Monday, February 12, 2007

"Jaw-Dropping" Proposals from the CCI?

The Chronicle’s Towerview magazine has a piece on the Campus Culture Initiative, the one-sided body ostensibly devoted “to evaluate and suggest improvements in the ways Duke educates students in the values of personal responsibility, consideration for others and mutual respect in the face of difference and disagreement.”

In reality, as a recent Chronicle editorial perceptively observed, “Stacking the CCI with critics of ‘white male privilege’ suggests that the initiative was created to pacify countercultural professors, rather than to shape a new and improved campus culture.”

Does anyone really believe that Peter Wood, chair of the CCI’s sports subgroup, was the best choice to promote the CCI’s stated goal of assessing “the extent to which Duke institutional practices promote values and behaviors expected of students”? This is, after all, the same Peter Wood whose views on the lacrosse team were found non-credible by the Coleman Committee, and who then appeared to slander his own students in an interview with the local alternative weekly.

And how qualified is Karla Holloway to offer recommendations on the CCI’s stated goal of assessing “how students relate to each other and other members of the campus and community across bounds of race, gender and other social divisions”? This is, after all, the same Karla Holloway who bitterly denounced her own school’s students (the women’s lacrosse players) for adopting a public position on the lacrosse case different from her own.

And how qualified is Anne Allison, who co-chairs the CCI’s gender subcommittee, to offer suggestions on “the role that faculty play in the development of student values and behavior and make recommendations for increasing interaction between students and faculty in campus life”? This is, after all, the same Anne Allison whose spring-semester course is using a book that “updates the incidences of fraternity gang rape on college campuses, highlighting such recent cases as that of Duke University.”

The CCI’s workings have been shrouded in secrecy—perhaps because, Towerview hints, this trio has been considering “potentially jaw-dropping” recommendations that surely would generate alumni protests and possibly could have an impact on admissions. It would seem to me that, before making a decision on whether to attend Duke, prospective members of the Class of 2011 have a right to know how Holloway, Wood, and Allison want to transform the University.

Moreover, the secrecy appears to have allowed Wood to escape criticism for continued dubious behavior. Towerview reports “that the path of some of those subcommittees has been all but calm,” since “the leader of the athletics subcommittee, Peter Wood, a professor of history who has voiced his often-negative opinions regarding athletics at Duke, presented his subcommittee’s recommendations, but a source says his report did not fully encompass the opinions and concerns of his entire subcommittee.”

Fully 20 percent of the CCI’s 25-person membership had actions or statements that were cited in the defense’s change of venue motion. In addition to the remarks of Wood and Holloway, and Allison’s Group of 88 membership, the CCI includes Rev. Sam Wells, whose inflammatory April 2 sermon contextualized the “disputed facts of an ugly evening” as part of “a disturbingly extensive experience of sexual violence, of abiding racism, of crimes rarely reported and perpetrators seldom named, confronted, or convicted, of lives deeply scarred, of hurt and pain long suppressed”; and the student head of the Duke NAACP, whose parent organization produced an error-riddled memorandum of law that presumed guilt.

In his comments to Towerview, the CCI vice chair, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta, dismissed criticisms of CCI’s performance. “Every member of the group,” he stated, “has been objective, has been thoughtful, reasoned and reasonable.”

How many people would describe as “thoughtful, reasoned and reasonable” Holloway’s sending out a mass e-mail passing along fifth-hand, unsubstantiated gossip when she resigned as chair of the race subgroup to protest the lifting of Reade Seligmann’s and Collin Finnerty’s suspensions?

People shouldn’t worry about secrecy, Moneta added. “The initiative is vague by design. We said from the beginning that all the work was going to be confidential until the committee submits its report.” Actually, the announcement of the committee’s formation was unclear on that point.

Those who suggest that extremist faculty will use the CCI to champion a seemingly discredited agenda needn’t worry, according to Moneta. “We’ve heard what students have to say loudly and clearly. And I think this document reflects their concerns.”

A document oriented around faculty allegedly “listening” to ideologically compatible yet unidentified students. Where has that gambit appeared before?

---------

Moneta is widely perceived as the senior Duke administrator who has been most hostile to the lacrosse team over the past 10 months. And the current Duke crisis isn’t the first time he has given short shrift to defending civil liberties in higher education.

In 1987, as part of a wave of similar actions at schools around the country, the University of Pennsylvania promulgated a campus speech code, which prohibited “any behavior, verbal or physical, that stigmatizes or victimizes individuals on the basis of race, ethnic or national origin . . . and that has the purpose or effect of interfering with an individual's academic or work performance; and/or creates an intimidating or offensive academic, living, or work environment.” (A strong proponent of the code was then-Penn professor Houston Baker.)

Interpreting these inherently vague guidelines depended on judgment calls by student life and judicial affairs administrators—people like Larry Moneta, who, in his position as associate vice-provost for university life, was the administrator to whom the judicial system reported.

In January 1993, angered by members of an African-American sorority loudly partying right outside his dorm, a Penn freshman named Eden Jacobowitz, asked them to be quiet. They ignored him, so 20 minutes later, he yelled out, “Shut up, you water buffalo!” The university responded by filing charges of racial harassment against Jacobowitz, on the grounds that “water buffalo,” an animal native to south Asia, constituted a racial slur. Moneta upheld the decision to punish Jacobowitz.

