Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Praising Stephen Miller

While their statement claimed to be “listening” to Duke students, the Group of 88 has shown little regard for what their school’s students think about the lacrosse case.

Take, for instance, Cathy Davidson’s recent Group of 88 apologia. She defended the Group’s statement by attacking students who made “racist and sexist remarks . . . on the campus quad in the aftermath of what happened on March 13 in the lacrosse house.” The ad’s gestation period lasted from March 29 through April 6. Just who were these unnamed Duke students issuing “racist and sexist remarks”? Davidson doesn’t say.

The Duke Chronicle recounted what the campus climate really was like during this period:

Surrounded on the quad in the middle of Duke’s West Campus, lacrosse player [Bo Carrington] wanted to convince protesters that neither he nor any of his teammates were rapists. But Carrington, a sophomore, couldn’t muster a word.

“You know what happened that night!” shouted one member of the crowd. “Why aren’t you saying anything?” . . . During those weeks in early April, Carrington and his teammates encountered pictures of themselves plastered around campus like WANTED posters. Posters that, in their minds, conveyed a predetermined judgment: guilty.

Davidson’s apologia also blamed unnamed “right-wing ‘blog hooligans’” for calling attention to the ad. No one noticed the ad, she suggested in follow-up e-mails posted on Liestoppers and elsewhere, until sometime in May—when the unnamed “blog hooligans” started writing about it.

In fact, the ad was noticed immediately, on her own campus, by the students to whom Davidson and her fellow signatories claimed to be listening. When the Group of 88 statement appeared, Bo Carrington told the Chronicle, “I think that all of us [these were Duke students he was talking about, lest Davidson not notice] kind of checked over our teachers to make sure they weren’t on that list.”

People on campus unaffiliated with the lacrosse players also were “listening” to their professors. On April 13, the Chronicle editorialized:

Campus groups, in attempting to respond to these issues, face a difficult balance between constructive dialogue and one-sided dogma. In many cases, they cross that line. An advertisement for a forum sponsored by the African-American Studies department proposes the idea that Duke is a “social disaster.”

This is but one example of the instances of radical, inflammatory discourse that obscures what should be our true aim: reasonable discussion.

The day before, Stephen Miller was even more direct, in a prescient Chronicle column:

Apparently, the lack of evidence was not a factor.

Friday, a full-page ad ran in the paper repeating the charge that the situation would be handled differently were the accused not a bunch of white lacrosse players. This absurd ad, which levied the untrue and indefensible charge that Duke is filled with racists, was officially endorsed by 20 of our academic departments and institutes and about 90 individual professors . . .

It is the hope of many activists, protesters and condemners to make a case not only for the excoriation of the lacrosse team, but also for sweeping social reform to address what they see as profound racial inequity.

Instead, they make a very different case—one for protecting, at all costs, our system of justice from the passions and prejudices of the people.

Miller went on from this column to defend due process and the players’ presumption of innocence in several national media appearances over the spring.

In contrast to Davidson’s claim of a vast-right wing conspiracy to use the ad to “make academics and liberals look ridiculous and uncaring,” I discovered the statement by “listening” to Duke students.

At the time, I knew no one on the Duke lacrosse team. Nor did I know any family member of a lacrosse player, or friend of a lacrosse player. I was reading the Chronicle every day to get a sense of campus attitudes; and after seeing Miller’s column and the follow-up editorial, I found the ad on the African-American Studies website and encountered its rush-to-judgment language myself.

In yesterday’s Chronicle, 293 days after he first wrote about the Group of 88, Miller returned to the topic.

He lamented how the lacrosse scandal has exposed a “shameful reality” that “while there are many good, decent and commendable professors on our campus, there are also a number of professors that are unethical, unbalanced and out of control.”

Miller cited the deeply disturbing case of Kim Curtis—who last spring “signed the abominable 'social disaster' ad, which pointed the finger of guilt at the lacrosse team, praised the protesters who rushed to judgment and slandered our student body as racist.” Moreover, of course, Curtis penned a March 29 e-mail suggesting Dowd and the other lacrosse player in her class were complicit in covering up a rape.

