Tuesday, March 20, 2007

March Madness, III: The Faculty

The first two editions of DIW’s “March Madness” looked at the 10 worst op-eds and 10 worst “news” articles of the case. Today’s bracket features the 10 worst case-related publications of the Duke arts and sciences faculty. As with yesterday’s bracket, the worst of the worst ranked is #1. Reader nominations are welcome in the comment thread. Worst of the soundbites come tomorrow.

The most famous faculty publication of this case, the Group of 88 statement, deserves a category all to itself in a Hall of Shame. This bracket will be confined to single-person publication.

10.) Orin Starn, “A Grand Show of Arrogance by Duke Athletics,” Herald-Sun, Sept. 15, 2006. Starn spent most of 2006 exploiting the lacrosse case as part of his crusade to transform Duke into the Haverford of the Triangle, an institution with Division III or club athletics. Of course, he never quite explained how this case should promote his goal: presumably club or Division III athletes could also hold spring break parties with beer and strippers. In his op-ed, Starn suggested he would remain “vigilant in ensuring that both [the players] and their accuser receive fair treatment from the justice system.” Given his demand for a trial and his refusal to condemn Mike Nifong’s procedural violations, with friends like Starn, the players needed no enemies.

9.) Mark Anthony Neal, (White) Male Privilege, Black Respectability, and Black Women’s Bodies,” NewBlackMan, 11 April 2006. The self-described “thugniggaintellectual” brought his unique insights to this mid-April post: “Regardless of what happened inside of 610 N. Buchanan Blvd, the young men were hoping to consume something that they felt that a black woman uniquely possessed. If these young men did in fact rape, sodomize, rob, and beat this young women [sic], it wasn’t simply because she was a women [sic], but because she was a black woman.” Facts (the players didn’t request black women, and the agency told them white and Hispanic women would be sent)—not to mention basic grammar rules—appear to be optional in Neal’s analysis.

8.) William Chafe, “Opinion: What Next at Duke?,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 3, 2006. Having already condemned the lacrosse players locally, the former dean of faculty went national in this essay, comparing the “Duke lacrosse fiasco” to Hurricane Katrina(!), since, “In one horrific evening early this spring at Duke University, the tensions of race, sexuality, town-gown conflict, and class inequity came together in an explosion that laid bare the fault lines that threaten our capacity to act as a human community.” Chafe also offered a line that is better read as an indictment of the faculty as a whole: “The events that we know took place reflect underlying realities of student culture, at Duke and at American colleges and universities generally, that cry out for attention.” Agreed: the rush-to-judgment atmosphere among Duke’s arts and sciences faculty does reflect the situation at American colleges and universities generally; and, indeed, it cries out for attention.

7.) Elizabeth Chin, “Out of Their Worlds,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 26, 2006. In the spring 2006 semester, Chin was a visiting professor in (of course) the Cultural Anthropology Department. She published a memoir of her experience teaching a course called “Girl Culture/Power,” in which she used class time to have her students to go outside and listen to an anti-lacrosse player rally. “After a while,” she related, “I noticed that, one by one, the sorority girls were going back inside.” (Many of the sorority “girls” knew members of the lacrosse team.) Chin continues: “When I went after them, their pain and frustration were obvious. ‘It's just not fair being targeted as a group,’ wailed one woman.” Wailed? Imagine the appropriate condemnation from faculty members like Chin if a male professor had used this verb to describe an upset “girl” in his class. Chin’s response to the demonstration and its aftermath effectively assumed that the players were guilty, her view of the scandal was undeniably correct, and teaching diversity is the only conceivable approach in the classroom. Her view of an in-class “olive branch”? One of her favorite students, a “radical woman,” admitted that she had a common experience with a sorority “girl”: the “radical woman,” too, knew a man who “had raped someone.”

6.) Wahneema Lubiano, “Perfect Offenders, Perfect Victim: The Limitations of Spectacularity in the Aftermath of the Lacrosse Team Incident,” NewBlackMan, 13 April 2006. Lubiano took time away from preparing her two “forthcoming” manuscripts to pen this essay, which included a line that New York’s Kurt Andersen correctly dubbed a perfect example of the academy’s “loopy left”: “Regardless of the ‘truth’ established in whatever period of time about the incident at the house on N. Buchanan Blvd. . . . [and] whatever happens with the court case, what people are asking is that something changes.” Translation: facts be damned, and full speech ahead with exploiting the case for her own personal and pedagogical aims.

5.) Houston Baker, “Awaiting the Restoration of Confidence: A Letter to the Duke University Administration,” public letter, March 29, 2006. Without a doubt the most vile publication of any Duke professor during the affair, it would have rated higher but for its being so inappropriate as to provoke a well-reasoned public response, from Provost Peter Lange. Ten times in his letter Baker referred to the race of the lacrosse players in a derogatory fashion. As a thought experiment, re-read his letter, but substitute “black” for Baker’s use of “white” and “blackness” for his use of “whiteness.” Now imagine the (appropriate) outrage if any college professor, anywhere in the country, released such a letter.

4.) Cathy Davidson, “In the Aftermath of a Social Disaster,” N&O, January 5, 2007. An apologia for the Group of 88’s statement, Davidson led off her essay by making a transparently false claim: “The ad said that we faculty were listening to the anguish of students who felt demeaned by racist and sexist remarks swirling around in the media and on the campus quad in the aftermath of what happened on March 13 in the lacrosse house. The insults, at that time, were rampant. It was as if defending David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann necessitated reverting to pernicious stereotypes about African-Americans, especially poor black women.” Yet between March 29 and April 6, when the statement was produced, virtually no student or media support came for the lacrosse team in general or for Seligmann and Finnerty (who weren’t even targets of the investigation for most of this period) in particular. After lionizing the accuser, Davidson concluded by suggesting that the real victims in the affair were members of the Group of 88, victimized by unnamed “right-wing ‘blog hooligans’.”

3.) Karla Holloway, “Coda: Bodies of Evidence,” Scholar and Feminist Online, July 2006. In her distinctively opaque prose, Holloway revealed that the victim in the lacrosse affair was . . . Karla Holloway, because of her increased committee work. (She had made the same point in a Herald-Sun letter that appeared a few weeks before this summertime essay.) She also lashed out at the women’s lacrosse team, which had the audacity to take a public position (expressing sympathy with the three players targeted by Mike Nifong) that was at odds with the position taken by . . . Karla Holloway.

