Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Ignoring Academic Procedure

The last two days’ posts have explored the unusual relationship between President Brodhead and the Group of 88’s statement. Even as some members of the Group apologized for the statement’s effects, the president has suggested that he saw no need for signatories to apologize. And even as some members of the Group made clear, in writing, that the statement targeted the lacrosse players, Brodhead has portrayed the document as either a defense of unnamed minority students at Duke or an innocuous recapitulation of the faculty’s veneration for the race/class/gender trinity.

In early April, the statement’s point person, Wahneema Lubiano, e-mailed the chairs of the History, Cultural Anthropology, and Literature Departments, asking for input into the ad’s text. She then e-mailed several other department chairs, requesting that their department formally endorse the ad.

In her language, she was clear about who was funding the ad: “African & African-American Studies is placing an ad in The Chronicle about the lacrosse team incident.” In her customary purple prose, Lubiano noted that “the ad is built around student articulations.”

She elected not to send these “articulations” to most signatories—the anonymous quotes from alleged Duke students were props. Indeed, noted Lubiano, “we don’t have an email list of all department and programs chairs, and I don’t have time to put one together.”

This task would have taken around 15 minutes to complete—the Duke website has a one-stop listing for all undergraduate departments and programs. But even this short amount of time evidently could not be spared. As Lubiano (and all other Duke professors) knew, the DNA tests that Mike Nifong had promised would identify the guilty but also exonerate the innocent were due back any day. If the tests all came back negative, the anti-lacrosse faculty might have missed their opportunity to exploit the situation.

So, as a next-best alternative to looking up e-mails herself, Lubiano asked all recipients of her initial e-mail “to spam(!) this to other individual faculty or to your chairs to see if they’re interested in supporting the ad and so that as many faculty as possible have a chance to see it and sign on.” A few possible signatories, such as Literature professor Kenneth Surin, didn’t receive one of these spam e-mails before the ad went to press.

But the key for Lubiano was obtaining departmental endorsements. She stated that “we will not be listing the names on the ad itself (only the supporting departments and program units).” Academic departments rarely sign onto statements that do not directly deal with departmental concerns; if even a few did for the AAAS ad, it would attract notice. And to make sure that the message got through, then-AAAS chairman Charles Payne followed up, with an e-mail sent to his fellow department chairs late in the afternoon of April 3. Other departments would have until 11am the following morning to decide if they would sign on. Payne does not appear to have considered whether it was an appropriate use of his authority, as the chair of an academic unit, to have engaged in such a lobbying effort.

Over the course of the last year, Payne refused to respond to five e-mail requests from me asking if AAAS used departmental funds to pay for the ad or whether an independent benefactor privately funded the ad at AAAS’s behest. As the Lubiano e-mail made clear, the signatories were not asked to pay for the ad out of their own pockets.

If—as now seems likely—AAAS funded the ad itself, this decision would mean that a document cited by defense attorneys as among the reasons why Duke students could not receive a fair trial in Durham was paid for by Duke funds, funneled through the budget of the African-American Studies program. (The program since has been elevated to departmental status.)

The action also would seem to violate official Duke policy, last articulated in 2003, when future Group of 88 member Anne Allison used Cultural Anthropology departmental funds to pay for an ad containing student quotes denouncing the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Individual faculty can pay for ads about political issues, Provost Peter Lange wrote, but departments could not use their own funds for the purpose.

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In the event, five departments were listed as formally endorsing the ad: Romance Studies; Psychology: Social and Health Sciences; Art, Art History, and Visual Studies; Classical Studies; and Asian & African Languages & Literature. In fact, no departmental vote ever occurred in at least three of these departments (Psychology: Social and Health Sciences; Art, Art History, and Visual Studies; and Classical Studies). Lubiano listed them as endorsing the ad anyway. She has never explained why she put false information on the ad; when asked by me about her conduct in the case, Lubiano replied, in full, “Do not email me again. I am putting your name and email address in my filter.”