After taking these actions, Curtis suddenly started downgrading both Dowd and the other player—first to grades of C- on their second paper, then to an F on their final paper. Even though, Miller argued, “it’s clear to any objective observer that Dowd’s performance merits the P that he and his attorneys are demanding,” the University rebuffed the private pleas of Dowd’s lawyer and has elected to fight a suit in court.

While Curtis appears to have violated professional ethics, Miller argued that other Duke professors embarrassed themselves and their institution with their public commentary. He traced the actions of several other Group of 88 members, while recalling the springtime public letter of Houston Baker. On March 29, the former professor wrote that the team “may well feel they can claim innocence and sport their disgraced jerseys on campus, safe under the cover of silent whiteness. But where is the black woman who their violence and raucous witness injured for life? Will she ever sleep well again?”

Baker—like Davidson and each and every other member of the Group of 88—has refused to apologize for having rushed to judgment. He also has been more defiant than most, as Miller pointed out when quoting a December 31 e-mail Baker sent to Kyle Dowd’s mother:

LIES! You are just a provacateur [sic] on a happy New Years Eve trying to get credit for a scummy bunch of white males! You know you are in search of sympaathy [sic] for young white guys who beat up a gay man in Georgetown, get drunk in Durham, and lived like ‘a bunch of farm animals’ near campus.

I really hope whoever sent this stupid farce of an email rots in.... umhappy [sic] new year to you ... and forgive me if your [sic] really are, quite sadly, mother of a ‘farm animal.’
Over the past ten months, both Stephen Miller and Cathy Davidson have claimed that a desire to stand up for Duke’s undergraduates has motivated their actions. One demanded due process last spring; the other rushed to publicly denounce. One demands accountability now; the other dissembles. Who do you think has better served Duke’s students?

72 comments:

Anonymous said...

JLS says...

Great column isn't it. Too bad such a student is subjected to such professors, if he wants to take classes in certain formerly great areas to take an elective like literature.

M. Simon said...

I vote for Miller.

Anonymous said...

I think it was Groucho who once said, "On one hand is the truth, on the other, five fingers".

Anonymous said...

Miller or Brodhead? You make the call.

Anonymous said...

Let the 88 struggle and squirm to get out of it all they want. They've been revealed, plainly and simply, as rotten people. The books on this case will cement them as such for years to come.

Anonymous said...

Brodhead or Miller?

Well, I know things were "really, really" so confusing for Brodhead but I'll still go with Miller.

John in Carolina

Anonymous said...

To say nothing of Miller's stunning performance on The O'Reilly Factor. One of the true heroes of this saga (even if he's only doing it 'cuz he thinks that Shadee is a bitch! :) lol

Anonymous said...

As a relatively new and occasional reader of this Blog I am curious if anyone has commented on the parallels between the Dennis Fritz, Ron Williamson vs. Oklahoma, the City of Ada, District Attorney and everyone remotely involved in the prosecution of the case and the Duke 3 and Nifong? I just read Grisham's "The Innocent Man" (non-fiction) and while I am not attempting to equate spending over a decade on death row with what has occurred in Durham, the frame up is very similar. Nifong could be the Ada, OK DA’s evil twin. The judge's strongly worded ruling (page 342) in denying the DA's motion for summary led to a multi-million dollar settlement. Despite the settlement the DA remains in office.

Anonymous said...

Miller did and continues to do a great job. Reading Houstn's writing and emails again is disturbing. Does he drink spirits?
Again - Rest in Peace Barbaro -

Anonymous said...

12:30am Anon:

Was Fritz the Okla judge with the penis pump under his robes? No, we didn't talk about him...

Anonymous said...

Respect to the Midnight Toker. He's Gonna Fly Like an Eagle; maybe even Take the Money and Run.

Anonymous said...

12:32am Anon:

"Does [Houston Baker] drink spirits?"

As I recall from the email header that Bill Anderson posted here, the email was sent fairly late on New Year's Eve, ~10pm CST. He may well have already had a few adult beverages.

Anonymous said...

12:41 - Boz was way better.

Anonymous said...

No, it is about a Nifong type DA, complicit cops and the railroading of two innocent men to death row. It's how it was done that makes me sick and is so similar to Nifong's actions. I hope someone has the book and can type more than 10 WPM and copy the insert on page 342 for the folks here.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of farm animals:

Looks like Baker is about to be put out to pasture.

