Comments and analysis about the Duke/Nifong case (2006-2014).
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62 comments:
Wait! You mean you don't see the good Dr. Davidson insisting that the "CASTRATE" sign be taken down? You must not be looking closely enough.
Davidson has really exposed herself as a revisionist fool.
I would rather send my kid to Apex Tech night school than to Duke after witnessing the rants of Baker & Davidson and the downright evilness of Curtis. The weak spined Brodhead is an enabler of these lunatics.
Duke alums need to rise up and express their displeasure at the school Duke has become. They will bring about change more than any lawsuit, committee or educational think tank.
Prof. Davidson has created an atmosphere of oppression and intimidation at Duke. She has used the power of her position to impose her will on the students there, preventing them from getting the education they deserve and are paying for. They cannot speak aloud, they cannot even be who they are, for fear that she and those like her will destroy them.
Davidson and the rest of the Gang of 88 had to know, back in the early days of the case, how their statement was taken. They did nothing to correct the "misinterpretations" at that time. Now, when the heat is on, they are singing a different tune. I trust they won't be too surprised when we denounce them as the duplicitous hypocrites they are.
The fundamental intellectual problem with Davidson's letter (aside from the gratuitous insults about hooligan right wing bloggers and the sleazy behavior of the lax team) is that the power dynamic clear favored the accuser in this case.
Whatever "power" the lax players had, it was not sufficient to compel the strippers to appear at the party, to stay at the party or to perform at the party. The stippers showed up on their own, left early and hardly performed.
Further, and more importantly, the accuser has used and continues to use the power of the state of NC to press two remaining allegations even after admitting that the first one was false. How much power is that?
Add to this, the protesters, the msm and the group of 88 clearly sided with the accuser. the lax players had no power over any of these people. nor did they have the "power" to avoid failing grades or stop the administrative suspension.
She also deliberately avoids the discussion of political power in Durham. This town is run by minorities and Mike Nifong won reelection by pandering to this group. What "power" did the players exert of the city of Durham? None. They don't have any.
Finally, I must address the "racist response" that always rears its ugly head when someone criticizes the left. Listen, the left frames the issue as "white power structure" and "white privilege" and "these white lax players did this" and when the responses are framed in the same general terms, they cry racism. Even KC and Prof. Anderson have fallen prey to this. When the issue is framed as general as the left frames it, one must consider whether there is a difference based on race. I submit that there is. Blacks are the only minority group that cannot or will not assimilate. Whether its cultural, biological or the result of extremely faulty leadership that benefits greatly from the race issue, I express no opinion. However, that is what needs to be addressed.
Davidson is right that they represent a disproportionate number of poor people. She belives the reason is white racism, I believe it is some other pathology that affects black people - whether cultural, political or whatever. So, when the issue is framed broadly, it will be answered broadly. But if its racist to answer the attack by the left, its racist for the left to make the argument in such general terms.
So, please Prof Davidson, explain this power dynamic a little further. As far as I can tell, it has been stacked in favor of the accuser.
WINDBAG
6:44 PM
It is strange when academics statements (the Ad) are removed from web sites? Is that academic honesty?
Or is that "oops" we messed up lets hid the evidence. Pretend it never happened. Have the web site admin remove the Ad.
Why have the Duke 88 not asked that the Ad be put back on the website? Are they not pround of their stand. Actions speak more than words.
I guess a picture can be worth a thousand (or two thousand or three thousand) words. It looks to me as though Nifongism (yet another new term) has infected some of the Duke faculty. I think we know the cure....
Svolich said...
7:55, I am a Duke alum, (medical school, '60). As a direct result of this affair, I have changed my "planned giving" - I'm leaving the bulk of my estate instead to my grandson's school, Claremont McKenna in California. I have willed Duke a lump of coal.
I have heard that alumnai donations are off 75%. I don't know if it's true, but MY donations are off 100%.
7:50 PM
Bravo, This my friends is the type of response the Duke Administration and the Trustees fear. Soon Davidson and the other buffoons at Duke will see an Alumni backlash from coast to coast. Their lack of integrity, disdain for due process and fair play, lies, and revisionist history will cost them Alumni support.
