http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/s...gepublisher.com
Time for understanding, not caricatures
Leather-bound books
Dave Kleban
Posted: 1/23/07
A particularly strange aspect of the lacrosse case-in essence, a story about a dishonest prosecutor's stubborn and personally motivated pursuit of a tenuous rape accusation-is that it has generated a noisy battle over academia itself.
As the tide of the case has turned in favor of the three indicted students, members of the "Group of 88" professors have been under increasing pressure to withdraw their support from the "Listening" advertisement they placed in The Chronicle soon after the story broke.
This pressure, says Provost Peter Lange, has come in the form of "viciously personal" and "openly threatening or racist" attacks via e-mail. Cathy Davidson, vice-provost for interdisciplinary studies and a signatory to the advertisement, said the aim of these "blog hooligans" is to "make academics and liberals look ridiculous and uncaring."
Indeed, many of the angry comments posted to blogs and to The Chronicle's web site focus on the "liberal" character of academia (especially of the particular departments that signed the ad), as if such a label is informative or relevant to a legal case in which, I hope the commenters would agree, ideology should take no precedence over actual facts and individual actions.
President Richard Brodhead is correct in noting that the 88 professors have seen their views "caricatured"-portrayed much differently than what it appears they intended. (It is worth noting, however, that this became far easier to do when the advertisement was conspicuously removed from the African and African-American Studies department web site.)
snip
Indeed, many of the angry comments posted to blogs and to The Chronicle's web site focus on the "liberal" character of academia (especially of the particular departments that signed the ad), as if such a label is informative or relevant to a legal case in which, I hope the commenters would agree, ideology should take no precedence over actual facts and individual actions
I'll wager Kleban was sobbing as he wrote this article, muttering under his breath as he wrote: "you brutes, You mean homophobic, racist, boorish, non-liberal brutes! How dare you use ideology to trump actual facts and individual actions when that special right ONLY belongs to the very special Professors comprising the Group of 88".
Abb, that article was *very* grotescque.