Duke's Tenured Vigilantes (DukeLax)

The Weekly Standard ^ | Jan 20, 2007 | Charlotte Allen

[JLS]

Well I think the development of job conditions in primary and secondary education developed over the years for a number of reasons:

1. Everyone is required to go to primary/secondary school until age 16 while it is only post WWII that anything close to everyone has gone to college.

2. In primary and secondary school, though this has been undermined by the left, students are to be taught the common culture and myths of a society. A for example secondary history is to teach the masses the received view of American history. College history is more of an inquiry as to whether the received view is correct.

3. So in college professor are suppose to be seeking new knowledge. In high school teacher are suppose to know thoroughly the received view.

Thus primary and secondary teachers are licensed based on what they know. Who could license some engaged in the search for new knowledge?

"And so how does one go about removing college professors? Avoid their classes?

You can get rid of the untenured by giving them a one year notice of nonrenewal. You can only get rid of tenured faculty members for cause, misappropriation of state property or other criminal behavior.

In my view the way to reform college departments is for:

1. An administration to demand all department hire people with a variety of IDEAS. The problem is diversity has come to mean different skin colors but no diversity in ideas.

2. In departments that have become too much group think, non-reappoint some or all untenured members.

3. Make it part of the job description that Professors will profess their discipline and not launch into nondiscipline related areas. That is that art or literature professors won't test people on politics. [BTW, keep in mind this one would most often be used as a club against any conservative academic who had been accidently hired.]

All three of these moves could get a college president a no-convidence vote of the faculty which essentially at respectable places forces an administrator out. The hard left has taken over faculties slowly but surely in the 40 years since the mid 1960s. Thus it will be a slow process reforming many academic faculties. But it is further in the future if it does not start.

BTW, this is not only a matter of the left nor even a matter of politics. There is a tendency of a good ole boy network to develop in any such setting. I worked in one department that unofficially would not hire a smoker. There is one relatively conservative university in economics whose grads inflitrate departments and hire each other in almost exclusively. I am against that too. But even this solution is problematic? Would you have wanted this solution to break up the great 1970s University of Chicago economics department of Friedmand, Stigler, Becker, etal that produced many Nobel prize winners because they were all conservative economists? Would you want this to become an accredidation standard and used to force Liberty U or Hilsdale College to hire leftists?

It is a tough problem that requires good university leadership to avoid or solve. And setting up a system to get good university leadership is as big a problem as Brodhead shows us.

[2ndClassCitizen]

No one has done a conclusive study to determine what the percentage is. You may be right, and I may be right.

The innocent boys were drunken testerone filled, athletic jocks of the college age and only innocent in that they probably did not rape or kidnap anyone. Their behavior was as irresponsible as could be. I hope the parents of these kids have impressed upon them how unwise that kind of behavior is.

There are black people that I have talked to who think like me, that a majority of the black population is racist. It gets really complicated as to just what a racist is and we could probably debate the point all day long.

I have never heard one word from any black leader about the heroic sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of dead white union soldiers that resulted in the freeing of the slaves. There is no nation in history that has let so much of its own blood to free a different race, different culture etc. Louis Farakhan should get down on his knees and publicly thank God for their sacrifice.
It is entirely racist, in my viewpoint, of anyone whose ancestors were freed under the conditions of the civil war,not to acknowledge thanks.
As to punishment of whites, the entire white slave owning power structure was ruthlessly destroyed along with killing off much of the slave owning population. Ever hear of the song "Marching through Georgia" or reconstruction?

PS I really do not like the Klan, the Klan kind of ruined it for us all by spewing so much hatred.

[ladyjane]

You can only get rid of tenured faculty members for cause, misappropriation of state property or other criminal behavior.

That is the difficult way to do it. The easier way is to cut an entire department for financial exigency. That approach is sanctioned by the AAUP and keeps the school from being blacklisted.

Chances are very good that Duke will have some 'financial exigency' when the law suits come rolling in.

[JLS]

When I live in the area before I became an academic they did do away with Forestry or some department.

[JLS]

Very nice point in this letter that the Ruth Sheehan's of the world are blaming the victims in this situation. I guess they rationalize it because of who the victims are?

Also as Professor Johnson noted on his site, John Podhoretz wrote two essays about this case. The one below is the first one.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01172007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/senseless_opedcolumnists_john_podhoretz.htm?page=0

[JLS]

The second Podhoretz essay:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01182007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/orwell_university_duke_profs_p_c__travesty_opedcolumnists_john_podhoretz.htm?page=0

[Jezebelle]

"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."

Western men=white men.

They forgot to add that all earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions are also the fault of "Western men".

[Jezebelle]

In this context, "sensitivity" is a code word for opportunistic feeding frenzy to get their agenda out front.

[okie01]

Obviously, there are more bigots on the Duke faculty than there are in the entire state of North Carolina...or Alabama...or Mississippi...maybe even Detroit.