To Bill Anderson:
I think the cause and effect relationship goes the other way. The Duke faculty (figuratively speaking) created Nifongism. Nifong is a consequence of a particular kind of intellectual culture that is common on American college campuses.
The Sword of Justice
from a non-lawyer/retired professor: Thank you KC for doing such a wonderful job outing these 88 idiots. To paraphrase Bill A, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Did anyone see Malik Shabazz who is a black lawyer and some officer in the Black Panthers on OReillys show being interviewed about the Duke lacrosse case?
It is scary that there are people in this world like him and he is typical of many blacks that base their views soley on what the color the accused or victim is. If the colors of the parties involved in the Duke rape case were different, his opinion would be as well. The sad thing is this guy has support.
I am learning more and more every day that Plessy v. Ferguson was one of the best Supreme Court decisions in our history.
I said this earlier today: Davidson's letter is just a move by Duke to mitigate liability. Unlike the other 88, she’s “vice provost”, an officer of the school. That ties their statements and the resultant harm (creating a lynch mob mentality in Durham, resulting in a “get somebody, anybody” mentality) directly to a senior officer of the school.
I would guess that both the lawyers and the PR people for Duke might have “encouraged” this.
It’s no accident that a little bird seems to have landed on KC’s windowsill with an advance copy of the statement from the Econ profs. That little bird told KC that the profs has sent it to the paper but it won’t show up till school resumes. It conveniently follows Duke’s very public offer of reinstatement. My guess is that the little bird maintains an email address with “duke.edu” in it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of that little bird’s email address pointed to somebody in a dep’t like “university relations” (the flacks).
You’re seeing the beginning of Duke’s marketing/pr/legal response to the disaster. I’m guessing that it’s being quietly suggested within Duke that other profs, and groups of profs, also go public with an embrace of the 3 kids and condemnation of the DA. I would also guess that Duke is suggesting that “members of the community” get on the web and make positive comments about Duke.
Duke is praying that the kids will return to the school. Then Duke can start with the “let’s put all this behind us and get on with out great work”.
The shinola will really hit the fan when Coach K starts missing out on five star recruits because parents of said recruits don't want their boys any closer to Durham than Chapel Hill.
Boy, Brodhead has really steered the ship well during this crisis...what an outstanding job he's done...he must be proud...
Can it get *any* worse at Duke? How much longer is Brodhead going to be allowed to keep his job? The more information that comes out, the more disgraceful Duke looks...they need to cut bait already, and start to attempt to undo all the damage his lack of leadership has caused...
Wonderful. A good graphic image clears the air better than a thousand words.
Davidsons apologia was a very hollow effort at spinning her story. If there was a heading across the top of her essay that said, "Nifong admits in court filings that he has no evidence beyond the unsupported word of the accuser" and "DNA evidence rules out that the LAX guys even touched the accuser" - which are absolutely true - then readers would know instantly how to assess her blather about "what happened at the party."
Since nothing actually happened at the party that is relevant to this criminal case, ie, no crime was committed by these 3 or any other LAX guys, everything that they could possibly be guilty of has to do with how they were born.
The plain English word for that is bigotry.
To 8:40
I wonder how Duke is doing recruiting “rich white male” lacrosse players?.
Johnboy, enough! You are becoming the Oliver Stone of this discussion board. Everything is a conspiracy! It's all about the PR! Vice Provost or not, if Davidson's statement is meant to be a positive PR spin for Duke, legally or publicly, they need a new PR person. Neither her statement or the Econ letter are administration driven. Stop looking for the second shooter already! There's plenty of real meat on the bones here!
Medical '60, you have changed your giving plan for your estate, and you think that will help the situation? Please. There are a lot of faculty at Duke. There are 88 wackos. 99% of what happens at Duke deserves your support. This fraction of the 1% that does not is obscuring the larger good.