2.) William Chafe, “Sex and Race,” Chronicle, March 31, 2006. Since Chafe, through his “diversity” program as dean of faculty, played such a critical role in hiring many of the Group of 88, it seems fitting that he is the only professor to appear twice in this bracket. In this op-ed, he famously suggested that the whites who lynched Emmett Till provided the appropriate historical context through which to interpret the actions of the lacrosse players. If only to confirm the “groupthink” atmosphere prevalent among Duke’s arts and sciences faculty, visiting professor Tim Tyson penned an op-ed for the N&O only two days after Chafe’s piece. Tyson’s thesis? “The spirit of the lynch mob lived in that house on Buchanan Boulevard, regardless of the truth of the most serious charges. The ghastly spectacle takes its place in a history where African- American men were burned at the stake for ‘reckless eyeballing’—that is, looking at a white woman—and white men kept black concubines and mistresses and raped black women at will.” And though Tyson closely mimicked his argument, Professor Chafe didn’t even get a cite!

1) Grant Farred, “Secret Racism Underlying Lacrosse Case,” Herald-Sun, October 29, 2006. In the final public statement by any member of the Duke arts and sciences faculty before the November 7 election, Group of 88 member Farred preposterously accused Duke students who wanted to exercise their right to vote of “secret racism.” The voter registration drive, he indicated, “does little more than obscure what is really at stake”—the battle against “historic white privilege” and an analysis of the team’s “reputed tendency toward arrogant sexual prowess” (he cited no evidence for this claim), among the “proclivities” that illuminated the “ongoing racism in the not-so-New South.” Farred accused Duke students of “closing ranks against Durham” and demanded that they get out of the way so Nifong could serve four more years.

That a college professor could effectively slander hundreds of his school’s own students for their seeking to participate in the political process was enough to earn Farred the worst of the worst honors for publications by Duke arts and sciences faculty.

91 comments:

Anonymous said...

KC - Starn, Wood and Rosenberg make me the maddest, Probably Wood yhe most. He is so smug and the picture of him at the lacrosse field is way to much. Go get'em

Anonymous said...

Duke could find better professors elsewhere. Try Brooklyn College and Frostburg State.

Anonymous said...

hoping to consume something that they felt that a black woman uniquely possessed

I have tried to understand what is this "uniquely possessed". Is is the sperm of GGM's 5 clients?

I concur: It is probably quite unique. Not sure if any other "escort" possessed the same combination of sperm from the same 5 clients.

Anonymous said...

“After a while,” she related, “I noticed that, one by one, the sorority girls were going back inside.” (Many of the sorority “girls” knew members of the lacrosse team.) Chin continues: “When I went after them, their pain and frustration were obvious. ‘It's just not fair being targeted as a group,’ wailed one woman.”

Is it possible the young lady meant, "It's not fair the lacrosse players were being targeted as a group"?

Gary Packwood said...

Grant Farred and other Duke faculty members discussed here needed to move this manufactured crisis forward in order to justify the existence of their own agenda and the 'Safe Haven' place on campus...which represents the day-to-day aspects of their...agenda.

If they did not have this crisis to work with, Duke may have needed to move Emmett Till to the 'Save Haven' as such a place has no relevance to the mission of the university except as a sad reminder of how things were many years ago.

God grant peace to Emmett Till and Duke University

Anonymous said...

The irony is that the 88 and the Angry/Silly Studies crowd didn't really need to jump on this manufactured "social disaster." Their take-over of the administration and developing hegemony over "campus culture" at Duke were proceeding very well. If they'd just restrained themselves, they could have gone on teaching their ludicrous classes, publishing poorly-written articles -- largely about themselves and their personal musings -- in Mickey Mouse journals (or in some cases not publishing at all), demanding more power and deference, shouting down differing opinions and denouncing those who disagree as racists, sexists and oppressors. Very few people other than the Horowitz faction would have paid attention to them and their stealth campaign would have continued to grow. But they just couldn't restrain themselves and the result is that they've been 'outed' and the silent(ish) moderate majority of the Duke family is horrified by them. While the 88 are still hanging together in public, I'd bet that many are privately furious with Lubiano and Holloway for talking them into destroying their reputations.

Anonymous said...

Good Work. The Group of 88 and the other other apologists notwithstanding, it seems obvious that higher education would benefit greatly from a diversity program. However, it would need to be a cultural and political diversity program. None of the G-88 need apply, because what Duke in particular and higher education in general need are no more Chafes or Hollways, but many more Johnsons and Andersons.

Orson Buggeigh

Anonymous said...

A hard choice indeed, as with the other categories, given how much awful material there is to choose from. But I would not have hesitated myself to put Houston Baker's odious screed first. It is nothing less than a scandal that an American academic could write such a thing... just because he's black. He should be unemployable, but instead now works for Vanderbilt University. How?

Anonymous said...

I suspect that an underlying problem in parts of Academia these days is that some faculty have lost the notion that they are members of a Profession.
As I understand these things, a professional is someone who posesses a specialized body of knowledge and skill, to be sure, but beyond that has accepted an ethical code in regard to reliably looking after the interests of anyone who comes to be accepted as a client, or patient, or ... student. Certain duties are explicit and binding, for professionals, because of the vulnerability and/or in-completeness of the client/patient/student - who all deserve (or just badly need) someone who takes their side.
Doctors who poison certain of their patients, lawyers who sell out a client to the other side - have transgressed.
To my way of thinking, for university faculity to have any claim on being "Professionals" they must take on a lot of the same duties in regard to the kids they agree to educate.

Anonymous said...

"Wailed???" "girls"!!!! Outragous -Chin's words are meant to demean the female students and make them look stupid. The same think was tried by some of the press on the Womens Lacrosse team. I for one have learned to question this stuff. Chin made this up.
I can't imagine any one choosing to live in Durham.

Anonymous said...

I don't know where poor Till is buried, but I hope it is an honorable place.

Anonymous said...

