. But she has remained a prosecutor.
"I have a lot of respect for people who really dedicate their career to the public sector, to serving the needs of the justice system, the people of North Carolina," Forbes said.
In 1981, she got her law degree and went to work as an assistant in the Wake County District Attorney's Office. In three months, she became an assistant prosecutor. In April 1987, she went to work in the Durham District Attorney's Office. In Durham, Winstead prosecuted rape, vehicular manslaughter, murder, armed robbery and trafficking cases.
Winstead and District Attorney Mike Nifong worked together. Although Winstead will not be charged with investigating Nifong, part of her job will be to review his actions in the lacrosse case. Alex Charns, a defense lawyer in Durham, said the fact that Winstead and Nifong were colleagues in Durham could raise eyebrows. Charns said he thinks Winstead can do the job, but in such a highly scrutinized case, the link seemed an unnecessary risk.
"I don't understand why the attorney general would do that, to put Mary Winstead in that situation," Charns said.
In April 1994, Winstead moved to the special prosecutions section of the Attorney General's Office. She was responsible for handling cases that were referred to the office as well as cases before the state appeals court.
She has handled high-profile cases including a scandal in 1999 involving a Wayne County Sheriff's deputy who was accused of having sex with inmates at the county jail. In 2005, she prosecuted an insurance fraud ring in which several people were accused of staging car wrecks for money.
Winstead is a warm friend, wife and mother, say her friends and family. But when a case is approaching, they all know to leave her alone, her mother said.
"When she has a trial or she is going before the Supreme Court justices for oral arguments, her nights and days are completely dedicated to that," Dombalis said. "I think she blocks everything out when it's time to go to work."
Staff writer Benjamin Niolet can be reached at 956-2404 or bniolet@newsobserver.com.
http://www.newsobserver.com/114/story/534740.html
Published: Jan 21, 2007 12:30 AM
Modified: Jan 21, 2007 02:41 AM
Duke prosecutor treads familiar ground
JAMES J. COMANSpecial deputy attorney general
WORK: Greensboro police attorney, 1973-1978; Greensboro assistant district attorney, 1978-1985; N.C. Department of Justice, 1985-present (senior deputy attorney general, SBI director, special deputy attorney general).
EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree, St. Anselm College, Manchester, N.H.; J.D., Wake Forest University.
FAMILY: Married, two daughters, two granddaughters.
HONORS: Twice awarded North Carolina's highest civilian award, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, by Republican Gov. Jim Martin and Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt.
Joseph Neff, Staff Writer
In the coming weeks, the new lead prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case can expect a deja vu moment when he meets with defense attorneys who will argue that charges should be dropped.
Special Deputy Attorney General Jim Coman had a similar meeting in 2003 with some of the same lawyers when they tried to persuade Coman to drop charges against former death row inmate Alan Gell.
Gell had been convicted in 1998 after prosecutors from the Attorney General's Office withheld evidence that could have proved his innocence. In some respects, Gell's case foreshadowed the one against former Duke lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty. Previous prosecutors had withheld evidence favorable to the defense. There was no physical evidence against the defendant. The timeline had major holes. There was a solid alibi.
Coman chose to retry Gell.
It was just the most recent high-profile case for Coman, who has spent a career in the spotlight. He prosecuted members of the Ku Klux Klan after the fatal shootings of five Communist Workers Party members in Greensboro in 1979. He served as former Attorney General Lacy Thornburg's "junkyard dog," was outspoken as director of the State Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted or investigated many public officials.
Coman was appointed Jan. 13 by state Attorney General Roy Cooper to take over the highly charged case in which the three defendants are accused of sexually assaulting an escort dancer at a team party in March. A day earlier, Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong had recused himself amid a storm of criticism and ethics charges from the N.C. State Bar.
"I've heard others say he [Coman] is a bulldog and mean and tough, but my experiences have always been very pleasant," said Joseph B. Cheshire V, one of Gell's attorneys who now represents one of the lacrosse defendants. "He's always been reasonable."
A retrial for Gell
Cheshire, his partner Bradley Bannon, and Jim Cooney of Charlotte are lawyers in the Duke case who represented Gell in his second trial. When Cooney helped win him a new trial in 2002, Gell had already spent seven years behind bars, four on death row.
In spring 2003, Coman met with Cooney, Cheshire and Bannon.
Cooney tied together the evidence of innocence in a PowerPoint presentation that foreshadowed many elements of the lacrosse case. Coman chose to go forward, but the opposing lawyers still speak highly of him.
The Gell case differs from the Duke case in several key respects, Cooney said. A crime had definitely occurred: The murder victim was found in his bedroom riddled with shotgun pellets.