I doubt that giving is off 75%, but either way your response is the perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. I am sure the education and work being done at Claremont McKenna is quite worthwhile, but it's unlikely that CM will be the home of research that cures diseases, or the birthplace of CEOs and thought leaders (real ones, not these goofball 88 losers). Duke is one of the country's top research institutions. As a medical school graduate, I would think you would understand the dynamics better than you seem to.
To 8:47
Incredibly they are having a banner year recruiting rich, white lax players from places like NY and MA. But that can change real fast if the anti-rich, anti-white lobby persists to rear its ugly on-campus head.
Just a few words to those who actually care about Duke -- alumni, students, prospective parents, etc.
1. KC has done a wonderful job here.
2. Duke is a wonderful place. Always has been and will be.
3. I'm guessing the figures on "donations down 75%" come from the annual fund numbers at this site. That would be persuasive if not for the fact that the fiscal year runs from summer to summer, not Jan. 1 to Dec. 31. And a hefty chunk of giving is tied to the spring reunions. They may end the year down a few dollars from last year's record, but let's not kid ourselves. Despite ticking off extremists of several stripes by refusing to cater entirely to their whims, Duke is going to remain a wealthy school, though still lagging behind the Ivies because they had a headstart of a century or two.
4. Duke is a diverse school -- racially and politically. The left wing complains that it's too conservative. The right wing complains that it's too PC. There's an element of truth to each. I doubt you'd find an elite university without a few political and social blowhards. Minor drawback, and it won't stop your prospective freshman son or daughter from finding a group of friends he or she will treasure.
5. My experience at Duke -- and the experience of every student I knew, of all political and religious backgrounds -- is that faculty members are fair in their teaching no matter how strident they may be in their politics. I got As in classes in which I vehemently disagreed with the professor, and I got Cs in classes in which the professor was likely my ideological kin. The vast majority of my professors didn't divulge their politics.
6. After all that, if you don't trust a particular faculty member, it's pretty easy to steer clear of them. The only classes that are hard to miss are introductory chemistry and ... introductory economics.
7. Duke has a few athletes and a few rich kids who have a sense of entitlement. Again, true at pretty much any school. And it's a minor annoyance. (Frankly, I was stunned to read this spring that the lacrosse team supposedly ruled the roost at Duke. Really? The lacrosse team? Likely one of many inaccurate portrayals of Duke you might have read over the past year.)
8. Duke football has good young talent and is going to make a comeback next year.
9. Duke doesn't have an undergraduate business major because there's no need for it. If you want to go into business, go right ahead. Chances are, you're going to get an MBA, anyway, and you'll be well-prepared for it. There's no "pre-med" major at Duke, either, and you'd better believe it doesn't stop anyone from going into medicine. Duke turns out well-rounded graduates who are very well prepared for whatever comes next.
10. The Duke student body is passionately committed to serving the community and society at large. The disagreements that pop up are fueled by that passion. You deal with the disagreements and move on. If we dim that passion, society loses.
Duke Blue, now and forever.
I am not a Duke alum. But if I were, I would do 2 things: (1) writing to the alumni relation office telling them I would like the board of trustees to seek a new president, and (2) suspending gifts and donations to the university until the institution begins to change its behavior and repair its image. Why should the president go? He should take the fall for letting this case smear the image of the university. He did not protect the university well enough.
Is Davidson's vocabulary so limited that she has to use the word "hooligan". Liefong might sue her and Duke for copyright infringements
re Johnboy
It was an unprofessional response.
Does Duke have a School of Communications? Or any Communications courses? They need to get a course put together for every professor and administrative purson that works at the college to educate them on communicating with the public.
In a large corporation, you get it hammered into you to shut up unless you work in the public relations department or otherwise have authority to speak for the company. Failure to do so gets you fired.
We're talking Communications 101 here. Not rocket science. Don't write stuff or go on TV sounding like an idiot. Or making your employer look like an idiot. The interviewers on TV are good at that using sound bites and editing.
And today we have the army of bloggers that will dig into your past to see if what you say is consistent. If you have made enemies along the way, that may come out too.