The arrogant self-promotion and hypocrisy of these members of the Duke faculty is disgusting.

I can remember reading the May, 2006 article from Elizabeth Chin in the Chronicle of Higher Learning, and recognizing that, for many Duke faculty members, this case was going to be about political and personal agendas.

The insane smugness with which Chin contrasted her sorority "girls" with her radical "women" was enough to make one cringe.

Could Chin really be so dense as to not recognize her own gross misuse of a smearing stereotype?
And did Chin receive a rebuke from any of the readers of the Chronicle for Higher Learning? If so, I did not see it.

All parents of sorority "girls" should take note of the immense prejudice faced by their daughters on America's college campuses by feminist members of the "Angry Studies" faculty.

A Duke Mom

james conrad said...

what is most disturbing here is not that academia is hiring morons to teach mostly nonsense but that its promoting morons to positions of authority. america has pretty much destroyed public K-12 education and it apppears the rot is now infecting colleges to an alarming degree.

Anonymous said...

Duke's Trustees apparently do not yet understand the damage these mediocre and venal hostiles are doing to Duke's reputation. I believe Duke's yield rate will drop substantially among key demographic groups over the next several years, resulting in a long term decline for Duke, excepting the School of Medicine. sic semper tyrannis

Anonymous said...

Just think.

The racists and sociopaths on this list will be teaching the proposed required "diversity" course.

All the bright young high school kids from across America will be considered morally unfit to attend Duke until they go through political indoctrination and have their secret racism dealt with by Wahbeena, Farred or Tyson.

Anonymous said...

Duke is, at least when it comes to the baseless arrogance and talent for delusion of its faculty, a powerhouse. What other team could trade someone of Houston Baker's caliber and still bring it like this?

But there is no better symbol of the depth of Duke's mad-squad than that a player like Mark Anthony Neal sits on the bench. The thugniggaintellectual ranked no higher than number 9? Most places this guy would definitely start.

Why is the Duke team so strong? Chafe gets a lot of credit for recruiting, but it's really the program, the overall culture that allows Duke to dominate; Brodhead has been instrumental in letting the talents make their little mistakes and grow.

That's why when March Madness rolls around, other schools are on notice: Duke will take a back seat to no one in madness.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to think this rogues gallery is confined to Duke, but we all know differently. In fact, had this incident happened at almost any other university, I can say with complete certainty that that institution's versions of Starn, Chin, Lubiano, Baker, Chafe, et. al. would have appeared front and center, ready to expound the same nonsense as is exhibited here, such is the sorry state of education in this country.

That there are people within the educational system such as Profs. Johnson and Anderson, and, for example, Coleman at Duke itself, is small comfort in the realization that education in this country has been largely hijacked by a group of people unfit to occupy their positions. While the "hard" science professors at Duke appear to have stayed above the fray, one need only look at the situation involving Larry Summers at Harvard to witness an occasion in which science professors ran wild in their condemnation of a man who was merely positing an idea. So the cancer reflected in these 10 examples knows no bounds as to discipline or geography.

America had better wake up and realize what they are creating in the sick environment known collectively as US higher education. It's time to take a stand against the Holloways, Neals, Davidsons, and all others of their ilk and tell them they are free to teach their rot, but under no circumstances are rules going to be put in place that even one student is required to attend their classes as a condition for anything.

Greg Allan said...

These are the people who worry me the most. They are bigots who are passing their own bigotry to the young. That they are still employed in an educational setting is a travesty.

Anonymous said...

In contrast to your listing, I found Karla Holloway's Coda thoughtful and informative. She is a good writer and perceptive critic. And, much of what she said has proven to be true.

Anonymous said...

It is ok for Duke faculty to favor review of the athletic-academic "balance", which at the moment leans strongly to the athletic side.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Neal proves something I learned long ago: people who describe themselves as "intellectuals" almost never have anything intelligent to say.

Anonymous said...

Ah, Emmett Till... yet another wonderful piece of Southern history. Put that up there with the mass treason of the Civil War, and the KKK being a quasi-governmental entity, and you have a heck of a lot to be proud about! NASCAR too!

Anonymous said...

How about Peter Wood? “The football players here are often rural white boys with baseball caps or hard-working black students who are proud to be at Duke,”. (taken from an earlier KC post)

To me this is blatant racism. It is condescending and demeaing to his own students. I would think some of those at Duke who promote speech codes would have seized on this and condemned it.

Anonymous said...

Duke's Trustees must be awfully proud of these morons. I simply cannot fathom how students and parents tolerate this crap. To be sure, Duke ain't alone in this swill. But, now that KC (and others) have undressed the Duke faculty in such a manner and laid bare this chancre sore, it is now incumbent upon Duke to fix this mess.

Anonymous said...

"Sweet things from Boston
So young and willing" - Hey 19 - Steely Dan

Who calls himself "thuganigga...?"
Someone who's interested in jiving his way into the bedrooms of "sweet things from Boston" that's who. There's always been a surfeit of coeds who would gladly give themselves to the next Rap Brown or Eldridge Cleaver. Groupies! They're there for jocks, pansy artists, and radicals on campus.

Wouldn't it be fun to walk into the first day of class and bellow from the back door in friendly greeting;

"Yo, thuganigga, how's it hanging boy?"

Anonymous said...

to jamil hussein
you gave me a LOL, isn't the whole thought of Crystal's uniqueness DISGUSTING? I think she is up to 7 in the DNA count.

KC thank you for keeping the spotlight on these perpetrators. It all is madness and we will continue to work to make a change for the better.

Anonymous said...

Good work, K.C. If you were to list ALL of the Really Bad Things that came from the Duke faculty in this incident, I think that deforestation of North Carolina would be necessary to write a volume that large.

That these professors would try to railroad their own students into prison despite the evidence to the contrary is unforgivable.

Anonymous said...

Professor Tyson's hate piece can be found on the web at http://www.newsobserver.com/690/story/424299.html

It MUST be in the top 10. You may need a top 15 or 20 for this list.

Anonymous said...

It's just amazing how many publications exist to support the constant outpouring of content-free drivel, yet another classic example of the self-eating watermelon phenomenon.

Anonymous said...