Could it be that Duke, unlike most academic institutions, doesn’t follow normal procedures, and allows a single professor, on her own initiative, to assert a departmental endorsement? That was the explanation provided for the Classical Studies Department’s “non-endorsement endorsement.” Department Chair Peter Burian described this violation of standard academic protocol as a “well-intentioned” decision that “needs to be understood in the context of the immediate, highly emotional reactions to the first reports of the incident.” In fact, the false claim of a departmental endorsement occurred more than two weeks after the first reports of the lacrosse incident.

In any case, departments that took seriously academic procedure acted in a much different fashion to Lubiano’s request. The then-interim chair of the English Department, Ron Butters, noted at the time, “I cannot imagine on my own accord—or even with the backing of the Chair’s Advisory Council—giving Departmental backing to such an ad without a Departmental vote.” He added that he hoped “that we all agree that we need to be mindful that nothing we do or say as a group should violate the conscience of any of the Department members.”

With the exception of Houston Baker and Maurice Wallace, Butters’ colleagues appeared to recognize the impropriety of a departmental endorsement of Lubiano’s ad. Thomas Pfau bluntly observed, “The English Department has no more calling than any other department to take a public position on what, to date, remains largely a matter of allegations and opinions.” Future Group of 88 member Ranjana Khanna said that she didn’t “think that the department as a whole could have any response that is outside the commitment to students and the pedagogical mission of the university.”

Even Karla Holloway--of all people--doubted the wisdom of Lubiano's quest for departmental endorsements. She suggested that “departments do not need to act univocally,” and added that “inflammatory language is completely irresponsible.”

Holloway, of course, would subsequently change her mind about the wisdom of inflammatory language. By the summer, few Duke faculty members’ language would be more inflammatory than hers.

Given that a figure as extreme as Holloway recognized the impropriety of departmental endorsement of the Group of 88’s statement, surely Brodhead could at least bring himself to criticize the statement on technical grounds, citing the established record of the ad listing departmental endorsements that never, in fact, occurred. Yet the president’s response to the apparent violation of Duke procedure in the funding of the ad and the grievous violation of academic protocol in the listing of false departmental endorsements has been silence.

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Amidst such a record, how is it possible to account for Brodhead’s persistent defenses of the Group’s statement—and his implicit rebuke of the Duke faculty members who have dared to criticize the Group? Only two reasonable explanations come to find.

The first: He was frightened of the Group. As they have made clear over the past 16 months, Group members are quick to condemn anyone who disagrees with them as sexist or racist or both. Brodhead—as a white, male president of a university in a majority-minority city—could ill-afford to be branded a racist by his own professors.

The second: Brodhead supports the Group’s agenda. His primary appointment is in English (32 percent of whose faculty belong to the Group), and upon coming to Duke, he took the unusual move of becoming an affiliated faculty member with the Women’s Studies program (72.2 percent of whose official members endorsed the Group’s ad). The decision sent a message to the faculty that the new president had a personal stake in the race/class/gender vision embodied by Women’s Studies and similar programs (like AAAS).

Beyond Brodhead, the list of Women’s Studies affiliated faculty reads like a Who’s Who of the Group of 88—Professors Neal, Wallace, cooke (she doesn’t capitalize her name), Deutsch, Abe, Boatwright, Litzinger, Davidson, Chafe, Koonz, Olcott, Thorne, Viego, Wong, Damasceno, Gabara, Greer, Aravamudan, Longino, Mignolo, Schachter, Beaule, Brim, Rego, and Hovsepian. Eight more—Sieburth, Gheith, Metzger, Radway, Albers, Gayton, Marko, and Quilligan—signed the “clarifying” statement.

In short, the full-time and “affiliated” Women’s Studies faculty included 36 members of the Group of 88, as well as 11 additional “clarifying” letter signatories.

Criticizing the Group, then, would require Brodhead to criticize the ideas that have defined his own academic career and the people with whom he has chosen to associate. This, it appears, is something the president will not do.

284 comments:

  1. K.C.,

    I think you figured it out. Brodhead agrees with the agenda, or is too frightened to publicly disagree with it. In other words, the man was willing to destroy his credibility so Lubiano, Holloway, and Houston Baker would not be mad at him. So pathetic.