Duke could get away with educating their staff with an educational training video. Companies do that too.
Duke may be a great institutions in various areas but they have problems in many areas of business execution.
Some more pics of the rally.
Real men Tell the Truth
Group shot
Sunday morning, time to confess
I wonder if the people holding those signs realize what asses they made of themselves ...
The evidence lives on
Lots of alums will undoubtedly take a "wait and see" approach to giving over the next year or two. The trustees still might right the ship, but if the University loses multi-millions of dollars in lawsuits connected with this debacle, and slime like Davidson et al remain at Duke, contributions are going to go way down. I'll bet that Brodhead has been in near-constant contact with one alum...Melinda Gates, wife of the richest man on earth, and possibly the future financial savior of Duke University.
My deceased father, Duke c/o 1963, would be livid to see the out of control moonbat liberalism at Duke, and he would close his checkbook until an appropriate amout of flesh had been exacted.
It is clear that the protests were not generic protests against "violence" or "rape." Instead, these protests were aimed at certain individuals, and the tone of the protests was that the lacrosse players were rapists.
If that protest stayed off campus, Duke has no liability. But once those signs appeared on the campus, and professors openly were calling students rapists in class, then the university at that point was breaking its contract with the lacrosse student-athletes. The protests were not "free speech." Instead, they were specific accusations aimed at specific people, something that crossed the line.
While Duke might win a lawsuit if a civil trial (or trials) were held in Durham, but the information that would come out about what Duke did and did not do would be embarrassing to the administration, and would be a red flag for the recruitment of future students, not to mention alumni contributions.
By choosing to tell a loyal segment of Duke's alumni to go to hell, the administration created problems for itself that were not necessary. I would not want to be employed as a Duke administrator at this time....
I wonder why they weren't charged with trespassing.
But if you're going to act
in a stupid way, might as well take pictures of yourself so that everyone else knows how stupid you are.
I hope the Dowd lawyers get a hold of the posts on that internal Duke feminist email list. My guess is that there should be more evidence of going after other students there.
Maybe a current student could subscribe and sift through the archives.
The funny thing about that Yahoo Group last night is that you should have seen the numbers of people subscribing to it in a short period of time. There's a place that indicates the number of new people joining and it was 35 when I last looked. The owner of the Yahoo Group should have been wondering why there were so many people joining the group.
In addition to training on external communications, Duke could probably use some training on being careful about what you put in emails, bulletin board posts and the like.
Seagate is coming out with a disk drive that will hold 45 Terabytes of storage using vertical recording technology in a few years. This means that the cost of storing digital data will effectively be near $0 in the future.
What does that mean for professional workers? Be careful in what you say and be honest in what you say.
And leave the cooking utensils in the kitchen.
I hope that the Duke students, professors, and administrators seen in these pictures will be publicly identified and held up to public shame.
My kid just applied for Grad school at Duke and a couple of other blue chip schools. I have every confidence that Duke will do what is in its best interest and pruge itself of the type of faculty that have demonstrated such poor judgement and behavior. And I am willing to endorse my kids decision to pursue an education at such a great university and believe that individuals like Prof. Davidson will have been forced out by then. But, I am watching, as is my kid, to make sure that corrective action is taken and that the university's reputation recovers quickly.
9:32
I hate to say it, but you're living in a fantasy world if you think Duke will clean out the crazies from the faculty any time soon.
As a former medical school dean (major northeast university), I was astonished that the senior admin let the real hooligans(the pot bangers and their allies) control the debate early in this sordid affair without using it as a "teaching moment" for due process. What dopes Brodhead and his senior team are.
Davidson's Picture
Davidson's Blog postings
An article by Davidson
Looks like she's into e-learning.
The folks at liestoppers have already identified a Kim Curtis in a few of the demonstration pictures floating around. I don't think that there have been sightings of Davidson at the protests.
The people at these protests need to take pictures of themselves with high-resolution cameras and post them that way.
