Posted on 08/03/2007 2:18:51 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Accountability finally came to Durham County District Attorney Michael Nifong last month, when he was disbarred as an attorney and forced to resign as a disgraced public officer. Last week he issued an apology and a full retraction of the rape accusations against three Duke University lacrosse players.
Now, with students heading to Duke in just a few short weeks for the beginning of the fall term, the time is at hand to demand some accountability for Nifong's academic enablers.
Eighty-eight members of the Duke faculty publicly promulgated a dreadful letter, enflaming a premature and prejudicial atmosphere against their own students. Yet, their conduct is largely shielded from accountability. Equally troublesome, their ironically and suddenly protective university masters executed a confidential settlement to further immunize the Duke cabal from civil liability exposure.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
No comp sci but plenty of AAAS: African and African American Studies. Is it hateful, BOR, to point that out?
One math prof and one physics prof.
Two Math, One physics. The first math prof is about one third down the list with no contact info. The other math prof and the physics prof are adjcent to each other on the list. Still, three too many for the logic and analysis guys.
isn’t it interesting that these tenured socialists have free speech,
but the same is denied daily to others in this country.
The link didn't work, so I couldn't check whether the reporter credited those who were on the issue before he sat down to write.
Congressman Billybob
Used to have a “S” in it when I were a lad, to presumably distinguish it from the other use of the word.
Anyone in that “study” department is probably of the fake but accurate mindset.
Only BORe is allowed to comment on much of anything doncha know.
It could be worse, had it been a hockey team they would have called for the death penalty.
They’re all the Brie/Chablis socialist artsy crowd who perceived a po’ victim of WASP jocks, who they were sure were guilty by the nature of their haircuts.
I’m guessing a liberal arts degree from Duke is worthless. It also looks like the science professors/teachers (for the most part) opted for proof. Go figure.
See posting #6 for names and contact info. ;)
The so-called “humanities” and “social sciences” at places like Duke still have some good people (who are mostly out-shouted and overshadowed by the rabid leftists), but increasingly they are a dumping ground for pc academics who cannot distinguish between well-reasoned arguments with evidence and stuff like this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1875673/posts
Hi, I’m a junior at Duke University presently studying engineering. It really is saddening to see people here excoriating the university, and to hear of alumni withdrawing their donations. There are professors like this in every college around the United States, and if you’ve read the university paper you’ll see that, by in large, the student body is deeply critical of the administration for failing to take appropriate action against these professors. I know *not one* student who has anything but vitriol for these professors. Moreover, most of us were always in support of our falsely-accused classmates inasmuch as we are in support of the principles of justice underlying our legal system, and inasmuch as we are duly loyal to our peers and university.
Duke’s campus is more conservative than I could have hoped for from a major university: the students are independent, intelligent, opinionated, and supportive of each other — and frankly, we have many Christians.
Because of the university requirements, I did have the exquisite displeasure of attending a class with one of these 88 professors in my freshman year, despite warnings from a Facebook group devoted to exposing her as the devil. Sometimes we really don’t have a choice.
Please have respect, at least, for the thousands of students who have been vilified by the media (too craven are they to admit to their mendacious, sensationalist reporting). We’re good people, the University subsists and thrives because of us, and aside from the lacrosse players, we are the ones most hurt by these 88.
I don’t doubt that a limited number of politically correct leftist nuts (both faculty and students) create a highly misleading impression that their foolish (and frequently depraved) ideas and behavior are typical of the entire campus. True, they are usually a limited minority at almost any campus, Duke included. Unfortunately, few people stand up to them and most of the saner members of the faculty and administration (at any campus I’m familiar with, which is quite a few) simply try to keep their heads down and do their own work (I was guilty of this when I was still in the academic world, I’ll admit it — who wants to waste their time and energy on such fools?).
The feverish activists distort so much in campus life and also in the public life of our nation. Anyone who wants to stand up to the left faces the most vicious vituperation and an onslaught of threats, badgering, and quite possibly loss of livelihood. Just look at what happened to liberal (former) university president Larry Summers at Harvard when he dared to challenge one of the worst pc frauds in PRIVATE (Cornell West) and then dared to make som un-pc remarks in a small academic conference. His career as a university president was demolished by the left (though he still does have a tenured faculty position).
If you are not already familiar with one of the most egregious academic embarrassments of recent university history, based upon a journal published by your Duke University, you really owe it to yourself to follow the links from the item I linked in #53 above.
I wish to offer my personaL encounter with one of the Duke 88 after I sent them a group e mail. It is detailed below.
I was outraged by the arrogant and presumptive proclamation by 88 members of the Duke University after they took out an ad in a campus newspaper connecting the accused Duke La Crosse players with intimidation and racism.