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  2. This is for Polanski. I put it on yesterday's comments, but very late, so in case he missed it there:

    Polanski, I just came back. I don't know if you're still awake, but a brief search by me turned up this regarding affirmative action mandates for government contractors (which would definitely include universities):

    http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/ofccp/fs11246.htm

    Notice, specifically:

    AFFIRMATIVE ACTION REQUIREMENTS

    Each Government contractor with 50 or more employees and $50,000 or more in government contracts is required to develop a written affirmative action program (AAP) for each of its establishments.

    A written affirmative action program helps the contractor identify and analyze potential problems in the participation and utilization of women and minorities in the contractor's workforce.

    If there are problems, the contractor will specify in its AAP the specific procedures it will follow and the good faith efforts it will make to provide equal employment opportunity.

    Expanded efforts in outreach, recruitment, training and other areas are some of the affirmative steps contractors can take to help members of the protected groups compete for jobs on equal footing with other applicants and employees.

    Now the mystery is solved as to how the likes of Holloway, Baker, Farred, Lubiano got jobs at a top flight (or even bottomrung) university.

    R.R. Hamilton

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  3. Prof. Anderson,

    Apparently firing the 88ers would result in a loss of tens of millions of dollars of government contracts for Duke. Brodhead is protecting the 88ers because their employment is (essentially) mandatory under federal law. See above.

    R.R. Hamilton

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  4. Anderson's right. Brodhead is pathetic. So are the 88 nitwits who signed onto the irresponsible, dishonest, and defamatory ad.

    I hope they all get what they deserve. But I won't hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

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  5. Not one has been fired. Not one has lost their position. No one seems to care. Quite a place.

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  6. The alternative secret history of the world according to progessives by Oleg Atbashian.

    The Gang of 88's, Brodhead's and the abettor's historical preference on how things could have been, or why isn't Turkey, or Mongolia the richest country in the world?

    This does a fine job of shining light on the fraudulent nature of those academic frauds...

    Happy 4th of July.
    The Alternative Secret History of the World According to "Progressives"

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  7. Actually Pressler lost his position. So did Ryan F, Reade S and Dave E lost his first Wall Street job (in 2006). None of them deserved to lose those positions.

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  8. "If I were an inquisitive public school graduate I’d ask a question: if land theft and slave labor is what had made America so rich, why isn’t Turkey the richest country in the world? As opposed to the bare lands and deserts of the New World, the Turks conquered cradles of ancient civilizations with turn-key cities and pre-existing infrastructure. However, apart from oil deposits, the formerly Ottoman lands remain dirt-poor, with Turkey itself not far away in the lead.

    But let’s not single out the Turks. Before them were the Mongols, who made no distinction between the civilians and the army, and whose conquest had lead to the creation of the world’s largest empire ruled by fear and iron discipline. How many millionaires does Mongolia have today? And before that were the Arabs who came as conquerors from the Arabian Peninsula, stole all of North Africa and Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) from the Christian natives, forcibly converted them to Islam, and settled on their land for good. And before them there had been conquests by the Huns, the Chinese, the Celts, the Greeks, the Romans, the Goths, the Persians, the Slavs, and many others who settled on other people’s lands simply because they could."

    It is time to deconstruct AAAs, women's studies, and the class warfare agendas. Their theories are based upon lies, their definitions shift to the times, their scholarhip does not raise the human experience. Why are they funded?

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  9. While we don't know the specifics of the agreement between Duke and the victims, it would not be unreasonable to surmise that Brodhead understood all too clearly just how wrong the Gang of 88 were and how much liability they so foolishly stirred up for Duke. Should the victims have sued them all, even if only a few of the suits were successful, the public relations fallout would have been a disaster that continued for many long, embarassing years. Brodhead is certainly smart enough to realize that the Gang of 88 was more than wrong enough to cost Duke untold millions and to cause a wide variety of terminations of involved staff, including his own termination when the public outcry became too great to sweep under the carpet. Rather than face that uncertainty (which was in reality, all but certain), Duke settled for what is surely an enormous amount of money, though I'm sure those involved in negotiations on behalf of the university thought the amount cheap compared to what it might eventually have been.