"You had two girls who testified that they were eyewitnesses to a murder, and a jury believed them,'' Cooney said. "And the victim's family was pushing for a retrial.''
Coman was lead prosecutor at Gell's 2004 retrial. The jury quickly found Gell not guilty.
"It was a difficult case for him to retry," Cooney said. "He and [assistant prosecutor] Pat Murphy tried as ethical and honorable a case as I've ever seen."
Coman, 64, declined to be interviewed for this story. Colleagues say the prosecutor can spin a yarn when he has a mind to, usually in salty and colorful language.
"Jim is fun to talk with; he can tell some tales," said Steve Royster, a Mount Airy defense lawyer who has faced Coman in several cases. "He loves to tell war stories, and that is very entertaining when you represent the other side. Now, he may be very personable, but he doesn't cut you any slack.''
A life in law
The son of a Rahway, N.J., police chief, Coman has been in law enforcement his entire life. His first job as a lawyer was as an attorney for the Greensboro police. In 1978, he became an assistant district attorney.
One of his first, toughest and highest-profile cases was the murder prosecution of Ku Klux Klan members in Greensboro in 1980. Five members of the Communist Workers Party were killed during a "Death to the Klan" rally. TV cameras captured the 88 seconds of mayhem: Some party members rushed the KKK and Nazi convoy as it arrived and pounded on the cars. Klansmen pulled guns and fired, and several communists fired back. Five communists were killed.
Coman was one of three prosecutors on the case caught between hate groups. The victims' families refused to cooperate with the prosecutors and actively undermined the trial. On the first day of jury selection, dozens of party members rushed the courtroom, caused a riot with security and pulled fire alarms as they fled the building.
Widows of the victims were gagged and removed after they denounced the trial as a sham devised by the bourgeoisie. Someone poured skunk-scented oil on the floor. One party member testified, but he refused to identify photographs of his bullet-riddled colleagues and launched into a tirade that revolution was imminent.
An all-white jury acquitted the Klansmen. Coman and his fellow prosecutors discussed the case and their frustrations at length in a 2005 interview with the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which published a summary of the interview.
According to that summary, the prosecutors said the communists, by refusing to humanize their loved ones, reduced themselves to cardboard caricatures of rabid Marxists. Coman primarily blamed the communists: They were the provocateurs, he said, and the KKK members were so foolish to need to establish their manhood that they fell into a trap.
"To me, the conduct of the CWP -- as reprehensible as the Klan was -- that they won't even admit they did anything wrong, for me, they bear much more responsibility for what happened,'' said the summary of Coman's interview. "If just one of them has the moral fiber to get up and say publicly that they have regrets for what they did, you can call me up and say I am full of [expletive]."
Coman moved to Raleigh in 1985, when Thornburg, then the attorney general, hired him to work in the special prosecutions section. Thornburg, now a federal judge, used to refer to Coman as "my junkyard dog." Colleagues presented him with a "buzz saw award" -- a saw blade mounted on a plaque.
In 1993, Attorney General Mike Easley -- now governor -- named Coman as SBI director. Coman oversaw the investigation of Alexander Killens, director of the Division of Motor Vehicles, who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. He also supervised the investigation of Rufus Edmisten, then secretary of state and a former state attorney general. Edmisten resigned.
Coman returned to the Attorney General's Office in 1999 at Easley's request, in part because Coman made blunt remarks to a News & Observer columnist about a case in which two Hispanic men languished in jail for eight months, awaiting SBI lab tests that would exonerate them.
"Those guys oughta be thanking us," Coman said. "Six years ago there wouldn't have been any damn tests. Do I feel sorry for the guys? No. Is it fair? No. No one ever said life was fair."
For the most part, Coman has avoided speaking with the media since then. He has focused largely on prosecuting public officials, judges and law enforcement officers.
Gell aftershocks
After Gell's acquittal, the N.C. State Bar brought misconduct charges against the two assistant attorneys general who withheld the evidence at Gell's first trial, including a tape recording of the state's star witness saying she had "to make up a story" for police.
Coman appeared as a character witness and supported the prosecutors' decision not to give Gell's attorneys the tape. The tape could be used to "impeach" the witness or undercut her credibility, Coman testified, but didn't have to be turned over.
The U.S. Supreme Court first ruled in 1972 that prosecutors must turn over impeachment material in criminal trials.
This interpretation of constitutional law from the lead prosecutor in the Attorney General's Office proved controversial. At a State Bar hearing in 2005, Coman defended himself under close questioning by Cooney, his adversary in the Gell and Duke lacrosse cases.