As Jacobowitz’s faculty advisor, Alan Charles Kors, recalled in a 2003 talk on the Duke campus, Moneta

sat down with 10 dictionaries and two papers from leading mammalians. Later he called me up and said he had found that in the American Heritage Dictionary, the fifth entry described the water buffalo as originating in Africa. It turned out that, in fact [the dictionary] had confused the water buffalo with the cape buffalo . . . This kind of prosecution is absurd.

In large part due to the journalism of Dorothy Rabinowitz, the “water buffalo” incident became a defining moment in the battle over campus speech codes. With the university increasingly on the defensive, Moneta continued to assert that the prosecution of Jacobowitz was correct. An NBC reporter, for instance, asked him, “Have you ever heard of ‘water buffalo’ being used as a racial slur?” Moneta’s reply? “The issue is not whether I have or not. The issue is also, you know, language in my mind is neutral. It’s a question of the context in which is language is used.” By this standard, virtually any language could violate the speech code, depending on how administrators like Moneta chose to interpret it.

Under strong pressure from both the media and alumni, Penn was forced to roll back its speech code; the charges against Jacobowitz were dismissed.

Asked in 2003 about Moneta’s move to Duke, Kors had a cutting reply: after the “water buffalo” affair, “I wondered who would possibly hire him.”

Moneta’s performance in the “water buffalo” incident makes his defense of the CCI’s one-sided nature easier to understand. It does not, however, inspire confidence in the result that the CCI will produce.

88 comments:

Anonymous said...

updates the incidences of graternity gang rape on college campuses

Typo graternity

kcjohnson9 said...

got it--thanks.

Anonymous said...

Jeez, KC, you got dossiers on all these people? Or is that just what you want them to believe? ;)

Anonymous said...


graternity gang rape


Yeah, I thought it meant gratuitous gang rape.

Anonymous said...

Did Brodhead hire Moneta?

Anonymous said...

After reading tonight chapter, Linwood Wilson was heard to say,"Damn, of course, Water Buffalo!, Why didn't I think of that".

M. Simon said...

The CCI is now the "in" crowd.

As with campus speech codes I believe the Duke will be causing a roll back in groups like the CCI.

Campus Culture Initiative could be called the Hurt Feelings Committee.

Anonymous said...

This is a very simple issue. People of weak character want other to be hurt as they believe they have been hurt. It doesn't really matter who is hurt specifically. They want it so badly that they either try to do it themselves or they clamor for it so intensely that a person like Moneta comes around to answer their prayers and gain false power and false respect by placating them.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I forgot to mention that the people who rush to placate those of weak character are also of weak character.

Anonymous said...

JLS says...

It is more and more looking like in their rush to climb up the be like "Mike," I mean the Ivies, Duke went out and hired whomever they could get from an Ivy.

And who can a social climbing school hire from the Ivies? Why someone who has screwed up and while having tenure has stalled their career:

1. Someone who has trampled on the rights of a prof concerning a police investigation at Yale? Yes like Brodhead.

2. Someone who was behind an infamous speech code incident at Penn. Yes like Moneta.

And I wonder if any of the 88 gangsters also were poor social climbing hires from Ivies that the Ivies might have been quite happy to foist on Duke? Certainly social climbing can cause a school to hire based only on where someone previously worked or went to school and not consider the person. And not surprisingly this leads to getting weak candidates from good places.

Anonymous said...

This just in from Nifong and the DPD....

The lineups presented to the accuser did not contain only lacrosse players. The 5 to 1 ratio was observed. For every photo of a lacrosse player, the accused was also show photos of 5 water buffalo.

ZING!

Anonymous said...

Thanks KC!

A bit O/T, but funny to me. We have a chemically contaminated site near where I live that is on the EPA's Superfund list for remedial action.

This site, former home of Chemical Commodities, Inc, is known as "CCI" to all here!

Certainly you can understand how I confuse it with the Campus Culture Initiative or which is actually a worse problem.

Gary Packwood said...

KC's first link today (Chronicle's Towerview) needs a second read for the responses from the students.

http://www.dukechronicle.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=869ee2f5-f7b7-44b6-9941-b42645b5b742

Ludwig Wittgenstein (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) was an Austrian philosopher... and is not a Duke Student :-)

The students know more about this issue than I thought.

Anonymous said...

Did Moneta come to Duke prior to Brodhead's arrival?

Anonymous said...

Moneta was there during my tenure. So, yeah, he's been there for a while.

Anonymous said...

Carolyn asks:

So I can't call Moneta a 'water buffalo'? Can I call him a jerk?

After all, he worked for it, he earned it, he should get it.

Anonymous said...

Not knowing any of the CCI players first-hand, I've got to have some hope for an organization that is chaired by someone who "holds appointments in the Department of Psychology: Social and Health Sciences, the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and the Department of Pediatrics."

Any chance he'll actually be the designated grownup?

Dave

Anonymous said...

During my four years at Duke, Larry Moneta was viewed nearly unanimously by the student body as the most unpopular administrator there. Most felt that his policies were almost always in direct constrast with the the wishes of the majority of the student body. He seemed to be a vain, stubborn man who wanted to use his position to reshape a great university in his own image, common sense or wishes of the actual people paying to attend the university be damned. The only continuity to his decision making was that it would typically be the opposite of what everyone I knew would have preferred it to be. He almost became a larger than life villain figure, the kind whose picture you would not be surprised to find used as a dart board.

The lacrosse is really just the ultimate result of a steady stream of Duke actions directly contrary to the interest of the school's own students. This march has been led by Larry Moneta, and its no surprise that his support would fall right in line with those who see their own students as mere railroad tracks toward their own vain agendas.