    But now that it's all over. Brodhead can hide behind the non-disclosure agreement and pretend that he has done what is right for the university as a whole. But worry not; people like Brodhead and many members of the 88 live their own hell every day--what must it be like to be them?--and eventually do themselves in. No one need lift a finger, but no one should forget who they are or what they did. They are pariahs and should be treated as such by ethical, honorable people.

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  10. KC...

    Just a superb, cogent, and irrefutable essay. Some of your finest writing since the outset and a credit to the blogosphere!

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  11. Excellent post, NJNP. Reminds me of the time when I was an undergrad, and one of my professors said "Americans are anti-intellectual" and I shot back, "That's because intellectuals are anti-American". I have to give the professor (Jack Zamitto(sp?)) credit: Though stunned, he thought about my retort for a few moments and then acknowledged in front of the class that I was right.

    Anyway, KC still needs to address the "3rd possibility" of why Brodhead sides with the 88: to wit, their employment is mandated by the federal government.

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  12. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  13. This is why the Gang of 88, Brodhead, Durham PD, the MSM, the pot bangers and the abettors should be fired and punished for their abhorrent actions. They should have their ball-sacks sued off as well. This hoax will have a very long shelf life because "the progressives" are too blind to understand the damage they create. It's time to shine some light and stop them. They do not advance society.

    ...Crime may have led to suicide jump...The Dallas Morning News, 07-03-07

    Duke hoax shelf life

    "...but he acknowledged in an interview that "it was just really hard to hold your head up, even to walk outside with everyone almost in the world knowing what happened...

    ... he said: "I shouldn't care what people think or say. It's just the fact that everyone knows I'm the kid. It was bigger than Houston. It was bigger than Texas. It was bigger than America. Everybody in the world knew what had happened and everybody knew the details of it...

    ...On Sunday, he was pronounced dead...several witnesses saw Ritcheson jump from an upper deck of the ship Sunday morning."

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  14. JLS says...,

    Yeah, I started out believing Brodhead was scared of the 88 gangsters. I have come around to the view that as some have suggested he is a member of the gang.

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  15. JLS: No intelligent person could be an 88ist. Brodhead is intelligent.

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  16. To: Mike at Jul 4, 2007 1:48:00 AM

    Don't forget there were 43 other lacrosse players harmed by the actions of the G88 and Duke Admin. I don't think we've heard of any settlement w/ Duke for those student athletes... maybe???

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  17. KC, either get your facts straight, or admit you are spinning for your own purposes. Your informants do you little good if you willfully misrepresent the matter at hand.

    This was not in any manner a dispute about signing onto the 88 ad. It was a full-on attack on the intemperate screed mailed to the department by Professor Baker specifically requesting that the English Dept. chair convene a meeting on this LAX matter. The response that followed suggested to Baker that such a gathering was not of interest to his colleagues, especially a meeting generated by such a reprehensible document as the one that he had sent to the faculty. The faculty response can be summed up in this letter:

    "I strongly concur with Karla's and Vic's recent public emails (as well as with other statements to the same effect that have reached me privately). Having written Ron this past Friday, I would like to reiterate that I am strongly
    opposed to holding a special English Dept. meeting at this time on the Duke Lacrosse team's alleged criminal behavior. All we can accomplish is to stoke the fires of publicity, which hardly need any further stoking The English
    Department has no more calling than any other department to take a public position on what, to date, remains largely a matter of allegations and opinions. Why, when even the Durham D.A. has elected to postpone any potential
    criminal charges until the week of April 10, should we collectively enter the public arena now with little more than further opinion? For the same reason, it seems premature to harangue the university administration's conduct in what remains a fluid situation largely devoid of agreed-upon facts and fraught with far too much speculation and news-mongering already.
    Once the flames of publicity have subsided and a reasonable quantum of facts has been established, a debate on the exaggerated status of collegiate athletics, its excesses, and often deleterious impact on the university's intellectual core mission should indeed be made a subject of vigorous, campus-wide
    discussion. For now, however, what we need to keep in focus are, as Dean Thompson's letter puts it, the "core institutional values of reason and discernment," to which I would add restraint and the continued dedication to our pedagogical mission. Like Karla, I fear that we will have to learn to live in the spotlight of national media attention for quite some time. Staying focused on our diverse intellectual purposes will help us here.