Accordingly, I sent two group emails to the Duke 88. The only response I received was from one Paula McClain, who among her other offices is the Co-Director, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity
and Gender in the Social Sciences at Duke. Below is the second iteration of the two messages that I sent.
The Duke Rape case is a crystallization (pardon the pun) of all the corruption to the rule of law, linear reasoning and the presumption of innocence engendered by political correctness and Cultural Marxism (particularly that personified by campus professorial elites) .
It has added a new phrase to the lexicon: To be Nifonged. The egregious conduct of Nifong will be addressed in other venues. As an Illinois state policeman for 28 years, I can say with near complete confidence that a case like this with these facts would never have passed Felony Review with even the WORST State’s Attorney that I ever dealt with.
The most important lesson to be gleaned from this is that Tawana Brawley Syndrome is no substitute for a proper analysis of the objective facts. I LOVE to see liberals like you 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 criminal justice system or the past subjugation 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. In the Brawley case, Al Sharpton was continually referencing the “400 years” of unrequited oppression for black women and their inability to obtain redress within a racist criminal justice system. The fact is that had absolutely nothing to do with the Tawana Brawley case.
None of this would have happened if an unscrupulous DA had not chosen to exploit racial identity politics using an apparently mentally ill woman for his political gain, and if the Duke 88, the Durham black community, the radical feminists, and the racial grievance industry merchants had sifted thru the facts objectively and not attempted to stuff them into lurid post modern meta-narratives of privileged white male elites sexually exploiting black women. But than the attendant historical overtones of plantation sexual abuse were probably too much for them to resist. I have increasingly noted that fact and truth present no barrier to the fanatical Cultural Marxist.
My question now is this: Will all those who stampeded to rush to judge and vilify these innocent men now arrange a meeting with them, ala Imus to apologize and create a genuine aura of “healing”? I hope so but I don’t think so, because often being a liberal means never having to say you’re sorry.
Aside from the fact that petty tyrants like you have turned US college campuses into little ivy covered North Koreas, I suspect that you were 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 privileged white elite. A case of cultural Marxist Class warfare that boomeranged. GOD how I love it so!!!!!
Even though I despise the racial identity politics that mindlessly multicultural cultural Marxists like you have fostered amongst my people to our ultimate detriment, I would like to state that I am a black man living in the heart of Chicago’s South Side ghetto, who values the rule of law and truth as best as it can be objectively and humanly determined.
It would be fitting if they get a pretty penny from you.
I got the response below:
Your continued messages have now moved into the realm of harassment and
I have reported you to your service provider for using abusive and
inappropriate language in your email which was sent through their servers.
Paula D. McClain
Professor of Political Science
Professor of Public Policy
Department of Political Science
Co-Director, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity
and Gender in the Social Sciences
Duke University
Accordingly, I responded as follows
I was unaware that the 2 emails that I sent to you had caused you such distress. I wish to tender my apologies and desire to assure you that you shall receive no further messages from me. But since you are a college professor I was acting upon the putative assumption that universities are about the exchange of ideas, and I thought that my admittedly critically gloating message might prompt a suitable rejoinder. My missive was harsh, yes even severe. But it does contain concepts and ideas that however offensive ought to provoke a suitably barbed retort rather than a threat of server censorship.
Alas, I shall have to reconsider the notion that the campus is about the free exchange of ideas. But this is precisely what I was getting at in my email. If you can ever manage to free yourself from leftist dogmatic doctrine maybe you will realize that.
This is the best evidence of the thought policing that must be extant on all too many college campuses. If she can threaten me with this, someone unconnected with Duke University, just imagine the ax that she wields over any dissenting students!!!! Political Correctness is the intellectual scourge of our time and the worst threat to academic freedom that I have ever seen.
re: thought police
Great message - just be glad that you are separated from them by cyberspace! If you were a student in one of their departments they would likely try to ruin your career, especially if you had any interest in continuing in academia. I have seen this happen, and I have known of many more threats, harassment, and innuendo emanating from leftist faculty members. You have to think of these scumbags as operating like Leninist enclaves trying to destroy everyone in their way — whether or not they have any serious ideological beliefs or merely the usual sappy left-wing miasma of “progressive” thought, people like Paula McClain believe in thought control and vicious recrimination against anyone in their way.
p.s. Keep up the good work!
I nominate YOU to be the new President of Duke University! If anyone could clean up that faculty cesspool it would be you. However, I suspect we have a far better prospect of winning in Iraq than of bringing sanity to the Duke faculty and administration.
p.s. Paula McClain is not merely one of 88 pc-nitwits, she is now chairs the university’s Academic Council:
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2007/02/mcclain.html
Academic Council Elects Paula McClain as New Chair
Thus, her contempt for ideas and for your own freedom of thought and expression is even more disturbing since she is in one of the foremost faculty postions at Duke University.
Romance Studies... languages like French, Spanish, Italian...
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