Oh darn.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

Anonymous said...

I sent Miller a congratulatory email.

I suggest everyone on this blog write him.

s.miller@duke.edu

I asked him if anyone was discussing defunding Angry Studies.

He wrote back: yes.

That's a good thing.

RP

Anonymous said...

Esq,

Baker out to pasture?

Please tell me you're serious.

RP

Anonymous said...

RP: With that diatribe of hate in print? The Trustees are going to freak.

Yes, I would say the plot begins. That was an unforgiveable sin, and reflects too poorly on the school for even Duke to ignore.

In other words, Mr. Miller has set up Baker for a fall.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

Anonymous said...

Great article by Stephen Miller. We know by his writing that he reads here so I say to him well done. The value of the piece is not the new information, but that he has distilled it into a readable article that many on campus and off will read. Many of those readers will not have followed the case as closely as regular readers of this and other blogs.

Anonymous said...

Esq,

Baker's at Vandy, and that doofus Gordon Gee loves him.

RP

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, what was the campus climate like in the immediate aftermath? Let's see: "Racial tensions ran high across campus on the first day of classes after a weekend of national attention directed at the incident. More than 200 students, faculty and community members gathered for a 'speak-out' in front of the Allen Building Monday morning. Participants stepped to the microphone to express outrage about the issues of gender, race and class surrounding the incident. The event marked the fourth demonstration in 48 hours.
'This is a matter of white privilege,' senior Tiana Mack said. 'When I read what was going on, it made me think about Jim Crow.... If these three culprits get away with it, it will prove to me that Duke does not honor the black woman's body.' Some demonstrators wore T-shirts with slogans such as 'Men's Lacrosse? Not fine by me' and 'Men's Lax, Come Clean.' Senior Jay McKenna alluded to the widespread belief that the lacrosse players are not fully cooperating with the investigation. 'The fact that this wall of silence has been constructed only adds to the mystery, which adds to the speculation,' he said, noting that he knows members of the team."
USCHOArticleMarch28,2006

Anonymous said...

"...blamed unnamed “right-wing ‘blog hooligans’” for calling attention to the ad."

So what sort of nitwit would pay for advertising space, then hope it goes unnoticed?

Anonymous said...

KC:

Should the Chronicle be nominated for a Pulitzer? I blog about this at Volokh.com:

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_01_28-2007_02_03.shtml#1170131166


Also this suggesting prizes for the women's team:

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_01_28-2007_02_03.shtml#1170135133

Keep up the incredible work.

Jim Lindgren

Anonymous said...

Even IF something happened, this is no way for a professor, a representative of the University, to conduct himself. (BTW, I believe the players are innocent) If I wrote an email like that from work, I'd be fired before day's end. Yet, he still "teaches" (if you can even call it that) and unknowingly to him delays my contribution to Duke's Annual Fund. I'm quite happy to leave it sit in Apple's stock.

If broadhead does not take action against this, then he is truely more of a wuss than I thought.

Anonymous said...

Has anyone yet discovered the source of the money used to publish the ad?
gk

Anonymous said...

1:24 AM Luke

"The event marked the fourth demonstration in 48 hours."

Bill Anderson wrote a great article last September, Duke’s Reichstag Fire, which bluntly shows the G88 agenda in the early days:

'Of course, instead of government-sponsored anti-Jewish pogroms, college administrators demand new rounds of "diversity training" and "campus initiatives" to browbeat students and faculty members into "confessing" the "wrongness" of their thinking. Moreover, unlike the Reichstag Fire – which really did occur – the vast majority of these "incidents" turn out to be fictitious, although administrators rarely seem to acknowledge that fact.'

By good fortune and sharp minds the lies were made transparent, and Davidson/G88 re-invented themselves victims of bloggers who “make academics and liberals look ridiculous and uncaring”.

Perhaps what they might need to apologize for is larger than we know.

-------------
1:46 AM - Stoo
"So what sort of nitwit would pay for advertising space, then hope it goes unnoticed?"

Good call!

Anonymous said...

Miller 88, Brodhead 0.