Btw, Prof. Johnson, you keep using the phrase "lynched" with Emmett Till. I could be mistaken -- I've not looked it up -- but wasn't Till beaten to death by the angry husband and another man (another relative of the white woman, iirc)?

I don't think he was lynched.

Anonymous said...

Sorority girls 10
Chin 0

A perfect wipe out.

JeffM

Anonymous said...

As a former academic, one of the things that appalls me about the Group of 88 is the semi-literacy of many. It may be an even deeper problem of intelligence. Does Neal not know how to use a spell/grammar checker? It also tells me something about NewBlackMan, which doesn’t bother to correct Neal but publishes exactly what he writes. They don’t have an editorial function?

But I digress. The famous article authored by Lubiano and signed by the Group of 88 contains at least one spelling mistake. This is their standard? Moving on, I have tried to read Holloway’s pellucid prose—NOT as my kids would say. She is a Professor of English? And then there is her colleague the Head of Womens’ Studies, who attributes racial implications to the old English phrase, tarred and feathered. Unbelievable.

I swear if some of this stuff had been turned into me by students when I was teaching I would have turned it back with the instruction to correct it. But then, my students had to pass a test in English proficiency before they got into the university. Somehow, I don’t see Neal, Lubiano and others making the grade.

Diesel

Anonymous said...

Interesting. Anybody seen this?

indoctrinate U

Indoctrinate U, Evan Coyne Maloney's much anticipated documentary exposing the anti-intellectual, intolerant culture of our nation's campuses, is finally here. Early versions of the film won prizes and international critical acclaim. Maloney has been called "a Michael Moore, only with integrity." And the film has been dubbed "a call to action" that will "shock the conscience of Americans in the best sense, through exposure to truth and logic." Now, just in time for graduation, the film America needs to see has arrived. To watch the trailer click here.

january said...

7:52 a.m.: Please! A person capable of clear and cogent thought can usually express it in a clear and cogent manner. I have yet to see any of ms. holloway's pretentious murk qualify for either of those adjectives.

Anonymous said...

This has to be the best(?) grouping of enablers yet K.C. Keep the heat on them.

Anonymous said...

Thomas Sellke here.

I was not aware of how deep the field was for "March Madness, III: The Faculty."

Yesterday,I thought that perhaps my Purdue colleague A.G.Rud would merit an award if,as an honorary member of the Group of 88,he were to be included in the competition.
However,upon seeing the winners of this contest,I recognize that A.G.Rud's silly "simmering gang rape" nonsense is not competitive at this elite level.

Anonymous said...

Anon 9:03...

Your description of Emmet Till neglects to add the part about having him dragged behind a vehicle, as his body disintegrated from same.

kcjohnson9 said...

Yes, I'm afraid that A.G. Rud would only make the NIT of outrageous faculty statements. He can complain to the selection committee . . .

Gary Packwood said...

jamil hussein 9:18 Re: Indoctrinate U documentary

University students at times find all of us older folks slightly amusing as we don't read what they read or watch TV programs that they watch.

We challenge the younger generation to broaden their focus but then we don't broaden our own focus.

The fabulously successful TV series The Simpson's gets at the same issues as Indoctrinate U only we are just now learning what the kids have known all along.

The kids would place all KC's writers of this list on the ...WELL DUH list of writers to use The Simpson's response to such problems in academia.

Real world kids such as the members of the Duke Lacrosse team, just laugh along with other students who watch The Simpson's as they know for sure, that students who join these writers are just ...sucking up.

But why are there so many kids at Duke...sucking up?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 7:28:00 AM said...
"Duke is, at least when it comes to the baseless arrogance and talent for delusion of its faculty, a powerhouse....

{more excellent parody snipped}

Duke will take a back seat to no one in madness."

This is one reason I read blogs - this bit of writing is better than most attempts in my local daily.

Anonymous said...

Good lord. Just fire all of them. Instead of a mandated course on "diversity" for all students, there should be a mandated course in the US Constitution for the 88 faculty.

What a bunch of losers smearing the reputation of so many who do such excellent research and teaching at Duke. If I were a professor at Duke, one doing real research and publishing it, I would be so embarrassed by what my peers did to my own reputation with their lightweight drivel. If I were a student at Duke, I would not take their classes- the poor sorority girls were standing up for innocent until proven guilty boys while the "professor" was too blinded by her guilty until innocent views to see her own biases. All the while, talking about the biases of others! How- uneducated! Civics 101 for the 88 and Brodhead!

Anonymous said...

OMG, MSNBC is so liberal and unfair. Not only do they have Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, they are complimented by uber-liberals Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson.

Plus, they used to have that other uber-liberal, Dan Abrams, as a host... he was so unfair to the Duke lax boys that he was promoted to PRESIDENT of that liberal bastion. If he was more fair to the accused boys on the lax team, he'd probably have been fired.

But anyway, with hippies like Scarborough and Carlson making up half of their primetime lineup, there is no way to doubt: (1) the network is sooooo liberal; and (2) the network, being liberal (you know, like the faculty in the Group of 88), has punished those who are fair to the accused, and has promoted Gail Magnum supporters like Dan Abrams!

Seriously, what drugs are you all on, and where can I get some of that kool-aid?

Anonymous said...

Elizabeth chin deserves a special place in the Durham in Wonderland Hall of Shame. Sending students out to observe an unjustified and vicious public shunning of their friends and then publically branding them as whiners in the Chronicle of Higher Education when they were repelled by it, establishes a new low for faculty behavior.

Anonymous said...

I’ve always been amused by Cathy N. Davidson’s piece. I imagine when she came up with the term “blog hooligan” she must have been pretty pleased with herself. Davidson thought using Nifong’s language to describe bloggers would be a hot stick in the eye to the lumpen proletariat who had the temerity to criticize the distinguished academics who comprised the G88 (Some of them don’t even have degrees!). I doubt her intention was to coin the second term from this case to enter the English language after Nifonged.

Unfortunately for Ms. Davidson forty nine minutes after her op-ed hit the Liestoppers discussion board the first comentor (Newport) had self adopted the term as a badge of honor. Others took it as their screen name or included it as a tag line for their posts. Today they very forum that’s beats the G88 like rented academic mules on a daily basis supports itself, in part, by selling T-shirts and coffee mugs with Davidson’s creation.