Anonymous said...

I'm shocked, not in the ironic "Casablanca" way that is often quoted on this blog, but truly shocked that Duke would hire Moneta after his involvement in the absurd speech code case at the University of Pennsylvania. I had no idea that was his background. How can this man be Vice President of Student Affairs? That he could condemn a student for shouting "water buffalo" to some disruptive students and not condemn the Group of 88 for their written statement is dishonest. I hope that the background information provided in this post will appear in "The Chronicle." The man needs to be exposed. That he would do research in an attempt to find racial overtones for the term "water buffalo" is frightening. Mr. Politcal Correctness Run Amok is now the head of student affairs at Duke! I cry.

Duke alum

Anonymous said...

Notwithstanding the lessons of the Water Buffalo Affair, be prepared for some proposed vague speech codes.

Anonymous said...

To 1:07 AM: Thank you for your characterization of Moneta. How has Moneta been able to retain his position?

Anonymous said...

By the way, if you think that former UPenn Pres Sheldon Hackney gnashed his teeth and rendered his robes over the handling of the water buffalo affair under his stewardship, think again. Hackney's Reflections

Anonymous said...

That situation at Penn was not so amicably resolved. If my memory serves me correctly, the student was let off because he maintained that his use of the term 'water buffalo' was culturally based. He was jewish and had spent time living in Israel. It was determined that on a kibbutz a common derogatory term for noisy people is water buffalo. Thus, it was deemed that he had made an insensitive remark. The noisemakers were African-American females who lived in his dorm. I'll see if I can find more info on this.

Anonymous said...

The Water Buffalo Affair

Anonymous said...

Sheldon Hackney is the Brodhead of the Nineties. He and the water buffalo incident did immense damage to UPenn.

It's interesting to note that Penn's renaissance and re-emergence as a top Ivy school occureed once he was out of the way.

It's also interesting to note, in Hackney's above linked reflection on the water buffalo case, that he shirks responsibility for it, blames the media, panders to the fringe minority, and expresses no real regret for nearly sarcificing the career of a student at the altar of political correctness.

Sound familiar?

M. Simon said...

12:34AM,

dukechronicle.com/

Here is how you make permalinks:

<a href="url">text to display</a>

replace url with:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/02/duke-fever.html
leave the quote marks

replace text to display
with
Duke Fever

Duke Fever

james conrad said...

re 3.24 all i have to say about the water buffalo affair is.....DAMN

Anonymous said...

Note this anecdote from the Water Buffalo case. Was Moneta involved in the racist inaction noted below? This happened during the Water Buffalo case.

"What Eden "had to do," simply put, was to prevent Penn's administration from continuing the travesty, and to secure some modicum of equal justice. At Penn, however, there was no equality before the law. One incident caught the double standard in all of its hypocrisy. In 1990, several black members of a racially integrated campus fraternity had tried to teach a lesson to a white student in another fraternity, a student named Sheffield, whom they believed to be a bigot. By mistake, they kidnapped a student named O'Flanagan. In Municipal Court, that Spring, the following charges and underlying facts were admitted, uncontested, in connection with the accused kidnappers' plea bargains:


[The kidnappers] played a tape of a Malcolm X speech containing references to violence directed at whites....O'Flanagan believed that no one would be able to hear any possible cries for help...[They] drove [him] to a secluded playground/park area....They encircled [him] whispering to him again the phrase "Sheffield Deathfield!"....They also taunted him by referring to lynchings in the South, in Alabama. [He] remained handcuffed to the metal structure [in an inner-city playground] for a period of time...barefoot and only minimally clothed, and the night was cold and rainy....They then conducted a mock "trial" which consisted in part of [his] being subjected to physical discomfort, emotional distress, and repeated and intense verbal abuse....[They] talked about lynchings....and they shouted obscenities and abusive language at him. Among the phrases used were statements such as (a) "Fuck you!"; (b) "racist"; (c) "You're a neo-Nazi racist fuck!"....[They] then shoved [him] back in the car, recuffed him and drove him to the intersection of 34th and Chestnut Streets. During this 10 to 15 minute ride, they again played the same Malcolm X tape. At the intersection, they pulled [him] from the car, blindfolded. [He] believed he was being left in the middle of a highway or a busy street.20
Now, if that was not racial harassment, it was hard to see what might be, yet Penn simply suspended the integrated fraternity from having an active chapter on the campus. No individual punishment. No sensitivity seminars. No stamped transcripts.21 Reverse the races, and the date of the kidnapping would have become an annual day of shame at Penn."

james conrad said...

great piece by chris hitchens in the WSJ on robert conquest....Just as one can never imagine Mr. Conquest raising his voice or losing his temper, so one can never picture him using an obscenity for its own sake. A few years ago he said to me that the old distinctions between left and right had become irrelevant to him, adding very mildly that fools and knaves of all kinds needed to be opposed and that what was really needed was "a United Front against bulls--t." hitch on r conquest

james conrad said...

oops, heres the link hitch on conquest

Anonymous said...

Larry Moneta sat back and did nothing to protect Duke students from the anger of the mob. Moneta should be swept out with the rest.

The report of Brodhead's CCI will predictably do more damage to Duke University. Of course it has to be kept secret... for now. As soon as the Duke alums see the extreme nature of the report, there will be a new outcry against the excesses of Richard "Dick" Brodhead and his administration.

Anonymous said...