I’ve grown up around academia. I attended both a prep school and college that suffered bad news events that have hit page one of national papers and then recovered. I have interviewed and worked with people from a number of high profile schools, including Duke. I have no affiliation with Duke. I do enjoy rooting against the Duke basketball team.
Pay attention to that 8:58pm comment. I find what KC has written about the case itself largely persuasive. As for understanding how Duke is going to come out of it, that 8:58pm comment rings truest—and that’s saying something, as some other comments show considerable professional legal knowledge, energy and analytical power.
On the other hand, some of the comments on the board are inexcusable. I wonder—are people supposed to rally around the 8:31 comment with its reference to Plessy v. Ferguson? It’s pathetic. Maybe a troll, I know, but pathetic.
As an aside, at this point, this is thankfully not a clear cut Democratic vs. Republican issue. Read recent posts at Daily Kos (not my usual favorite reading) for numerous calls on Nifong to quit.
But definitely re-read he 8:58pm comment.
Anon,
In order for Med School '60 to avoid cutting off his nose to spite his face, how many white male students would be acceptable to subject to being pillaried and maligned with the assets he has spent a lifetime earning? 3? 5? 10?
It is illogical for Med School '60 not to consider that part of the life savings of his friends and fellow alums now deceased has been used to ruin the lives of dozens of LAX players with smears by the current Duke "thought leaders".
If that is what is money is going to in part shouldnt he follow the admonission to "first do no harm" and give it to a institution that does not lynch it students?
Exactly what medical advances to you hope to acheive with Alumni money justify the treatment the students have received from their
own university?
i wonder if the person who held up the sign that said "real men tell the truth" now understands that they always did from the very beginning- shame on these ignorant individuals and may they never know the pain of being falsely accused
I think 8:58 said it well, that was my Duke experience.
As to Davidson, her current revisions are just bizarre. So, in her mind, the group of 88 statement was not about the alleged assult, but about the side effects?? really. and all those protests, about the side effects?? Is that serious
[Both sides of the spectrum
"This is a social disaster."
That was the tagline of a paid advertisement signed by 88 members of the Duke faculty that appeared in the April 6 issue of The Chronicle.
"I think that all of us kind of checked over our teachers to make sure they weren't on that list," Carrington said. ]
Living a Nightmare
Cathy Davidson did not write that op-ed.
It was clearly written by someone in the vast right-wing conspiracy to make her look incredibly stupid. I'm mean, she's a Duke professor and no Duke professor could write anything so infantile. It must have been written by one of her enemies to make her look like a complete nutter.
9:51 - Conservatives have no quarrel with liberals like Professor Coleman. By "liberal" I mean a respect for a rule of law, a deep concern about government abuse of power, and a similar deep and abiding concern for individual rights (as opposed to a more abstract notion of group rights. The radical left in academia today evinces little care about these principles, and frankly, their conduct and their writings (which are by and large incredibly mediocre, didactic sloganeering efforts)need to be exposed for what they are - little more than shallow attempts to demonstrate the evils of a variety of "isms" designed to perpetuate not only their skewed and highly imbalanced views, but to perpetuate their victocrat scams and jobs. And note, the harm is not by and large to conservatives, or centrists, or Democrats or Republicans (although in the case of the Gang of 88 they have done harm to innocent students), but to the institutions themselves. Institutions get weak if they don't encourage and in fact experience a very healthy competitive exchange of ideas. Witness the incredible energy the Chicago School infused into economics - cast aside whether they were ultimately correct - they incited a competition for ideas that made the academy better. And you of course can disagree with me, but this is not only my view, but the view of several prominent liberal economists, including a former professor of mine who headed the FTC. Clearly in most women's studies, African American studies, and humanities programs in academia there is little true competition for ideas - it is an echo chamber filled with apparatchiks who hire their own, and who specialize in the same conclusory (forget data or alternative theories of causation with this bunch) turgid prose that rarely adds a scintilla of value to the body politic. Again, disagree? Duke's head of the English department (it edited Social Text) was responsible for the publication of Alan Sokal's scientific hoax article, in which he postulated all scientific truth was relative and dependent upon one's views as to race and class and gender.