How’s that taste Cathy?

Anonymous said...

8:11 AM --

Step out from behind your cloak of anonymity and tell us where you're from. I'm sure we can come up with some examples of things that people in your area aren't too proud of either. And like the Emmett Till incident and the KKK, the majority of people in your area had nothing to do with them. Your reference to NASCAR is simply stupid. No doubt you spend every Sunday holed up in a coffee shop somewhere devouring the BS printed in the New York Times like all good Marxists that your comments paint you to be.

This blog focuses on a bogus case in which a person falsely accused 3 people of rape and other charges, and the resultant piling on by several sub-groups within society to justify their racism or assuage their liberal guilt. Your comments have done nothing to further the discussion. Hit the road, Jack. Don't bother to return until you can offer something of substance.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous at 7:52 writes: "In contrast to your listing, I found Karla Holloway's Coda thoughtful and informative. She is a good writer and perceptive critic. And, much of what she said has proven to be true."

* * * * *

At first I thought this comment must be from Ms. Holloway herself, but then I realized that she could not have written this statement. This statement communicates its points clearly (although they are demonstrably untrue!).

Anonymous said...

Scott wrote:

***Step out from behind your cloak of anonymity and tell us where you're from. I'm sure we can come up with some examples of things that people in your area aren't too proud of either. And like the Emmett Till incident and the KKK, the majority of people in your area had nothing to do with them. Your reference to NASCAR is simply stupid. No doubt you spend every Sunday holed up in a coffee shop somewhere devouring the BS printed in the New York Times like all good Marxists that your comments paint you to be.***

I'm from Margate, New Jersey. I hate the Times, much prefer the post due to the fact that, inter alia, the Times is extremely annoying to read because of its format. I love coffee and all, but I hate Starbucks clowns who wear berets and sit there all day long for no reason. A proud pro-capitalist and litigator, I am no Marxist. As for having things about my area I wouldn't be proud of... I'm 100% sure you can find those things. And I'm a huge Jets fan.

***This blog focuses on a bogus case in which a person falsely accused 3 people of rape and other charges, and the resultant piling on by several sub-groups within society to justify their racism or assuage their liberal guilt. Your comments have done nothing to further the discussion. Hit the road, Jack. Don't bother to return until you can offer something of substance.***

I agree about the purpose of this blog, and about how it attacks those viciously-unfair "sub-groups". I agree with those aspects of it 100%. What I don't agree with are the do-do birds and ding dongs who won't stop talking about "liberals" and the "MSM" (which I finally figured out is supposed to mean the "Main Stream Media" or some BS).

Not only does their description of the vast majority of media outlets fail for factual reasons, they also fail to recognize that in our capitalist society, with much if not most of the money owned by conservatives, if there was a market for neo-con drivel like Fox News, there would be more Fox News Channels.

There are not, because not only can neo-cons tune into Fox News, there are also conservatives with their own shows on CNN and MSNBC... the latter of the two having a perfect split between conservatives and liberals... and only one liberal on either of thsoe competing networks, Keith Olbermann, can be argued to be the same type of venom-spewing idealogue as ALL of the Fox News commentators.

But hey, they DO have "Mr. Happy"! OMFG, can you be a bigger tool than a guy that calls himself "Mr. Happy", and writes a book about how to succeed at marriage? I'll bet his marriages have been about as smooth as Newt Gingrich's various marriages!

Anonymous said...

Contrary to popular belief, a fish does not "rot from its head down".
A fish rots from its guts outward.

Duke University is rotting.

Anonymous said...

I agree about Karla Holloway being a fantastic...well, c'mere. Read for yourself:

"... when asked to provide the labor, once again, for the aftermath of a conduct that visibly associates me, in terms of race and gender, with the imbalance of power, especially without an appreciable notice of this as the contestatory space that women and black folk are asked to inhabit, I find myself preoccupied with a decision on whether or not to demur from this association in an effort, however feeble, to protect the vulnerability that is inherent to this assigned and necessary meditative role."

Good writin'? Oooo-eee! Friend, you cain't improve on it.

Anonymous said...

K.C.
I expect this was just an oversight, but you have William Chafe listed twice, at numbers 8 and 2. May I suggest replacing one of them with Kim Curtis. I was surprised you left her off of the list.

Anonymous said...

As noted above at 11:39, KC’s 10 worst does not include Kim Curtis. Admittedly, Curtis never publicly “published” her position in the aftermath of the Duke Hoax in the most strict sense of word. That said, the grade retaliation “F” grade Curtis gave Kyle Dowd made a very loud and clear statement with regard to the lynch mob hysteria that continues to pervade a segment of the Duke arts and sciences faculty.

Curtis’ contribution to the Hoax should never be forgotten:

KC On Curtis

Anderson On Curtis

LieStoppers On Curtis

Time On Curtis

Anonymous said...

The Durham Three

Crystal Gail Mangum was upset that night,
When they took her to the drunktank she did howl,
Then nurse Levicy helped her hatch a plan,
Cried out, "My God, they've raped me foul!"
Here comes the story of the Durham three,
The men that Mike Nifong came to blame
For somethin' that they never done.
Put in a living hell, but one time they could-a been
The champions of lacrosse.

kcjohnson9 said...

No Kim Curtis because she doesn't fit under this category (no publications on the case).

That doesn't necessarily mean that Kim Curtis won't make one of the four brackets . . .

Anonymous said...

Scott 10:53 has the right of it. There are a lot of posters here who are fair weather fans of objectivity and the fight against isms and ists.
The underlying enablers of this travesty are feminism, allowed racism, and the self monitoring of the legal system. All these grew mainly out of the Northeast and West were they were more often encouraged than fought.
For those Regionists who think this is a Duke, Durham, North Carolina problem, I suggest you take your head out of the sand and take a good look around as this case could have happened anywhere.

Anonymous said...

"when asked to provide the labor, once again, for the aftermath of a conduct that visibly associates me, in terms of race and gender, with the imbalance of power, especially without an appreciable notice of this as the contestatory space that women and black folk are asked to inhabit, I find myself preoccupied with a decision on whether or not to demur from this association in an effort, however feeble, to protect the vulnerability that is inherent to this assigned and necessary meditative role"

She's channelling Norm Crosby, and he's not even dead yet.