Anonymous said...

Carolyn says:

Two comments.

To "Stoo said" who wrote about the Group of 88 complaining about feedback from their ad. "So what sort of nitwit would pay for advertising space, then hope it goes unnoticed?" I hadn't thought of that before, but you're right!

As for Miller, his parents must be so proud of him not just for the truth of what he wrote about the Group of 88 perverting the Duke lacrosse scandal for their own bigoted agenda - but also WHEN Miller wrote it.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of on-the-mark commentaries,
Thomas Sowell has just written another one

Anonymous said...

I've tried several times to understand what could have moved Baker to describe the mother of a student on his (former) campus as the "mother of an...animal," and I just can't figure it out. For an African-American to use the loaded term "animal" to castigate another human being, given the history of his own race with that term, defies understanding.

What it does show, though, is that callous, sneering, blind hatred is not the exclusive domain of whitey.

beckett

Anonymous said...

"Leadership" that is based on fear always leads to thuggery. If Mark Anthony Neal's alter ego is "thugniggerintellectual", then Brodhead's is thugleaderineffectual; both men are, as Neal fondly describes himself, "fearful and menacing" (although I'd imagine that the ridiculous Neal meant fearsome, his mistake fits much better).

The problem isn't really with the intellectual cowardice of these people; it's that this fear drives them to become thugs.

Anonymous said...

"But where is the black woman who their violence and raucous witness injured for life? Will she ever sleep well again?”

Gee, "Professor" Baker, I'm guessing that the drug-addled prostitute sleeps pretty well most nights, especially when she is able to get her fix from the local hospital emergency room by telling whatever lies occur to her that day. And sadly, because of nitwits like you, she'll probably be able to continue on with her chosen lifestyle, safe behind the cover of her not-so-silent blackness.

Anonymous said...

An indication of the problem in higher ed, not just at Duke, is that Baker got another gig.

I expect the 88ers could find other employment with no loss of income.

Anonymous said...

[QUOTE
]Just who were these unnamed Duke students issuing “racist and sexist remarks”?
[UNQUOTE]

In her mind it would be racist and sexist to say that the lacrosse players were innocent because the black woman was lying.

M. Simon said...

RP,

I put one up for you.

Angry Studies

*

Anonymous said...

Go,kid,go! He and Butler make monkeys of the Despicable 88. They must have learned to think and write in high school, as the muddle headed Marxists do not appear to have damaged their cognitive skills. sic semper tyrannis

Anonymous said...

Q: In the 21st Century, who can write emails as vile as Baker's and expect to get away with it?

A: Activist University Professors with a perverse chip on their shoulder.

Anonymous said...

NYC Joe-

KC,

It might be a good point to do a short Q&A.

(Some of my questions)

What's your take on the new team handling the case?

When do you expect them to make a decision?

Is there any change to the civil liability Nifong's facing?

What's going on witd the Dowd-Curtis case?

Etc..

Thanks for all your work.

Anonymous said...

Interesting point.

The Group of 88 have been saying, essentially:

"Hey Duke students,

Yes YOU, the student body, would you like to know our opinion of you? No? Well guess what, we're to shout it out anyway in a full page ad:



1) We think you're RACISTS.

and

2) We think you're SEXUAL PREDATORS.

How DARE you spread YOUR prevalent racist hatred and your prevalent sexual assaults to OUR university.

Sincerely,

The Group of 88".

Michael said...

You don't want to be the subject of one of KC's articles when he uses the term: "In fact..."

Anonymous said...

1:46 AM
"So what sort of nitwit would pay for advertising space, then hope it goes unnoticed?"

I was going to say "garden variety nitwit"... but it's more like "highly payed, intellectually revered, and tenured nitwit"

MGM

Anonymous said...

Miller's boldness in the face of the 88 is amazing. I hope he has enough credits to graduate because the influence of the 88 may be more far reaching than we suspect. I hope he continues to expose the academic deceit that seems to have a hold on Trinity. IT'S MILLER TIME!

Anonymous said...

This week's Weekly Standard has an excellent overview of the whole case.

Anonymous said...

Assuming all the courses taught by the 88 are not "required" courses - What has happened to enrollment level in their classes?