Sokal's put-on continues to speak volumes to me - almost fifteen years later. Dubiously coherent relativistic views about the concepts of truth and evidence have actually and insanely gained wide acceptance within the contemporary academy, just as it has often seemed (those darn right wingers, right). Second, this has had precisely the sorts of pernicious consequence for standards of scholarship and intellectual responsibility that one would expect it to have. Finally, that neither of the preceding two claims need reflect a particular political point of view, least of all a conservative one. And to claim that this set of relativistic beliefs is not a major problem in the academy, and does not cause harm to its institutions (evidenced in its worst form in the Duke incident) is delusional.
I disagree that the 8:58P is insightful.
He is simply a mindless booster and apologist.
The Duke equivalent of Baghdad Bob Ashley is for Durham
The hoax happened in part because there is a HUGE problem at Duke with a large percentage of the faculty in the liberal arts loathing the students they teach (I have seen this at a few other Southern schools but never at any other college I have been involved with)
The campus culture at Duke is sick from a number of perspectives. The fact that liberal neighbors of Duke would, as a group, solicit a multi-year (illegal) police crackdown on off-campus students is the most obvious example.
I didn't believe it before but looking at the latest Davidson outbreak I think it is very possible that Duke many _never_ recover its reputation
There is simply no other precedant for a college receiving so much negative publicity in American History.
We are in uncharted waters.
The Davidson letter is most revealing.
Thus far, many bloggers have focused on the intellectual lightweights who make up the bottom feeders of the Gang of 88, e.g., those from the African and African-American Studies Program and other such programs.
The real story here, though, is that the "heavy-hitters" among the Gang of 88 turn out to be incredible lightweights as well. In a just world, people like Peter Wood, William Chafe and Davidson should have been teaching at the local community college instead of getting endowed chairs at Duke.
The earlier poster makes a good point about "real men tell the truth." I wrote in an earlier article that one of the great ironies in this case is that the one group of people that told the truth has been the lacrosse players. From the start, these young men told the truth.
Think of everyone else who lied. Most important is that those individuals for whom people depend upon TO TELL THE TRUTH, from the police to the prosecutors to the Duke administrators, we heard nothing but lies, lies, and more lies. That tells me what I need to know about this story.
8:58~
Well said--thank you!
duke2009mom
8:31
Your last statement "I am learning more and more every day that Plessy v. Ferguson was one of the best Supreme Court decisions in our history" makes little sense and adds little (if anything) to the discussion. B/c some fool makes statements on on FOX and his views are "typical of many blacks" makes a supreme court decision that was morally and legally bankrupt.
Am i missing sarcasm?
Michael says:
Seagate is coming out with a disk drive that will hold 45 Terabytes of storage using vertical recording technology in a few years. This means that the cost of storing digital data will effectively be near $0 in the future.
Well, given that Hitachi has just announced their 1TB drive, and Seagate will announce theirs in Feb, and that we usually see a doubling of drive sizes about every 18 months, I think it will be about 9 years before we see 45TB drives.
Well said, JoeT
I also am impressed by the shared consensus on how this came about.
which is why I believe that the (few) apologists for Broadhead miss the point.
Duke faculty and administrators are at the heart of the hoax.
Were and (apparently) still are.
Once all charges are dropped against the 3 guys, I've been more inclined to just focus on putting Nifong in jail and 'getting positive' for the upcoming lax season - this team has a lot to play for.
But that crap from Davidson just makes my blood boil - and you can't let it just pass - These "88" need to be taken to task.
10:25 Please don't diss Community Colleges. Some provide quite good quality education at a very affordable price.
---------
Just saw on TV that former MA Speaker Tom Finneran avoided jail for pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. This was the most powerful politician in the state. He met the press and was contrite and apologized for his actions. He could lose his license to practice law too.
"It was a divergence from a code of conduct I tried to follow my entire life," Finneran said. "I shamed myself."
Finneran pleads guilty; future with biotech council uncertain
I cannot envision Nifong as contrite or apologizing for anything that he's done. It's a sad commentary on Durham.