Man, I'm old.

Anonymous said...

This clearly illustrates that the G88 frequently confuse belief systems with scholarship.
Their conclusions appear to be more the results of blind faith than deductive reasoning.
Thus the hard-line stance taken by the G88 in regard to revising their stance. They view their beliefs like most people view religion.
They are not about to alter their belief system just because of some inconvienent 'facts'.

If scholarship involves noisily taking a controversial stance on a public issue of race, class or gender; making a loaded, but misinformed or incorrect, public statement; and then acting like a victim when the faulty reasoning process is exposed; then the G88 are at the top of the class.

If their grasp of current events is so tenuous, then how can we expect the G88 to handle some of the more complex topics that apper on their syllabi?

Tall T

Anonymous said...

I agree that Elizabeth Chin's article operates from the apparent assumption that the lacrosse players were guilty --at least some of rape and all of racism and offensive behavior. With respect to her response to the lacrosse case itself, that is a significant failing.

And one can certainly quibble with her phrasing (she does, at other points in the article, refer to "sorority women," so her occasional use of the old-fashioned phrase "sorority girls" may reflect the seeping through of her own unconscious assumptions about these women).

But if she actually got students from different racial and cultural groups to talk to each other and learn about each other for their final project, then she accomplished, for a few students, what the "listening statement" signatories claimed to want to do but never really attempted--she used the lacrosse situation as an opportunity to help students listen to each other and learn from each other about their lives and concerns. And, at least as she describes it, it was a two-way process, not just an opportunity for the "non-privileged" to harangue the "privileged." I know the "all education but science and engineering is B.S." types probably would deride this as an academic experience, but speaking as a parent of a current Duke student and a recent graduate, it sounds like it could have been a pretty valuable experience. There are some pretty strong unstated social barriers at Duke based on race, class and culture (as there are at many, many US universities as well), and the fact that these have been wrongly linked to the lacrosse case, vastly overstated, and/or reflexively and speciously blamed solely on "structural racism" or "the hegemony of white privilege" (I'm not quoting anyone specifically here, just disowning this terminology) doesn't mean that they don't exist or that it might not be useful to find an appropriate context for dealing with them.

Anonymous said...

Thank God, I for one have learned the nuances of "hate white male" speak - I agree, it is doubtful the 88 are "hanging together" privately. Each of them is responsible for what they diid and continue to do. Thugnigga..is a joke and one of the laughs in this case. "how are they hanging: The laugh for the day. Do they know they are a running joke?

Anonymous said...

Their conclusions appear to be more the results of blind faith than deductive reasoning.

What is faith, but a belief in things unseen?
What these people believe cannot be seen nor quantitated by a logical mind.
They act as the apostles of political correctness, then they ridicule Jews and Christians for their belief in God.

Anonymous said...

Eh, you good Southern folk used to own slaves, lynch blacks for fun, and keep them from voting until about, um 40-some-odd years ago.

Sorry, but I think its hilarious how hard it is for you to handle the (very, very predictable) counter-cultural backlash from the direct descendants of the people who were owned by your direct ancestors.

If the worst thing that ever happens to you as a result of everything your grandparents did was that you have to be annoyed by an extremely-liberal and grossly unfair backlash to an alleged crime that never actually happened... well, hey, not really all that horrific, is it?

Not saying you shouldn't be angry about this case and shouldn't be zealous in your defense of the boys... you should be... but don't act like there aren't historical reasons, that make this societal backlash, ESPECIALLY in academia, a predictable result of your great-grandparents', grandparents' and parent's actions!

Anonymous said...

Kool AId Boy at 10:38 says..MSNBC is so liberal and unfair. Not only do they have Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, they are complimented by uber-liberals Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson.

Mathews and Olberman are far-lefties, Scarborough and Carlson are moderate conservatives and Abrams has been right about Duke almost from the beginning. So whats your point? You cite the weakest drawing cable show from the Mainstream media.

How about a vigorous defense of CBS,NBC,ABC,CNN,NYT, Wash. Post , Boston Globe, Time, Newsweak ? Wot say you, Bright Eyes?

Anonymous said...

No, Nurse Tara did not help Crystal hatch a plan. Crystal was asked by a CLERK at Durham Access "were you raped?" Bad, but this is a minimum wage employee who should never have been doing anything but getting the insurance information and sign up facts - like name. Crystal was transfered to Duke Hospital, where poor Nurse Tara asked her a series of questions from a printed form.
Chin's intent was to demean some of the women in her class by calling them "girls" - this is simple.

Anonymous said...

***Mathews and Olberman are far-lefties, Scarborough and Carlson are moderate conservatives and Abrams has been right about Duke almost from the beginning. So whats your point? You cite the weakest drawing cable show from the Mainstream media.***

OMFG, you are really going to compare how fair Matthews is -- regardless of his personal beliefs -- to the maniacs on Fox News like Hannity, Gibson, Hume, Kondrake, Coulter, Malkin, O'Reilly, et al? Just as a basis of comparison, Matthews CANNOT be compared to these Fox News people, or Olbermann. Olbermann and his ranting and raving is actually the exact equivalent of EVERYONE at Fox News, whereas Matthews is very transparent in his overzealousness of asking Dems hard questions and being overly fair to Repubs who come on his show, to build his own "fairness" credentials (buddying up to indicted Tom Delay, etc.).

Scarborough is awesome, but lets not forget that he was all for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. While I really respect him (especially for his backlash against Bill O'Reilly's attacks against his network), he is truly a REAL conservative, not some hack neo-con like you have to Faux News Channel.


***How about a vigorous defense of CBS,NBC,ABC,CNN,NYT, Wash. Post , Boston Globe, Time, Newsweak ? Wot say you, Bright Eyes?***

I have no reason to defend those networks or publications. Of them, I am only familiar with CNN and Newsweek. I don't read the NYTimes, but I do recognize that it is a liberal media outlet.