Also, the advisor to the women was none other than Houston "I did not sexually assault that student" Baker. This guy's fingerprints seem to be on everything that stinks, and I can hardly wait until he does something to make Vanderbilt look bad. (As a Tennessee graduate, I did not need any more reason to hate Vanderbilt, but then Vandy hired Baker....)

Hackney comes across to me as yet another PC "hack" who cannot understand why anyone ever would disagree with his PC view of the world. Of course, his piece on the "water buffalo" affair was the typical kind of PC "we were unfairly crucified" nonsense that we now are seeing from the G88.

These poor "victims" sure do a good job of running roughshod over the rights of others when they have power, don't they?

james conrad said...

bill anderson.....how exactly did these morons get the power to begin with and why does this sort of thing not only persist but continue to grow in academia?

S.G. said...

The infamous "water buffalo" bruhah was indeed fascinating.

It perhaps was one of the incidents that has propelled thefire.org to prominence in its assault on unconstitutional speech codes seen through-out the university system.

The battle continues. No winners yet but the anti-speech-codes group seems to be making progress.

S.G. said...

Reading thefire.org

is almost always fascinating to see the university mindset at work.

Anonymous said...

Now I finally understand it. It's at U. Penn that Houston Baker must have learned the term "farm animal". My how these hypocrits flourish.

Anonymous said...

Who are these students that the CCI is supposedly listening to?

Since their work is shrouded in secrecy, will anyone ever know? Given that their database will likely remain anonymous, how likely is it that the CCI is listening to a diverse (to use a word that academia loves so much) population within the Duke student body?

My guess is it's a lot less likely than that they are listening to a specific sub-group, i.e., those students who attend courses taught by the likes of Holloway, Davidson, Allison, and Wood.

The CCI is a farce. Duke, as an institution, has already suffered for even entertaining the idea and will suffer even more if they implement any of its recommendations.

Anonymous said...

After reading the Penn case and learning that two of the administrators involved are also involved with the Duke travesty, it has become clear that the lack of leadership at Duke is endemic and widespread.

The more I learn about the Gang of 88, what they espouse, and most importantly the tripe they teach, the more disgusted I become. It is time to raise the standard of care, implement governance controls, provide transparency AND let these racist, bigoted frauds go find somewhere else to go.

While I understand the Presdient must answer to many constituencies, it appears he has woefully fallen on the wrong side of this case and cannot ascertain right from wrong. Silence and delay speak, no scream, volumes; leaders get out front, and he appears to constructing pickets to defend against the coming legal battles. His actions mirror the actions of the President at Penn, which are shameful, take no responsibility, and indicate a complete lack of leadership while benignly supporting a deconstructionist agenda.

It is worse at Duke than it appears.

Michael said...

Nice digging KC. It's almost as if a small set of bad apples goes from school to school spreading a destructive virus.

Any thoughts on Harvard's new President? Just saw a blurb on the news last night that her background is in history.

Anonymous said...

Given his age and readiness to act in a cartoonish fashion, I'm surprised Moneta missed it: Fred Flintstone belonged to the Loyal Order of the Water Buffalo. The Penn student was saying that those noisy black sorority women were prehistoric!

One can only hope Moneta does a better job at rooting out such socially disastrous slurs at Duke.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like they used one of their favorite tactics, The Delphi Technique.

http://www.http://www.eagleforum.org/
educate/1998/nov98/focus.html

Anonymous said...

The Delphi Technique

Anonymous said...

Re: Student allegedly raped off campus.

Just for the record, this is allegded to have occured at Phi Beta Sigma, a "Black Greek lettered organization".


For a very long time now, each time there is a crime where hate is a possible contributing factor, Nofing and those who enabled him are going to have to ask themselves if what they did added the additional quantity of evil that tipped things. I'm not saying anything happened here -- but it will be very interesting to see how things develop. This is very unfortunate either way.

In addition, the eyes of the world will be on the justice system in Durham, to see if it will do the right thing. If it comes to it, will a Durhamite jury convict someone of black-on-white crime?

Anonymous said...

If Duke is so enamored of taking in castoffs from institutions that happen to rank closer to the top of "the list" than does Duke, perhaps they should consider hiring the former Harvard President?

Anonymous said...

For those who have raised children or who have college age children, you may not realize how deep into the education chain the Culture of Offense goes. I had children in a prominent private school and already in the lower grades it almost became impossible for children to play together on the playground because someone's parent was always complaining about their child feeling "uncomfortable" with a comment made by another child. I could never figure out what that "uncomfortable" meant, but I can assure you that the word police were alive and well in this school. In hindsight, the children all acted like clones of one another. There was no tolerance for individuality whatsoever. This is not just in higher education.

David said...

Has there been a drop in enrollments at Duke?

And if not, why not?

Anonymous said...

In re: the story linked by 8:56 AM ---

It doesn't mention the most important aspect of the situation so that the reader can determine if a real crime was committed -- whether or not there was under-age drinking taking place at the party.

Anonymous said...

Blaming Moneta on Brodhead is foolish. Keohane hired him. And Dean Sue. She also was President when Baker was hired. She appointed Chafe, Holloway, Davidson as administrators. An incredible micromanager, she created the "Woman's Initiative" (sound familiar?) to make women more important to the life of Duke. She created the Baldwin Scholars to have a cohort of women treated differently by having access to special programming which excluded men. She funded Women's Studies, and AAAS to present levels. Neither Sanford nor Brodie did these things.

She crusaded against drinking and partying which she said were hostile to education. When she arrived she was publically hostile to athletics too, until Butters and K handed her her head.