Oh, Ms. Davidson.
The lacrosse incident became one of the top news stories because it was evident, early on, that the boys were innocent of the charges against them, yet over and over, they were shown handcuffed and on national magazines as accused rapists.
The lacrosse story makes me, an American of conscience cringe, when I think innocent Americans can be used as pawns by DAs or their own professors. DAs with teenage sons. Professors with teenage sons. Ms. Davidson, the pain and suffering of David, Colin, Reade and their families makes me sick daily. I keep up with it daily, hoping that Nifong will finally do the right thing. This is why it is one of the top news stories.
8:31 Unfortunately,it did materialize into seperate but not equal. Somehow, we must learn to get along. There are much worse enemies out there trying to kill all Americans - refusing cab fares in Minnisota is the least of it.
To the people in the photo at the head of this posting:
Are you ashamed of yourselves, because you should be!
So everyone here has a good sense of what tall cotton Cathy Davidson IS at Duke:
From the Duke English Department website:
Cathy N. Davidson
Interim Director and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Ruth F. Devarney Professor of English
Office Location: 203 JH Franklin Center
Office Phone: 919-684-8472
Email Address: cathy.davidson@duke.edu
Office Hours:
by appointment
Education and Interests:
Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Northwestern University
Ph.D., State University of New York at Binghamton
American Literature
Cathy Davidson has published numerous books, including Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (Oxford, 1986; Expanded Edition 2004), Reading in America: Literature and Social History (Hopkins, 1989), The Book of Love: Writers and Their Love Letters (Pocket/Simon and Schuster, 1992), Thirty-Six Views of Mount Funi: On Finding Myself in Japan (Dutton/Penguin, 1993; New Edition with Afterword, 2006, Duke U Press), and, with Linda Wagner-Martin, The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995) and The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States (1995). In collaboration with photographer Bill Bamberger, her most recent book is Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (Norton, 1998). She is General Editor of the Oxford University Press Early American Women Writers series, past President of the American Studies Association, and past editor of American Literature. She was Duke University (and the nation's) first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies from 1999-2006, and is co-founder of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke. She is also the co-founder of HASTAC ("haystack"), the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory and on the Board of Advisors to the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation "Digital Media and Learning" initiative. Her current research interests include an essay on Olaudah Equiano and the controversy over origins, a MacArthur Foundation occasional paper on "The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age" (with David Theo Goldberg), and a study of the social and scientific history of learning disabilities. Cathy Davidson is also the Interim Director and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies.
Representative Publications (More Publications) (search)
"Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself". forthcoming.
Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory. W. W. Norton, 1997. (With photographs by Bill Bamberger)
"Critical Fictions." PMLA (Sept. 1996).
C. N. Davidson and Michael Moon, eds.. Subjects and Citizens: Nation, Race, and Gender from "Oroonoko" to Anita Hill. Duke UP, 1995.
C. N. Davidson and Linda Wagner-Martin, eds.. Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States. Oxford UP, 1995.
Wouldn't you think that such an accomplished person would have more sense?
Finneran pleads guilty; future with biotech council uncertain
I think Finneran was a white lawyer/democrat. African-american democrats never admit anything. "Freezer" Jefferson was just re-elected to congress waiting for the official indictiment, Alcee Hasting (corrupt judge, removed from office by congress) is the senior member in house intelligence committee and favourite of Nancy Pelosi. "The most ethical congress in history.."
8:31 p.m. I am learning more and more every day that Plessy v. Ferguson [which reaffirmed segregation in this country] was one of the best Supreme Court decisions in our history.
That's right, lets go back to black only and white only toilets and drinking fountains. While we're at it, lets reopen the internment camps (another supreme court decision to be proud of). Wow, this Duke case is really opening our eyes to the errors of all the social changes that have been made in this country in the past 50 years.
The State of Mississippi can thank North Carolina.
MS know for being top of many of the worst economic, social and educational performance measures, now will see their rankings replaced by North Carolina.