    Finally, in the same spirit of moderation and self-examination (John 8:7), it is also vital that department faculty offering themselves to local and national media outlets as commentators
    on this distressing situation prove fit to withstand the close moral scrutiny that they are about to visit upon others."

    Some imagine the last paragraph, especially, indicated to the esteemed (by some) professor the collective judgment of his faculty colleagues regarding his own vulnerable position in such a debate.

    Whatever the reason, the meeting was never held.

    But the ad, was NOT in question in this exchange.

    Get it right KC, your credibility is already pretty much running a parallel course to Professor Baker's.

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  18. Professor Johnson,

    You could write a second book on the "articulations" of the Group of 88. Unfortunately, it would be humorous rather than scholarly. While I believe you have a well developed sense of humor, I think you would prefer not to ridicule your fellow professors. On the other hand, their shame or humiliation may be the only genuine recourse available.

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  19. To 2:32
    You refer to Baker's "intemperate screed" as the source of T. Pfau's (presumably) response letter. Which "intemperate screed" was that? Has it been made a matter of public record? Is it the letter to which Peter Lange forcefully responded? If the Baker writing you refer to has not been made public, will you please do? Are we talking a different kettle of fish, or same kettle, different fish?

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  20. Carolyn says:

    The only difference between Brodhead and the Gang is that he uses spell check.

    Sorry, this isn't intended to be funny - just accurate.

    (It's too sad and disgusting to be funny.)

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  21. Thank you, WAHNEEMA LUBIANO...the HNIC of the whole deal.

    For further cementing AA Studies as a joke.

    Your departmental status? Paternalism.

    Your intellectual bona fides?
    Forthcoming.

    You've used up a healthy chunk of your white-guilt capital...especially amongst the young folk. You know, people like Dave, Reade, and Collin, who will be running the country in twenty years.

    They won't forget you, WAHNEEMA LUBIANO.

    Mazel tov.

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  22. Another thought...

    Is it possible that President Brodhead, as an affiliate member of the Womens Sudies faculty, was copied on the original Lubiano e-mail. And if so, wouldn't that imply that he failed to exert his authority as the President of the university to shut the effort down or at least temper the gist of the ad?

    That might explain President Brodhead's unwillingness to look further into the appropriateness of the matter re: use of department fund, etc. and his desire to move on.

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  23. Peter Burian . . . of course, it is all understood now . . . to be highly emotional . . . are there any lynchings where participants are not "highly emotional"? Where are the "reasoned" adults at Duke?

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  24. The "administration" of Duke has a lot of "splainin" to do....

    Looks like the place has been overrun by racist feckless imbeciles --- otherwise known as arseholes...

    Folks holding Duke pedigrees just had a few limbs sawed off their tree of respect....

    river rat

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  25. Eviscerated, at the hands of a master.

    Cheshires law firm needs a new lawyer, KC. You'd be fun to watch.

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  26. "Criticizing the Group, then, would require Brodhead to criticize the ideas that have defined his own academic career and the people with whom he has chosen to associate. This, it appears, is something the president will not do."

    Let's assume the best by assuming that Brodhead is intelligent. So, why doesn't he critcize the Group of 88? Possible reasons:
    1. Brodhead is a white male. A white male criticizing a group made up largely of "protected" wont' be tolerated. It doesn't matter if the criticism is justified.
    2. As KC suggested, he is philosophically one of them.
    3. Intelligence doesn't necessarily also mean brave. Broadhead could be an intelligent coward.

    The Group of 88 actions clearly indicate that they:
    1. Are on the wrong side of the issue.
    2. Can not admit that they were on the wrong side of the issue.
    3. Because they can not admit that they were on the wrong side of the issue, they are stuck in a state of defiant and stubborn denial.
    4. People must get past denial to solve their problems, as the first step towards correcting a problem is admiting you have a problem.
    5. Continued denial demonstrates their lack of intelligence and adaptivity.

    People who often scream the loudest for change are often the same ones who hate change. Perhaps the Group of 88 fits this category. They like playing the underpriveleged race card too much to recognize and embrace the positive changes in race relations. In effect, they are holding back people of their own race. Very sad.

    Who was it that said "stuck on stupid"?