Oh, by the way, she was on the Harvard committee that just selected Faust as Harvard President.

Brodhead has yet to have the opportunity to select any senior administrator -- he's inherited Keohane's group.

Eric said...

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the first item on CCI's agenda will be banning the Greek system on campus. This has been the goal of much of the Duke faculty and administration for a few decades now. They haven't succeeded yet because the only think more important to Duke than Leftist academic credibility is Alumni donations.

With a couple of exceptions, I have no love for Duke fraternities (I lived in Epworth/S.H.A.R.E!) but the dislike of the frats by the administration has always seemed like a surrogate for greater control over the undergraduate student body and a manipulation of student life to maximize alumni contributions later in life. This was the impetus behind making East Campus all-freshmen housing. Studies found that greater Class cohesion produces a higher level of alumni involvement.

Anonymous said...

Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but for more fascinating reading on speech codes, Sheldon Hackney and the Water Buffalo incident, Moneta, Herbert Marcuse, Catharine MacKinnon, and other totalitarians, read:

The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses by Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate.

I think these guys might also run a website that discusses the relative levels of freedom and different campuses.

SAVANT

Anonymous said...

bill anderson.....how exactly did these morons get the power to begin with and why does this sort of thing not only persist but continue to grow in academia?

6:55 AM


To give a short answer, the college campus is a place where there a few penalties for being wrong. Remember in 1968 when Paul Ehrlich, a scientist at Stanford, wrote The Population Bomb in which he made all sorts of dire predictions that never came true?

Ehrlich never suffered professionally for what he did. Had he been at a company that (horrors) makes profits, his wrong predictions would have brought down the company, and he would have been out of work. Instead, he still is an honored "prophet" at Stanford.

Look at the cast of characters in the Duke case. Could any of these people have made it outside of academe? They are in a cloistered atmosphere, given freedom to rant about their supposed "oppression," paid very high salaries, and yet still claim that they are victims.

If a corporation president made the same idiotic mistakes that Brodhead has made, how long would he or she have a job? Yet, I can guarantee you that people like Brodhead believe they are intellectually and morally superior to the typical corporation president.

Again, my sense is that when there are few consequences for being wrong, you will see the kind of behavior we have seen in this case.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Conrad asks:

" . . . [h]ow exactly did these morons get the power to begin with and why does this sort of thing not only persist but continue to grow in academia?"

The answer is they get this power in $45,000 per year increments as well as varying amounts of alumni support which is reflected in $$.

These frauds won't be pried off the teat. The teat must be taken away. And the teat won't go away until there is exposure and lots of it.

Gary Packwood said...

Anonymous 1:07 AM

Thank you for your helpful post which gave me a little pinhole peek into day-to-day life at Duke.

You mentioned that during your four years at Duke you questioned many of Larry Moneta's policies.

Usually, 'policies' are the responsibility of the board of trustees and the president.

Did you find that during your four years as a student that many people presented themselves as making policies 'for' Duke University?

Howard said...

1. When you couple this with the Harvard hire as university president one of the most radical persons possible, and discover this hire is to give the stamp of approval to the already radical left faculty, I think it is safe to assume that the radical Left has taken over the entire university system, complete with censorship, "laws" that only act to validate all those who get their feelings hurt and mete out punishment to those who "hurt" other's feelings, etc. etc. etc.

2. Take a look at the current Duke basketball team. It is already the result of some of the top high school players avoiding Duke like it was toxic; you can bet every recruiter in the country throws this case in the faces of parents and prospects; and will throw the anti "jock" remarks of the CCI on the table too. And should you take an even harder look at the current season you will find that Duke is being whipped by outstanding freshmen at other schools who decided against Duke.

I don't know how much money the basketball program generates at Duke, but losing teams ain't appearing on ESPN every week.

As this thing plays out, the "unintended consequences" rule will raise its ugly head.

Anonymous said...

To Bill A 9:43 and Anon 9:50 -

Correct, but affecting fundamental change at an institution like Duke is a Sisyphean task and will require more than just exposure. I would venture to say that many at Duke are oblivious to these issues, and the ones that aren't are perpetuating its problems - a double whammy that conspires against self-examination.

--Lumpy Gravy

Anonymous said...

To 7:25,

I think you have answered your own question. People who don't like to be contradicted tend to go to the sympathetic and sycophantic for "input" and "data". I doubt these folks are up to speed on concepts like random samples or appropriate study designs.

This could have a lot to do with their anti-democratic impulses. As an example, the liberal intelligentsia of Michigan was stunned when 58% of the state's voters approved Proposition 2 which prohibits racial preferences. This was, of course, the same electorate that re-elected their Democratic Senator and Governor by comfortable margins.

Expect the CCI to seek out the input of those few who will admire their fine, new clothes and ignore the many who see them as buck naked.

The key is constant exposure and attention to their antics. Like the Leftists in Michigan, these people usually lose (and badly) in a fair marketplace of ideas where everyone has an opportunity for input.

Anonymous said...

No - the perp in the latest real rape is black? Watching the news and reading the local websites that is not mentioned - of course not - almost all the rapes here are done by black men - so it's not news. I get that.

Jes gettin' even fo' slavery! Oh yeah. Hope they catch the SOB and throw him in jail. Oh, right, this is Durham, where real (tm) rapists run free and the mayor just changed the city motto from "City of Medicine" to "City of Rape". Way to look after things, Bell...

Anonymous said...