Bourgeoisophobus said...

The Famous "Dog Defense":

1. My dog did not bite your dog.
2. Even if my dog did try to bite your dog, my dog has no teeth.
3. Anyway, I don't have a dog.

The Infamous "88 Defense:"

1. The "Listening" ad didn't say what it seemed to say.
2. Even if it did say what it seemed to say, that was because we were taken in by the District Attorney.
3. Anyway, nobody saw the ad.
4. Even if people saw the ad, we didn't really want them to see the ad.

Anonymous said...

The following is from Thomas Sowell's latest column:

"The current self-destructive misdirection of energies in black ghettoes cannot be explained by a "legacy of slavery" or "racism." For one thing, this level of self-destruction in black communities did not exist half a century ago, when racism was worse and the black population was generations closer to the era of slavery.

Moreover, a virtually identical pattern of self-destructive attitudes and behavior has been found among British lower-class whites, where none of this can be blamed on racism or a legacy of slavery. (See "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple.)

What the two self-destructive communities on opposite sides of the Atlantic have in common is hearing a steady diet of propaganda blaming all their problems on others, and depicting "society" as determined to keep them down, regardless of anything they might do to try to lift themselves up.

That same deadly message has produced the same tragic results among very different people. The Duke "rape" fraud is yet another sign that the time is long overdue for all of us to start thinking."

What Sowell says-obvious though it may be-seems to explain much about part of the black community, but what explains Kim Curtis and her ilk? As an explanation, "white guilt" just doesn't do it for me. These race/class/gender nutjobs remind me of the angry, rebellious sophmores I knew on campus in the mid-1960s. Most of those "newly-enlightened," angry folks I knew grew out of their atheist-, or Ayn Rand-, or SDS-, or whatever-stage. Maybe the rest became professors. Is there something about academia that arrests normal maturation?

Anonymous said...

RP: Gees, I had forgotten that point. Keeping track of names is tough in this thing.

But even at Vanderbilt, such an e-mail would not be treated lightly.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

Anonymous said...

Anonymous at 9:24. A fine post.

As to answering the question "Why is Curtis such a race/class/gender nutjob?" -

I agree - it can't be "white guilt". We know she's bitter and dour. Perhaps some tramatic event took its toll? Maybe, but she seems too consistently rotten.

Perhaps she'd willingly donate a bit of her DNA so we could study it?

Anonymous said...

"Davidson’s claim of a vast-right wing conspiracy to use the ad to “make academics and liberals look ridiculous and uncaring,”"

By quoting their own words.
How unfair!

Anonymous said...

Skip this comment if you are bored by "romantic" pontification or discussions of literature.

Original Comment: "Humanity always struggles to overcome history's legacy of violence stemming from envy, limited resources, differing ideologies, etc."

Response: "Anyone who subscribes to this view has a very narrow, and romantic, view of humanity.

As I am sure Margaret Thatcher would say, humanity consists of lots of individuals who are mostly (parents who have obligate homosexual offspring have lost the game already) all trying to get ahead and ensure that their genes get into the next generations. They all have varying levels of obligation and sympathy towards other individuals depending mainly on their degree of relatedness.

You can, by and large, expect them to all do whatever it takes to achieve their goals, and some ethnic groups might not think that it is in their interests to pander to the interests of the dominant ethnic group ..."

I was way too busy for a couple of days to respond. But I was not really proposing that my comment regarding humanity covered the entire gambit of human motivation--just a piece of it. Of course, being biological creatures we work diligently to perpetuate the species and protect the fruit of that effort in which we are most vested--generally our own children. Simply bringing new generations into being is a positive act of renewal and optomism, a reminder of why it is important to continue the struggle to overcome history's most troubling legacies, regardless of the exact role our direct genetic predecessors played in those legacies. Surely a thoroughly researched family tree would reveal both oppressors and oppressed in the genetic mix for all of us. Our presence here now is a pretty good indication that our own genetic lines have met with more success than failure, and I doubt that those successes have always played out in the most honorable and appealing fashion.

I am not sure what you mean by the statement about ethnic minorities not wanting to pander to the majority interest--ARE minorities pandering to the majority...DOES the majority expect ethnic minorities to pander to them? How?