CNN isn't even remotely comparable as a left-wing version of Faux News on the right. CNN takes on more of an internationalist/pure news flavor. Their news coverage during the day is rather good, without intentionally making it pro-or-anti-US. Their "news commentary" shows are just that... and that is about all there is at Faux News (starting with the very "Fair and Balanced" Brian Kilmeade and "Mr. Happy" [once again, LOL at the tool-box who calls himself "Mr. Happy"], and that blonde woman), working its way through the day with a few shows purportedly news without slant, then rearing up with a conservative 1-2-3-4-5 conservative knockout punch (with Mr. Mutant, Alan Colmes, being the sole regular counterbalancing host, which is absolutely ridiculous).

But I have no reason to defend those other publications. Once again, conservatives have tons of money in America -- more than enough to publish counterbalancing publications of their own. Conservatives -- once again -- have the Wall Street Journal as a legitimate paper in New York. They have the Nation with that windbag Fred Barnes as a magazine. Believe me, if there was money to be made off of it, there would be 100s more.

Anonymous said...

12:44 The number of rich, plantation owners 150 years ago was minimal. Slavery and Jim Crow was a burden to all and everyone is glad that is over. Most white Southerners were as poor as vhurch mice. Here is a little historical content - "No Irish Need Apply" - are the Irish whimping and whinning over that time - No.
See the thing is this kind of race baiting does not work anymore, thanks to the 88 and their supporters.

Anonymous said...


Eh, you good Southern folk used to own slaves, lynch blacks for fun, and keep them from voting until about, um 40-some-odd years ago.


Hmmm, you are good at stereotypes aren't you?

Please tell me what percentage of Southerners owned slaves until it became illegal?

Was it larger than 5%?

Anonymous said...


No, Nurse Tara did not help Crystal hatch a plan. Crystal was asked by a CLERK at Durham Access "were you raped?"


If Bob Dylan can take liberties, so can I.

Anonymous said...

12:44 said:

"Sorry, but I think its hilarious how hard it is for you to handle the (very, very predictable) counter-cultural backlash from the direct descendants of the people who were owned by your direct ancestors." etc.

Ooooo, now I see it all so clearly. My well earned guilt because I am a white male requires me to hold these people to a lower standard, just as they seem to have been held to a lower academic standard when hired (just read some of their writings). Because bad things happened to their ancestors they get a free card, and although they want justice for themselves, it is unfair to expect it for others who have not gone through what they (mostly vicariously) did.

Thanks for explaining it so well.

Bill Alexander

Anonymous said...

11:22 AM --

Recalling the words of Slim Pickens in Blazing Saddles, what in the wide, wide world of sports does your discussion about the liberal or conservative nature of mainstream media, whether it be MSNBC or Fox, have to do with the BS that my comment @ 10:53 AM was addressing with respect to 8:11 AM -- Emmett Till, the KKK, and NASCAR? If you are 8:11, try to explain why that comment was worth posting. Your 11:22 is completely off that topic.

Anonymous said...

The place for meeting and sharing with other races and cultures is in public school. Unfortunately, wtih the demise of education due to the "class moves as fast as the slowest student",people who can afford private education (whether rich or working four jobs to get the tuition money) do it. Bring back tracking and vocational schools. Bring back the draft also. The country is polarized and becoming more so. No one can make folk intermingle unless they want to.

Anonymous said...

CNN isn't even remotely comparable as a left-wing version of Faux News on the right.

Day off from work, Karla?
This Fox bashing by Karla/Gang88 is funny. I'm sure they believe it. "It must be true", just like Nifong hoax. They really want to believe it.

Seriously, Fox News has not been caught fabricating stories, participating in criminal acts, distorting news like CNN, New York Times, CBS News and left-wing sources. It's hardly a surprise that only Fox News and NY Post are increasing circulation/audience while NYT/CNN/CBS are losing it. Fake news work only so far.

Anonymous said...

Alex Rosenberg can count himself unlucky (or lucky depending on how he looks at it) that his bizarre comments about the sexual availability of rich Duke coeds, coupled with his temperance campaign, weren't sufficient to get him into the top ten; but one has to admit that the competition in this category is awfully stiff.

Anonymous said...

The 2:05 pm poster: They have the Nation with that windbag Fred Barnes as a magazine.

I'm not entirely sure what the author of this post was trying to say. This particular sentence seems nonsensical.
The Nation magazine is a progressive magazine with liberals such as Katrina vanden Heuvel. Fred Barnes is connected with the Weekly Standard.

Anonymous said...

2:05 PM says...and that is about all there is at Faux News (starting with the very "Fair and Balanced" Brian Kilmeade and "Mr. Happy" [once again, LOL at the tool-box who calls himself "Mr. Happy"], and that blonde woman), working its way through the day with a few shows purportedly news without slant, then rearing up with a conservative 1-2-3-4-5 conservative knockout punch (with Mr. Mutant, Alan Colmes,

Thanks for the very cogent yet dislocated polemic on the World of Media, according to YOU. I think we can agree that one man's "moderate" is another man's "extremist right wing fanatic", and vice versa.

Back to topic, however, youre the one who launched into a spirited defense of MSNBC (!?) , out of the clear blue. Were you, perhaps , lost in blog-land ? Do you need a lift back to town?

Anonymous said...

Honorable mention, at the very least, should go to Duke Prof. Thomas Crowley for unmitigated igorance of facts and unabashed, if not suckling, apologia for Nifong in an op-ed piece lampooned here by Michael Gaynor.

Prof. Crowley is a geologist. He not only studies rocks, he crawls out from under them occasionally.

Also- thanks for including Tim Tyson in your roast. What a vile screed he laid down.

Anonymous said...

K.C, for our continued reading pleasure, do you have a list of your runners-up to the 10 worst case-related publications of the Duke faculty?

Anonymous said...

I have just finished the article of third place finisher, Karla Holloway's. It is so poorly written that one wonders how she ever got to be a professor of English.

What a self-pitying, jargon filled piece of drivel. The most startling revelation for me was the endnote in which she thanked three other faculty members for their careful reading of her article and for their helpful suggestions. Were they too embarassed to tell her how awful her writing was?

Does any literate person think this professor is qualified to grade English composition at any level?

Frightening!

Anonymous said...

No - Not Tom Crawley. He just wanted to chat and walked into a buzz saw. He apologized almost immediately. Everett from the law school and AG Rud deserve dishonorable mention, but as Professor Tom from Purdue writes, the competion is stiff,

Anonymous said...