To Howard at 10:03--
Granted it's possible this situation may be a factor in future Duke basketball recruiting, the woes of the current team have little, if anything, to do with the lacrosse incident. A much more important factor is that top players who should be at Duke right now, such as Luol Deng (who left after his freshman year) and Shaun Livingston (who had committed to Duke but chose to go pro without college, before the rules changed), are in the NBA instead. Duke has actually been fairly successful in recruiting the players it wanted for the current freshman class and next year's incoming class--so if better players are going elsewhere (and a quick look down Tobacco Road to UNC suggests some of them are), it may have something to do with choices made by the Duke coaching staff as well as by the players. Bottom line, I think Duke's current problems on the basketball court are a basketball issue, not a socio-political issue.

Anonymous said...

8:56 - a jury here cannot convict someone who is not caught. Even if they are caught, they have to be charged. But more to the point, even black rapists get sent to prison here. Not for long, mind you, but they are sometimes convicted.

Anonymous said...

Should we publish a Listening Statement about black-on-white rape, if it is indeed true that a white woman was raped by a black man?

Another benefit of ending affirmative action, and loq-IQ college sports, is that Asian and white women will have fewer predators to worry about.

Anonymous said...

The new McCarthyism of the Leftist whacko fringe is the speech code. Perversely vague, its intent is to create sanctions for speech based on the subjective ideas of the people who created it. Thus, the term "water buffalo" is racist because a white male stated it to a group of black females. It must be both sexist and racist, because white males are, as we all know, sexist and racist, and black females are the victims of such sexist and racist attitudes and statements. This act of mental gymnastics is played on a regular basis at colleges all over America, with results that reek of injustice.

I also find it more than a little troubling that such a group lacks transparency in its meeting and operations. A cabal of like minds operating as a de facto secret society is always a dangerous thing when its directives operate to restrict the rights and freedoms of others. It definitely raises the issue of motive in this case.

Why are their meetings held in secret? Why can no other members of the campus community attend? What is discussed? Are there notes/minutes from such meetings?

Perhaps open meeting requirements of academic groups such as CCI would be too much to ask at Duke University?

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

Anonymous said...

Male students I talked to in the Fall about the CCI didn't take it seriously. They figured it would come out with a report saying how horrible white male students are and how much in need of political reeducuation they are. They figured the report would cause noise but not affect them in any important way. They frankly have other things to worry and think about.

I am reading The Shadow University now, as well as The Killing of History. I feel like I am catching up on a debate that I left when I entered the real world of employment. When I was still engaged in it 30+ years ago freedom of speech and expression were powerful tools in civil rights and anti-Vietnam war issues. Now it seems that people on the "left" have turned freedom of speech values on their head--only the powerless (non-white males) should have that freedom and members of the dominant group should not be free to say insulting or disparaging things about the "oppressed" group.

A few weeks ago I emailed Profs. Kors and Silverglate to ask what role Houston Baker had in the water buffalo affair, the black fraternity hazing (and quad egg throwing) affair, the "O'Flanagan" affair and the seizure of the student newspaper affair at Penn. All these are described in the water buffalo chapter in The Shadow University and all of them happened while Baker and Moneta were at Penn, I believe. I did not hear back from either Kors or Silverglate, but I used the email addresses they had at thefire.org and those may be out of date. Besides they may have more important things on their minds, and I am just some anonymous schmoe on the internet, anyway.

I can't tell whether Moneta functions as a flak for the administration, both to media and the students, or whether the decisions he announces are his. The students I talk to hold him in very low regard, as one of the recent alum posters above recited.

Anonymous said...

10:27 - not sure what you mean, but here in Durham many women of all races are raped by black men. Happens all the time. Most of the rapists are just local rapists, not students. It's a good job, judging by its popularity among the local thugs.

Gary Packwood said...

Bakerman 9:07 AM

said...
Has there been a drop in enrollments at Duke?

And if not, why not?

When Universities have endowments in the BILLIONS of dollars (Duke = $4.5B) the annual tax sheltered income from that endowment can provided for many scholarships.

Enrollment data at such universities need to be studied carefully if you want to draw conclusion about the rise and fall of student enrollment that makes any sense.

Anonymous said...

Regarding last weekend's rape . . . it just doesn't fit the metanarrative. Maybe Kim Curtis can find a way to discredit the alleged victim because this would not be a good time to have any attention drawn by black perpetrators. At least the N&O is with the program and was polite enough not to mention skin tone in the description of the attacker.

Always defend the metanarrative.

Anonymous said...

Am reminded of the Andy Griffth show episode,"The Education of Ernest T. Bass" (1964), starring Howard Morris, as Ernest T. Bass.

In it, the very prim and proper, Mrs. Wylie, calls Ernest T. a "creature" as he gamely attempts to learn manners so that he may romances Ramona.

According to Moneta, Ernest T.'s language would violate his language code.

Anonymous said...

Just before everyone gets too excited, the race of the alleged rape victim has not been reported, and I don't think there's any particular reason to assume that she is white. In fact, as an attendee at a party sponsored by members of a "Black Greek lettered organization," it's probably more likely that she is also black. There is apparently a real issue as to whether the suspect is a Duke student, as the party was attended by non-students as well.

Of course there is some interesting reporting in the MSM. Compare the News-Observer's description of the suspect to the Duke Chronicle's:

News Observer: "The man is described as being in his late teens or early 20s, about 6 feet 1 and wearing a black do-rag, a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans, according to a police news release."