"The mere fact that something can be impeaching in and of itself does not automatically require that it has to be turned over," Coman said.
Coman conceded that Cooney, Cheshire and Bannon used the tape to great effect on the jury, who twice listened to it during deliberations before finding Gell not guilty.
"The tape came in, and I certainly do believe that it had an influence on the jury," Coman said. "For me to come in here and say, 'No, it wasn't impeaching' would have been ludicrous."
Staff writer Joseph Neff can be reached at 829-4516 or jneff@newsobserver.com.
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/
Not fit to lead
Richard Brodhead, president of Duke University, must think all of us are so stupid we are buying into his assertions now, that he believes all involved in the LAX debacle should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. That's a far cry from his public view when the so called rape occurred. He jumped on District Attorney Mike Nifong's corrupt bandwagon and fed the players to the wolves. Now he has even invited the two undergraduates back to Duke.
Brodhead chose to condemn the players before the evidence was in. Now that all of us have found Nifong to be less than honest and honorable, it appears Brodhead is attempting to change horses in the middle of the stream. He has done a terrible injustice to the three victims -- yes the three young men are the victims, not the accuser.
It appears she saw a ripe money tree and decided to harvest her crop. Nifong and Brodhead were right there to hold the money bags.
Could Brodhead now fear that he and Duke will be sued? Could his job be in jeopardy? I hope so, because he has not shown the objectivity, wisdom and loyalty to hold the position of president at Duke University.
Louise Rigsbee
Durham
January 21, 2007
Where's the compassion for the least among us?
I find the letters about the Duke lacrosse case very disturbing.
The enraged outcry about judicial misconduct in this case was noticeably absent for Alan Gell, who faced a death penalty as a result of prosecutorial skullduggery. Alan was poor, unconnected, and without a prestigious legal team.
What strikes me about the lacrosse case is how so many are outraged about three privileged young men experiencing unfairness, and the level of hateful vitriol directed at those who suggest this case is about more than legal culpability.
I notice that these young men (and their parents) insist on innocence without taking responsibility for their behavior on the night in question. Apparently hiring dancers, monstrous drunkenness, racist, degrading name-calling and harassment are not grounds for moral outrage. Forget the team's culture of long-standing irresponsible and unaccountable behavior. Forget the prevalent elitist, racist, sexist behavior on campus exposed by this case. Forget the larger context of violence against women.
Instead, decry with wrath and resentment any threat to assumed privilege while remaining silent about insidious injustice that happens to nameless people every day. My hope is that we might instead hold equivalent compassion and concern for everyone in this community.
Tema Okun
Durham
January 21, 2007
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01212007/tv/fe...il_mushnick.htm
FESTERING ISSUES IN DUKE LACROSSE CASE
By PHIL MUSHNICK
January 21, 2007 -- On one hand, "60 Minutes" lately has done an admirable and thorough job, devoting two full segments to the wishful-thinking American justice system that left three Duke lacrosse players indicted for rape.
On the other hand, what took it so long? "60 Minutes" could've reached many of the same conclusions 10 months ago, when the charges against the students were first made.
And where's everyone else in the news media who rashly fueled an episode of mob and racial injustice, so reminiscent of what American blacks suffered for decades?
If the news media is disinclined to step forward to admit that it prompted erroneous and dangerous conclusions -- white people doing dirt to black people, yet again! -- why hasn't the case's evisceration been given the same blaring treatment as when the NAACP rallies were held? Or when a Duke professor called for the entire lacrosse team to be expelled in order to rid the school of the "drunken white male privilege loosed among us," and when the indictments were issued?
The news media, in this pathetic case of abandoning justice to pander to every sensibility except justice, was as guilty as Durham County D.A. Mike Nifong, the desperate fellow who needed Raleigh's African-American vote to get reelected, even if it meant sending innocent people to prison. The media, always gutless in affairs that become immersed in race, essentially fanned imaginary flames after the first cries of "Fire!"
snip
http://www.timesdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar.../-1/COMMUNITIES
Article published Jan 21, 2007
The making of a social disaster
The question posed by the title of a newspaper advertisement taken out by 88 Duke professors after allegations of a black woman being raped by three white members of the university's lacrosse team was this: What does a social disaster look like?
I will give you one possible answer. It looks like a bunch of academics making wildly incendiary remarks at the top of their lungs about racism and sexism on campus at a time when a sense of fair play and decency would advise you to speak dispassionately, and very carefully.
The advertisement may have fallen short of a mob in the streets, rope in hand, marching to lynch the accused -- but not by as much as you would hope. The implication that a rape certainly occurred and that racist whites were responsible was everywhere to be sniffed out, and that was just the beginning: There was a sense of incitement throughout the harangue.