10:38 What yyou wrote about Dan and the Lax team is just not true. Other than the statement,"Coming from Duke, I can see where it could have happened", he has supported the innocent until proven quilty theme. I want Dab to change some things at MSNBC also, but doublt that we are in agreement over what needs to be changed. Probably shows, they are in the middle,

Anonymous said...

11:22 I have been on this board almost from the beginning. It took me awhile to figure out MSM also. However, instead of whinning and blaming someone else, I worked on the letters. I am from Las Vegas= bring it on.

Anonymous said...

You can complain as you like about Holloway, but as the earlier poster said, she was right. Prescient even. And that's "Professor Holloway" to you people.

Now, read slowly after me...

1. "Despite the damaging logic that associates the credibility of a socio-cultural context to the outcome of the legal process, we will find that even as the accusations that might be legally processed are confined to a courtroom, the cultural and social issues excavated in this upheaval linger."

She's right about that. Lingering even a year later.

Now once again, slowly...

2." In nearly every social context that emerged following the team's crude conduct, innocence and guilt have been assessed through a metric of race and gender. White innocence means black guilt. Men's innocence means women's guilt. These capacious categories, which were in absolute play the night of the team's drunken debacle, continue their hold on the campus and the Durham community."

Can you handle the truth? The focus, comments, and hooligans on this blog prove her right once again.

And for you people who have trouble reading complex sentences, try to start over in your Dick and Jane readers. The ability to handle words with more than one syllable, and compound sentences will come. (One hopes). But if not, there are lower paying jobs available for you all.

Anonymous said...

Hollaway can write worth beans. She is a master of punctuation.

Anonymous said...

7:49 If it is as you say, I take back my Crowley criticism, especially if he's an open-minded Duke prof.

Anonymous said...

9:41

Well done - condescending and fact-free. You must be right!

Gary Packwood said...

K.C.

Backup candidate here for March Madness awards...perhaps an open category for miscellany.

Anonymous 9:41 said...
...And for you people who have trouble reading complex sentences, try to start over in your Dick and Jane readers. The ability to handle words with more than one syllable, and compound sentences will come. (One hopes). But if not, there are lower paying jobs available for you all.

Anonymous said...

OMG 9:41 is Cash - would recongize his style anywhere. The old 85 word sentance is a terrific effort, but not understandable.

David said...

RE: "Does any literate person think this professor [Karla Holloway] is qualified to grade English composition at any level?"

Answering with a simple "no" might lead readers to question the Ph.D pool from which Duke draws its literary life-blood.

Exhibit B:
http://www.amazon.com/Bookmarks-Karla-F-C-Holloway/dp/0813539072/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product/102-5451402-1726537

Unknown said...

KC,
I was just pondering, and I'm wondering if a teacher calling her students "rapists" (Kim Curtis and I believe others as well) constitutes sexual harassment, and would that also be grounds for A) a lawsuit against Duke and B) Duke revoking tenure (though Curtis has none).

It seems to me that declaring false accusations about someone's sexual practices to their face should constitute sexual harassment. Is it any different than a male teacher calling a female student a "slut" in front of a classroom?

Anonymous said...

To 9:41

You want to give credit to Holloway for realizing that a case with a spring date and civil litigation to follow was going to linger? That’s like petting a dog on the head for sitting on command. The real question is how did an unreliable stripper’s transparently false allegations become a national story. Karla and the rest of the G88 are partly responsible for the current situation.

In the second paragraph the current “social context” is that less than half of one percent of black women are raped by white men and a gang rape of a black women by a white group of athletes last occurred in 1991 to my knowledge. The party caused no “social contexts to emerge that I can identify. In the lax case the white men are innocent and the black woman is guilty. The group that attempted to portray the incident as an Indonesian shadow play was the G88 with Karla leading the posse.

The second paragraph has a good example of why her prose sucks. After pointing to four distinct categories (white, black, male, female) in the very next sentence she terms them capacious. While capacious may appear on a SAT it means exactly the opposite of what Holloway was trying to say. The entire essay is pretentious wordy and lacking clarity. I would suggest you read Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language”. Link below

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

nohatehere said...

I keep reading how this was a white on black crime (reverse the order if you care to). Without prejudging the case on race....Rape is an inexcusable offense. This case does not display the elements that must be met to prove the occurance of a rape (or for that matter..a sexual assault). I find it hard to believe that as such, the suggestion that such a crime could possibly occur (but apparently didn't) could support the theory that over-priveleged athletes (be they white or black), would suggest that an imbalance prevails on Duke's campus.

I suggest that the real problem is that such a perception exists whether it is real or imagined.

Based on the comments of the 88, one can only assume that they are pushing a racial agenda, and not an agenda that focuses on the safety and security of all Duke students (athletes as well).

Duke is a time honored institution, and boasts a very diverse population. It includes not only blacks and whites, but Hispanic, Muslim Jewish and other persuations. Why must this come down to black and white?

Could it be that many people in this community would use a tragedy to advance thier agenda? Or could it be that many people would use the suggestion of a tragedy for the same purpose. It doesn't really matter. The tragedy is only lived by a victim. The people who imagine the suffering of the victim, reach out in consolation. And the People who imagine the tragedy, bang pots in retribution.

This was not a white on black crime, nor a black on white crime. Apparently it was not a crime. Let's get back to the basics....we all have neighbors. They may be black, white or brown, they are sill our neighbors. If one of our neighbor's children is the m.v.p. of the world series...we all celebrate that regardless of race. We need to learn to condemn equally the actions of evil....without regards to race. Likewise we need not condemn evil due to race.

This would have been a horrific crime if it happened...but it is not horrific simply becaus it could be imagined.

Chris Halkides said...

I nominate Lester Munson's "Circumstantial Evidence: Duke lacrosse case far more complex than it looks." The title of this piece from 18 April 2006 makes it sound as if it will be an even-handed sifting through the facts. Yet, each of the first four points, and arguably the fifth point, assumes that an attack took place. There are no excuses for this article.

Chris

Chris Halkides said...

Sorry, I meant for this nomination to go into the Op-Ed section of March Madness.

Chris