RP, Austen, Eliot, Woolf, the female trinity of literature. I admire them immensely. Does Toni Morrison belong with this group--I do not know. Time will tell. She is indispensable at this juncture in the American Literature scene. It's not all about IQ, by the way. The soul, human insight, musicality--at least in literature, these deserve equal billing.

Stanley Crouch might not be the best person to read on Morrison--too much room for professional jealousy, and he was clearly offended by her strong, deeply emotional writing from the female perspective.

Back to our topic--Go Stephen Miller!! I believe his comments were as well aimed as the stone David slung at Goliath.

Observer

Anonymous said...

My daughter, SAT > 2300, will absolutely NOT be attending Duke. This whole situation is full of corrupt DAs, corrupt PDs, intellectually corrupt professors. WHO in their right mind would send a kid to study in such an environment? It seems as if the world has gone crazy, or at least Durham. Great column by Mr. Miller.

Anonymous said...

Bravo!! Stephen Miller showed all that the Duke 88 are unethical, adgenda-advancing, sexists and racists with little intereest in their students' or institutions' wellbeing.

Anonymous said...

10:25 - "My daughter, SAT > 2300, will absolutely NOT be attending Duke."

Don't forget to check out the web cams.
Michigan Technological University parents' page
MTU'76

Anonymous said...

Thomas Sowell excerpt:

"The current self-destructive misdirection of energies in black ghettoes cannot be explained by a "legacy of slavery" or "racism." For one thing, this level of self-destruction in black communities did not exist half a century ago, when racism was worse and the black population was generations closer to the era of slavery.

Moreover, a virtually identical pattern of self-destructive attitudes and behavior has been found among British lower-class whites, where none of this can be blamed on racism or a legacy of slavery. (See "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple.)

What the two self-destructive communities on opposite sides of the Atlantic have in common is hearing a steady diet of propaganda blaming all their problems on others, and depicting "society" as determined to keep them down, regardless of anything they might do to try to lift themselves up..."

The Angry Studies...Race, Gender, and Class frauds are culpable, whether they choose to realize it or not.

Anonymous said...

Holy cow, KC. That's quite an email Houston Baker wrote. I'm assuming it's a response to one that Dowd's mother wrote to him? Any chance you can post both emails so we have more context?

The faculty have been griping quite a bit about the "hateful emails" they've received. And here they are sending out some pretty nasty ones of their own. Next time they complain about getting flamed, someone needs to point out this doozy from Baker.

Anonymous said...

11:11 - here
Baker: in his own words
MTU'76

Anonymous said...

11:10 please excuse the redundant reference to Sowell's excerpt...

...oh, never mind, it was worth repeating.

Anonymous said...

houston baker can't be reprimanded or censured for his remarks?

Anonymous said...

RP---

Go take a look at the post I left in response to your libel and harassment.

Yesterday afternoon someone---who I believe to be you---left a libelous post on another thread. Although there are a few misfits who are here only to attack, I totally believe that it is you who continues to play roles on this blog...nonstop.

Whoever is playing the role of "New Black Panther" is a misfit. I believe that misfit is you.

Your idle life and your strange jealousy has taken you over. I suggest therapy. Seriously.

This is no place for you to do your Sybill act everyday....then libel people who have called you on your behavior.

Take me seriously.

Cease and desist such libel and infantile behavior.

You post as a racist. Then you post as someone who attacks that racist. You have far too much time on your hands.

Get some therapy....or a job.

Debrah

Anonymous said...

That Houston Baker is still kept on at Vanderbilt...even after his semi-literate rant e-mailed to a Duke parent came to light.....

.....is evidence that standards at most universities have descended beyond imagination.

It's just unbelievable that Houston, a man with such childish sensibilities, behaves any better when challenged in the lecture halls.

Debrah

Anonymous said...

Not to change the subject,but i take it that the Feb 5th hearing will go foward?

Anonymous said...


houston baker can't be reprimanded or censured for his remarks?


Of course not. He is a tenured minority and is beyond reproach.

Anonymous said...

Stephen Miller rocks!

Debrah

Anonymous said...