Although, MS has been working hard across the State with success to shed its negative images with results.
NC will have a long way to go.
KC,
As a centrist to liberal Democrat,I coined the term "Fuzzy" for the far left some years ago.A friend and I wrote a paper,"The Importance of Being Fuzzy" where we proposed Fuzzies "know how not to know".
IN essence,some things are so terrible to one's world view they trigger an irresisitible backlash.
Fuzzies tend to congregate in the more subjective major areas.And we did a Fuzzy Quotient" test,where we could score the FQ and correlate it to major area.For instance,at U Mich 85% of ed majors wrote "true " for the question of a female athlete running a four minute mile;0% of physics majors.
8:58_
Thank You!
There are too many people on this board "feeding the sharks." They were never supporters of Duke, and they are using this opportunity to "punish" rather than support the three players, disbar Nifong, and help Durham/Duke/NC become better and stronger.
DukeParent2008
8:58 makes as good a case as can be made to continue to support Duke if you are an alum. But one thing struck me, and it’s a theme that is repeated in many contexts: “Duke is a diverse school -- racially and politically. The left wing complains that it's too conservative. The right wing complains that it's too PC.” It’s the old “if I’m being criticized by both the Left and Right I must be in the impeccably proper moderate middle.”
Sounds reasonable, but it assumes facts not in evidence: that there is a “right wing” among the Duke faculty. If there is, why have we not been told about some right-wing wacko? We have certainly had our share of Left-wing whackos even before the “88” showed up. So tell us, 8:58, what proportion of Duke faculty and administration are “Right Wing” and where are their whack jobs?
Moneyrunner -- Fair question. I knew a professor during my time at Duke who made a well-publicized TV commercial for Jesse Helms. He has passed on, but I'm not speaking ill of the dead because I didn't consider him a whack job. I knew that he was an excellent professor, and I knew of no accusation that he was unfair. And that matches all I heard and saw of politically outspoken professors. (Whether that's true in the Dowd case, I don't know -- if there's one thing we've learned here, it's that we shouldn't rush to judgment.)
I didn't know the political affiliation of most of my professors, but there were several that exhibited traits we wouldn't identify as typically "liberal." I'd imagine many of them -- like me -- were people who didn't fit easily on a political spectrum. You'll find a lot more libertarians on a college campus than you will in the real world, to give just one example.
There are, of course, some areas in which a good university simply won't tread. The best example is evolution. It's a safe bet that you won't find a strict creationist and very little, if any, sympathy for "intelligent design" among biologists and other scientists at Duke. Outside the ivory tower, some would call that "liberal." At some point, the problem isn't inside the ivory tower, it's outside. If Duke were to embark on some affirmative action for conservatives to hire some creationists, then that's the end of it.
But most of the "whack jobs" are within the student body. That's natural. When you're 18, you think you know everything. By senior year, most of the "whack jobs" have calmed down.
Velobiff.
We started a Lax club at Michigan State in 1963. Do I have the honor of speaking with someone who actually used a stick made of wood?
Those were the days.
They say that Brown, when he bulked up and went pro, hit harder than anybody in the NFL before or since. Your opinion?
This might belong in grade retaliation, but I'm here.
A couple of years ago, at a party in East Lansing, I was talking to a young lady about her work. She was in doctoral studies in poli sci, international security. I hadn't offended anybody by that point, it being early, so I said something conservative.
She looked around and said, quietly, "I think that, too, but I am careful where I say it."
The fear of the malignant professoriate had even infiltrated a Christmas Eve party.
She wasn't afraid of grade retaliation. She was afraid of losing her PhD opportunity retaliation.
Now, not all profs are like that, but there are enough to cause the students to be extra cautious.
I wonder if the "good" profs know about the retaliators. If they did, what would they do? Besides jack-all, I mean.
Not sure if KC checks the comments regularly, but just in case -- the picture apparently caused your bandwidth to max out. You could probably save it as a lower picture quality and upload again.
The "Castrate!!" photo has disappeared. I suspect Wahneema Lubiano.
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