Chronicle: "Police said the suspect is described as a black male in his late teens or early 20s, about 6-foot-1 and was wearing a black do-rag, gray sweatshirt and blue jeans."

A Greensboro News-Record article linked on a previous post offers no description of the suspect, but includes this helpful information: "Asked if athletes lived in the apartment where Sunday's alleged assault occurred, Duke spokesman David Jarmul said, "I have no information about that." "

Gary Packwood said...

duke09kparent 10:30 AM

Great Post!

We should pay close attention to parents, graduates and students.

I wish there was a way to search for such posts.

You mentioned that the students..."frankly have other things to worry and think about."

That is exactly the point. Students are the primary customers and everyone needs to focus on what students worry about and think about ... on their way to graduation.

You get the idea sometimes that some of these strange professors are actually saying that Duke would be a wonderful place except for the silly students?!

Anonymous said...

10:42 - thanks for the information. As I say, rapists here just rape - it is not always a black retribution thing. Just a black thing.

The sad reality is that black on black crime here is awful - but it is under reported for various reasons. That's the true tragedy, but until some of the morbidly obese NAACP leaders or reporters (Cash - I'm talkin' to you, gordo) get on point, it's not going to change.

Anonymous said...

The Students of Duke should speak loud and clear of what they want and what they deserve. They are the ones who are paying the $45,000 plus for the education at Duke. They are the ones who will be paying off the student loans for years to come. Speak up students, this is not the education you want. The CCI is not thinking in your best interest but their own. They have stolen your education experience and the best 4 years of your life from you. Get it back. Let the Administration know you paid for an education not a politically agenda driven racist hate fest from the professors.

Anonymous said...

11:05:

"They [CCI] have stolen your education experience and the best 4 years of your life from you."

That is at least premature if not a complete overreaction. Personally, I hope several students engage in any CCI forums on the issues. I'm willing to bet Stephen Miller goes to the forum tonight (Monday), because he has already invested a lot of time and energy in this.

But the students I talk to don't think the CCI will have much impact.

There are so many ironies in this whole business. If the Group of 88 issued an apology for the prejudgment aspects of the Listening Statement, they would probably have a much larger and receptive audience for the concerns they want to raise.

Anonymous said...

Am I the only one who sees this whole sordid travesty of justice as a microcosm of the Zimbabwe-ization of America? Privileged and competent whites againts agrieved and angry (and incompetent) blacks and their enablers?

Anonymous said...

It's telling that the Penn 'water buffalo' case, and now the CCI cabal, enjoy two administrators in common. It's apparently no accident that the CCI gang are grinding out their process in secret - they follow the Penn procedure, which also did so.

Dr. Kors, in 'The Shadow University', gives revealing details on how such Star Chamber processes work. In the Penn case, the process was egregiously rigged against its selected fall guy Eden Jacobowitz (Sheldon Hackney's tortured description assiduously omits the arbitrary unappealable edicts from the campus 'judicial' thugs). Only the shining of some real light by national media (a case where Rush Limbaugh and NPR actually agreed) on Penn's 'judicial' process prevented their attempted lynching of Jacobowitz. Hackney's revulsion at this exposure is plain in his posing as the victim of an evil right-wing media.

At Duke, the CCI swung into action in just the same way, with secret deliberations and three selected fall guys from the lacrosse team. The LAX team's candor is a direct parallel with Jacobowitz's - but here, there was an outside producer, director and actor named Nifong whose drama was the reverse of the media storm directed against Penn. Nifong actually succeeded in creating a media storm against the LAX players for a while (what joy the CCI maggots must have felt), before KC Johnson and a few other reasonable parties shone enough light to turn the tide.

The world of law and liberty now owes two professors - Alan Charles Kors, and now KC Johnson - big time for exposing the Orwellian thuggery of the campus PC movement. In neither case was it easy, and without continued vigilance said thugs will continue in their intellectual fascism.

Insufficiently Sensitive

Anonymous said...

I looked at Hackney's Reflections as 2:05 a.m. linked. I didn't find it that reprehensible, just a little self-righteous. It gave his perspective on things as they happened in that affair. He thought he should stay out of a student judiciary matter, but finally talked to all three sides (the insulted black students, the accused and the process people) to encourage a negotiated solution.

From the article:
"With regard to the incident itself, they [the black women students] said they had heard Jacobowitz call them not just water buffalo but “black” water buffalo. Moreover, his shouts were part of a general barrage of insults, including “the N word” and the “word for a female dog.” Of course they were offended. Professor Peggy Sanday, their advisor, Professor Houston Baker, and Trustee Gloria Chisum Gr’60 Hon’94 had all been extremely helpful to the students as they thought their situation through. In addition, those three appeared at the press conference and spoke sympathetically about the plight of the complainants, bound as they had been to silence."

Note the presence of Houston Baker. Given his behavior in the Duke case, does anyone think he was trying to find a solution to the Penn situation that recognized the perspectives of both sides?

Hackney makes a good point that mediation in such a situation could have produced a better resolution. The women had a right to be upset about racial epithets. Jacobowitz could have explained his position that his epithet was not racist. They didn't even have to agree that it was or wasn't. Jacobowitz probably would have agreed that other, frankly racial epithets were shouted and were wrong. Hell, they might have even been able to issue a joint statement decrying racial hate speech.

Kors and Jacobowitz had little choice but to go public, since it appeared he would otherwise be railroaded by the judicial disciplinary hearing.

Anonymous said...

"Jacobowitz could have explained his position that his epithet was not racist."