It talked of many students who "know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism'' and "see illumined in this moment's extraordinary spotlight what they live with every day'' -- an ever-present danger of racial mayhem, one would guess, though no evidence is supplied.
It spoke of students "shouting and whispering about what happened to this young woman and to themselves.'' Anonymous students then quoted in the ad mostly address white insensitivity to their concerns, but also "terror.'' One quote says "what has happened is a disaster,'' and the professors jump in again: "The students know this disaster didn't begin on March 13th (the date a stripper said she was the subject of sexual assault at a lacrosse team party) and won't end with what the police say or the court decides.''
snip
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/ed...al/16507607.htm
Posted on Sun, Jan. 21, 2007
Letters | Letters
Students are victims
Re: "Nifong belatedly does the right thing," Commentary, Jan. 17:
Ruth Sheehan's attempts at fairness are admirable, but they fall flat when she includes the Duke University lacrosse players in her list of villains.
Sheehan commits the error of blaming the victims when she criticizes the students for the company they kept, implying that even though they aren't rapists, they're nonetheless guilty of bad taste.
The last time I checked, bad taste and immoral behavior were not considered crimes in this country, and certainly not enough to justify the unconscionable treatment these three young men received.
I doubt Sheehan would agree that even though the Scottsboro boys were railroaded by a racist system, they were at some level responsible for the tragedy because of their itinerant lifestyles. It is equally unlikely that she'd blame the young woman who was murdered after bar-hopping in Manhattan for her untimely end.
The fact that the Duke defendants are white and privileged should make no difference in our evaluation of justice; they don't deserve to be placed in the writer's rogue's gallery.
Christine Flowers
Philadelphia
cmf1261@aol.com
Pinging with Sunday's DukeLax news
Soon after the allegations were made, 88 Duke professors (commonly referred to as the "Group of 88") from the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences placed an ad in The Chronicle supporting the alleged victim and quoting individuals citing racism and sexism in the Duke community.[129] In three departments, more than half of faculty signed the statement. The department with the highest proportion of signatories was African & African-American Studies, with 80%. Just over 72% of the Women's Studies faculty signed the statement, Cultural Anthropology 60%, Romance studies 44.8%, Literature 41.7%, English 32.2%, Art & Art History 30.7%, and History 25%. No faculty members from the Pratt School of Engineering or full-time law professors signed the document. Departments that had no faculty members sign the document include Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Genetics, Germanic Languages/Literature, Psychology and Neuroscience, Religion, and Slavic and Eurasian Studies.Wiki
Just Arts and Fuzzy studies. No Science.
And WASC is also involved with the accreditation curriculum for teachers getting their teaching credentials, as I reviewed numerous curriculum for pals working towards getting their teaching credentials and WASC is all over the material. As I understand it, primary and secondary teachers must be credentialed to teach because of the laws surrounding Minors.
[I suspect they can hire someone temporarily in an emergency not credentialled]
They can, and as long as they go through the proper fingerprinting procedures, background check, etc.
A college can hire anyone they want to teach anything they want
And so how does one go about removing college professors? Avoid their classes?
Let me put this another way, when I was in college, I dropped Economics TWICE because the teachers were teaching Economics from a psuedo-Marxist perspective. This was a long time ago. I did finally find a professor teaching Econ from a free-market perspective. Loved it to the max.
I'm not wishing to put you on the spot, but you are within the system. Recommendations on how to get better professors into college? FIRE and DHorowitz are attempting to open the colleges up inside the closed, negative, systems they have become. How does one go about this in re a private college? Letters of complaint to the dean?
I did a primary search. Yes, I thought it important, given Dr. Holloway's "perspective" to ascertain the race of her son's victims. Didn't find out.
Yep.
Trolling here since 1998.
Leave Duke? I went for the business education and training - not political indoctrination.
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Postcolonial, or multicultural, feminists who tend to congregate in the universities have a different reason than gender feminists for not wanting to speak up about the oppression of women in the Muslim world. For them, the guilty legacy of imperialism has made any judgment of formerly colonized peoples an immoral expression of "orientalism" and a corrupt attempt to brand "the other." If Muslim men could be said to oppress their women, it is in any case the fault of Western imperialists, or more specifically, Western men. "When men are traumatized [by colonial rule], they tend to traumatize their own women," says Miriam Cooke, a Duke professor and head of the Association for Middle East Women's Studies. The postcolonial feminist condemns not just war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but any instances of what Columbia professor Gayatri Spivak calls "white men saving brown women from brown men."
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