The Dowd Suit

The first suit against a Group of 88 member was filed today, from former lacrosse player Kyle Dowd against Political Science professor Kim Curtis. The allegations are deeply troubling--that Curtis abused her classroom authority and engaged in grade retaliation.

I'll have more on the suit Saturday; am working my way through the documents now. But its filing testifies to the importance of the Economic Department's statement--and the reminder that for those professors, anyway, all Duke students are welcome in their classes.

Curtis is a political science professor whose most recent publication is on the politically correct topic of multicultural education. Over recent years, her behavior has been a caricature of an academic radical: shortly after 9/11, she wildly (and, of course, without any evidence) condemned an alleged attempt “to silence professors who encourage students to probe the history of U.S. foreign policy in the effort to understand the September 11^th attacks.” She protested efforts to remove from the ranks of the nation’s faculty those “who feel shame, fear and anger over the violent suppression that the United States has undertaken in so many states across the globe in the near and the distant past”; and those who “feel distress over the long-time support by the U.S. of the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, whose oppression of women has been brutal.”