He had already done so to the 'Judicial Inquiry Officer', and offered to write a letter to the aggrieved victims explaining so and apologising for any rudeness. The JIO said, not good enough, and followed by asking him 'weren't you having racist thoughts when you said water buffalo'?

The Inquisition was already under way, and proceeded to worsen, despite Sheldon Hackney's earlier agreement that calling a white person a 'fucking fascist white male pig' was NOT racial harassment.

The JIO offered Jacobowitz a 'settlement' in which he was to confess his 'inappropriate behavior' to the 'victims', set up a diversity-brainwashing program for his fellow dorm residents, be put on probation at hazard of expulsion from the University, and have a black mark placed in his transcript. In other words, a Soviet-style confession of impure thoughts, with perpetual hazard of further pseudo-judicial process against him whenever someone declared themselves 'offended' by his speech.

No human with a functioning brain could fail to see that racial harassment, to the Penn 'judicial' process, was to be defined as occuring only against blacks

Anonymous said...

Admission requirements for Duke basketball players are considerably higher than at most other programs. This whole affair can't help recruiting, but they do remarkably well year after year.

I hope that players who can meet the admissions requirements continue to hold Coach K and the program in high reguard and to choose Duke. If one were to remove the atheletes, those with priviledged circumstances, whites, and males, Duke would not be the place it is.

Yet there are those who seem to hold that it would be a better place...

Anonymous said...

I had no idea Moneta was the "water buffalo" guy. That was probably the most laughable example of a campus speech code gone wild ever recoded, although the make-out checklist proposed by feminist professors and administrators at a college in PA runs a close second.

The politically correct on campus, by the unsoundness of their ideas, have begun to undermine their own project. These inherently adolescent ideas can't withstand the burden of maturity, and so when fashioned into policy invite mockery and scorn, and soon diminish in persuasive power.

Conservatives know better than to toy with human nature in the manner so attractive to "progressives." And therein lies a large measure of the appeal of conservatism to adults, and the reason behind the short life span of so many "progressive" movements.

beckett

Anonymous said...

beckett at 2:26

slight correction. It was Antioch College in Yellow Springs Ohio.

Anonymous said...

To 2:26

Was it Antioch, bastion of Mumia supporters? The school ran through my mind as I was trying to recall the specifics of the case, but I rejected it, mistakenly it seems, because I could have sworn it was a Pennsylvanian college. Anyway, thank you for the correction.

beckett

Anonymous said...

beckett,

You both were right. Antioch had/s the policy that says every step has to have verbal consent. According to Gettysburg College in PA has a policy that might make a hug a sexual assault:

"Gettysburg's policy, publicized by the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, defines sexual misconduct as ''a threat of a sexual nature or deliberate physical contact of a sexual nature without the other person's consent," and goes on to state that the physical contact covered by the policy includes nonconsensual ''brushing, touching, grabbing, pinching, patting, hugging, and kissing," as well as ''coerced sexual activities, including rape."

http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/7049.html

BTW, I thought it might have been Oberlin, but a google search just brought up stuff on its Safer Sex Night which used to have a Tent of Consent.
http://www.clevescene.com/2002-11-20/news/the-safety-dance/

Anonymous said...

Correction:

"According to Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)"

Here's a more current link to the issue at Gettysburg

http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/7035.html

Neighborhood Retail Alliance said...

What our friend Moneta didn't realize, because he is not as culturally sensitive as he thinks he is, is that "water buffalo" is an English version of the Yiddish "behaimer" (sorry for the poor translation). This is an uncomplimentary expression that is used on people of all races-after all it is centuries old and originates in areas that knew no black people at all.

Anonymous said...

I am deeply upset that "Water Buffalo" boy is Moneta.

How depressing. I wrote my last check in Jan. At least number one son was in Econ, so he didn't get too infected with the BS.
Kemp

Gary Packwood said...

Eric 9:21 AM
Eric you used the phrase The ACADEMY when discussing Duke.

The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademeia, a sanctuary of Athene, the goddess of wisdom, north of Athens.

There are very few universities in the USA that still use the phrase 'The Academy'.

Those who do use that phrase are looked upon as somewhat elitist and not especially friendly to students who are not studying the Liberal Arts.

If Harvard profs talked about "The Academy" folks would roll their eyes.

Did you hear that phrase when you were studying at Duke?

Anonymous said...

As I've said here before, Duke is not a passive "victim" in all this. The faculty and admin is pervaded with the politically correct. It is NOT "Duke vs its detractors". Rather, it is "Duke at war with itself", a war that seems all but lost to the politically correct. The reaction of virtually ALL of Duke's faculty and administrators to the charges of rape (hostility towards the lacrosse team or silence) proves my point. Duke was already far gone BEFORE all of these unfortunate events.

Anonymous said...

Duke is at war with itself. How this plays out is entirely up to the Duke players. Once the charges are dismissed, most of us will be leaving Duke and Durham. Moving with KC and Bill to another cause. I am reminded of Santa Maria, Ca. The town made a lot of money on the trial,as they should. When the trial was over, everyone moved on.

Anonymous said...

Sort of related:

"A ‘Rebellious Daughter’ to Lead Harvard"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/education/12harvard.html?em&ex=1171515600&en=d383bca13cde68d7&ei=5087%0A

The new Harvard president chaired Women's Studies at U Penn for four years.

Anonymous said...

Sheldon Hackney said of her:

"I have immense regard for her, as a scholar, a teacher and now as an administrator. She could take Harvard wherever it wants to go."