[JoanOfArk]

Was it you who posted about what you remember of the Greensboro Massacre? I have found there to be a connection between some of the potbangers and the Greensboro Justice Fund.
In my post at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1770629/posts?page=38#38 there is a quote from Bryan Proffitt (white hip-hop man against rape culture) thanking various others for help in putting together his essay. Two of those others were Tema Okun and Precious-Jewell Zebriskie.

http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/centers/hlp/about/faculty/okun-tema/index.html
Tema Okun...work with...Institute for Southern Studies
http://townhall.townofchapelhill.org/records/minutes/2004/4a-03-24-04%20PF.htm
Precious-Jewel Zabriskie, Co-director of the North Carolina Lambda Youth Network

http://www.gjf.org/index.php?page=grantrecip
On the Greensboro Justice Fund listing of Grant Recipients
I found Institute for Southern Justice Durham NC and
North Carolina Lambda Youth Network Durham NC.
Among the other recipients is Greensboro Committee to Defend Mumia Abu-Jamal.

[okie01]

Two pullquotes which explain each other...and why the left is what it is...

Indeed, Lubiano, in her online article, dismissed the whole idea of evidence--and thus legal guilt or innocence--as just another set of socially constructed "narratives" to be deconstructed by her. The accused were apparently guilty by reason of their "dominant" social position, which made them "perfect offenders" in Lubiano's eyes.

...Estrich harped on the theme of stonewalling and wondered why no lacrosse parent had said to her son, "you go in there and tell the police the truth about what happened." It is hard to believe that Estrich was not aware by that date of Seligmann's airtight alibi, the procedurally flawed April 4 photo lineup, the negative DNA results for the 46 players (those were released on April 10), and repeated efforts by lawyers for the accused to present Nifong with evidence of their clients' innocence, including an April 18 meeting with Seligmann's attorney that Nifong curtly cut short. Instead, Estrich, taking an odd stance for a professor whose specialty is criminal law, castigated the three young men for having the audacity to "hire . . . lawyers."

Poor Susan was simply demonstrating how the left is moved by their agenda and their template of non-liberals...and not by logic, evidence or facts.

Ms. Lubiano's quote demonstrates the basis for Susan's opinion -- guilt or innocence is to be decided by one's place in the "social construct". What's more, it's a judgment that only liberals are capable of making.

Recall that both of these phenomena ran rampant through the Drive-by Media -- still the most powerful instrument of persuasion in the country. They are, of course, understandably loathe to remind us of this fact -- since it exposes such egregious, irresponsible behavior on their part.

The Duke rape case is thus a microcosm of the divisions in our society -- but not in the way they would have us believe. If this case -- and the artifacts it generated -- doesn't conclusively prove why the left is supremely dangerous when they are granted power, what does?

[maggief]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=sympathy_for_the_gang_of_88&ns=JonSanders&dt=01/21/2007&page=full&comments=true

Sympathy for the Gang of 88
By Jon Sanders
Sunday, January 21, 2007

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Sorry abb, I was pulling for Saints
Now I have to pull for NE

[Locomotive Breath]

Me and Howlin (I think). I have no doubt that it's part and parcel of the same bunch.

[abb]

I'm philosophical about it. This was the first time in history the Saint's have played in a championship game in the team's 40 year history. If I live another 40 years, maybe they'll get to the Super Bowl...

[kalee]

"Participants spoke about personal experiences of perceived racism on campus."

Perception is not always reality, but don't try to tell these folks that.

[Dukie07]

No flame from me. A couple of reasons:

I am a first gen American. My family had NOTHING to do with slavery. I think there are A LOT of 1st gens that think the same way.

What would they prefer ~ to be sitting in the motherland starving or fighting AIDS? Get real.

Was slavery right? No. Is it over? Yes. Were you denied equality, in many cases, after the Civil War. Yes. Do you have it now? Yes. Do you want respect? Of course. However, if you want respect, earn it. Nobody derserves another's respect "just because."

(Now THAT will draw flames if anything will.)

[DMZFrank]

Schadenfreude. I never really appreciated the nuances of this word until I beheld the burgeoning fallout from this incident. I LOVE to see liberals hoisted on the petard of Political Correctness, racial identity politics, gender determinint feminism and what I have coined as "Tawana Brawley Syndrome".

TBS exists when one takes a historical reality such as the marginalization of innocent blacks within a once overtly racist crminal justice syndrome or the past subjagation of women or any number of other offenses and attempts to apply that to a contemporary situation wherein the objective facts don't apply; ala OJ Simpson, Rodney King, Anita Hill etc.

Nifong was not only hoping to ride to re-election a wave of politically motivated outrage from the Black community over this contretemps, but I suspect that he was seeking to appropriate PC bonus points and obtain instant moral authority by championing the cause of the "other" (marginalized black exotic dancer) against racist male chauvinist members of the privliged white elite. A case of cultural Marxist Class warfare that boomeranged. GOD how I love it so!!!!!

"Metanarratves indeed".

[xoxoxox]

"I am a first gen American. My family had NOTHING to do with slavery.
I think there are A LOT of 1st gens that think the same way."

Your ancestors must have done SOMETHING BAD.

We will comb through the ruins of history for the last ten thousand years.

We will leave no pottery shard or bone fragment left unexamined.

The account books of history will be balanced.

---Sorry, I just finished watching the history channel.

[Locomotive Breath]

Funny stuff...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1771381/posts