I think the G88 are shocked by the amount of attention they have recieved because normally what they write is read by virtually nobody. Even the people who do read it are radicals with similar agendas. I'll give you an example. Wahneema Lubiano wrote an extremely hysterical piece about the Katrina disaster. If it was in the NYT op-ed section it would have created a fire storm. Instead it's posted on the Newblackman Blog

If you never expose your ideas to criticism you are going not going to realize how far out of the mainstream you are. AA and Womyn's studies Profs. need to watch Deliverence again to remind themselves how devasting inbreeding can be.

Anonymous said...

Lubiano on race and class New Black Man

"Racism side-swipes the usually non-raced (poor white people), or the lightly-raced (Latinos/Latinas, Asians and Asian Americans, etc.), or the accidentally and transiently raced (foreign tourists trapped by the disaster). The heterogeneity of the trapped is matched by the multiplicity of the forms of entrappment., (sic) by what was already in place, or, more to the point, by what wasn’t already in place–but the complexities are covered by the shadow cast by the people so multiply black."

I am only a little old olive skinned lady - this is gibberish to me.
MTU'76

Anonymous said...

Just who were these unnamed Duke students issuing “racist and sexist remarks”? Davidson doesn’t say.

Indeed.

The phantom racists are a straw man if there ever was one.


Rod Allsion

Anonymous said...

Two observations:

1. Academics and liberals made academics and liberals look ridiculous and uncaring long before that ad appeared and will continue to do so long after the ad is forgotten.

2. Am I the only one that believes Precious wakes up every morning and thinks, "I really had 'em going for awhile. Damn, I almost pulled it off."

Anonymous said...

Thank God I went to state college. I'd be outraged if I had paid that much money to listen to the hate these "professors" spew.

Anonymous said...

Roman Polanski has another controversial posting up on the Duke Basketball thread. It's about reparations. Posted at 1:19.

LOL

Anonymous said...

The entire mess shows once more that Universities went off the rails in the 60's and 70's. In their eagerness to pander to every possible group with a perceived grievance, they created "Studies" departments which are an intellectual joke. The accomodating Universities were not aware that the new types looked at their promotions seriously: not as a "favor." The new types worked actively to expand their areas and hire like-minded people who "care about causes" not people. They are deconstructionists who sneer at the greatest most free country in the world because it is not perfect: US imperfections would be the standard to meet in most other ocuntries, but they don't care. Due process offends them if it impedes their cause. These people are anti-freedom, anti-intellectual and anti-people. Like the taxpayer supported bonehead at Univ Colorado who demeaned the WTC victimes as "little Eichmans." Now we have 88 or more at a substantial University who are no smarter or thoughtful than a small town southern lynch mob. Cleaning them out of the Universities they have infested is the major job of the next 10 years. Alumni, parents, students and legislators need to re assert controlof the Universities and the sleection criteria. The good professors have obviously botched the job. And while we're at it, that Duke Law Professor from 60 minutes and Miller ought to get a big raise. They still wear the name "Professor" with the honor it should have.

Anonymous said...

2:47

Right on. Any way you could post this on Duke basketball thread?

RP

Anonymous said...

Christopher Hitchsen review of WHAT'S LEFT? How the Liberals Lost Their Way
by Nick Cohen
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-2550492,00.html
"My instant reaction to the 9/11 attacks was that they were a nuisance that got in the way of more pressing concerns. Throughout the 1990s, I had been writing about the overweening power of big business and how it could corrupt democratic governments. I had lambasted new Labour for its love of conservative crime policies and attacks on civil liberties for years. Attacking Tony Blair was what I liked doing � what got me out of bed in the morning. Accepting that fascism is worse than western democracy, even western democracies governed by George W Bush and Tony Blair, sounds very easy in theory, but it is very difficult to do in practice when you are a habitual enemy of the status quo in your own country.�"

Does anyone get the feeling that this is exactly the mindset at work in this case? The actual innocence of the parties, any prosecutor misconduct, and whether there was request for strippers of a certian race, are all side issues. The Duke faculty were like Nick Cohen already to talk about their pet issues, when the actual events got in the way.

Similarily the NYT is only interested in discussing DNA in regard to the innocence members of a protected class.