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  27. Guys (and gals) -- oops, gals = some lady just went ballistic

    Starting over, Everyone: It should be clear that Brodhead is the token whitey.

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  28. 3:01 has asked a good question.
    ou mention "faculty response,"
    but then suggest that it is merely a summary. Might help if you print
    the specific letter, not just a
    summary.

    And how many signatories are
    there of the letter you shared?
    Was it from a single individual,
    or a group? How many from the
    English Dept. agreed to sign it?

    Doesn't appear that any of the "88"
    would have agreed with the intent
    of the letter: am I wrong?

    I'm not intentionally harangueing:
    some of us would like to know.

    Thanks.

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  29. I don't think it's odd on the face of it that Brodhead might have become an affiliate of Women's Studies. Administrators do that all of the time if their work has any relationship at all with the area. The issue here is WHAT the relationship is, ie, is it academic, not IF there is a relationship.

    Before everyone starts dumping on Wahneema Lubiano (again!): while she seems to be "bookophobic," she has published numerous articles. It is probably exceptional to tenure someone in English on articles only--unless they were hugely influential--but article-driven disciplines like psych and poli sci do this all of the time. These kinds of distinctions are important in discussing academic "cred."

    Clearly, if she's been out of school twenty years and there's no book, it's not rocket science that there is unlikely to be a book. But, think of it this way: no book at all may be better than a bad book. And, she's saved trees.

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  30. Well put 7:43 . Denial explains the " something happened " attitude . The ego of the 88 and their ilk demands that the lacrosse players committed some offense against women , minorities , the intelligentsia etc. Brodhead would not be on the horns of a dilemma if the crime as accused had occurred . The best way to defend the indefensible ( yesterday's KC post ) is to change the facts . Remind the world that there was underage drinking ; a stripper was hired to entertain ; the boys were loud ; and they probably removed a few tags from cushions or matresses .

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  31. Appears as if the sign "castrate"
    was a past-tense reference to Brodhead, who obviously...

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  32. ...has undergone the procedure.

    "Thank you for not waiting" was a reference to Brodhead's willingness to self-emasculate, a kind of leadership-by-example.

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  33. Earlier comments suggested that the presence of some of the G88 on the Duke faculty is due to federal affirmative action requirements. While I certainly regard these requirements as loathsome, it should be noted that they do not require that anyone of a particular ideological or political orientation be hired. Duke has made a deliberate decision to seek out faculty of this ideological bent, and it is that decision, not the fact that some of the faculty thus selected, which is the root of the problem.

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  34. My spouse once asked me: "Do you know why internal University politics is so vicious?" I said I did not. "Because the stakes are so small."

    Be careful what we ask for. University presidents like Brodhead are usually cloaked with respect due to the position they hold. In this case, however, Duke's president has supported the Angry Studies group and for the first time a large amount of national public attention (people not part of the university family) has been drawn to the thoughts, teachings and actions of some truly unproductive faculty and staff. For many who have not delved into the underbelly of what goes on in the teachings of some faculty it comes as a huge shock to learn that the Angry Studies departments even exist.

    By their refusal to apologize in the face of facts that require an apology from a decent person, the Klan of 88 and Brodhead serve as a wonderful example of the sins of political correctness.

    If they apologized we would be deprived of the opportunity to use them as the poster children for which they are so well suited.

    Brodhead and the Klan of 88 continue to damage the reputation of Duke every day by continuing their magnificent state of denial and continuing to display to the general public the true thoughts of many of those teaching at public and private universities. If this were playing out at an insignificant college like Bennett, there would have been none of the attention drawn to it.

    No, we have here the "perfect storm" working to sink the ship of the Angry Studies and their accolytes. Napoleon at Austerlitz said it best. "When your enemy is destroying himself, never interfere."

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  35. mac,
    this is 3:01. re your 8:21 post: i think 2:32 indeed published the full text of the yet to be clearly identified "letter" from an english dept. faculty member. it seemed to me that that T. Pfau must have been the author given kc's attribution of a quote to him that matched identically a quote from the text of the letter that 2:32 supplied. my questions to 2:32 did not directly relate to that letter, but to the substance of the underlying "intemperate screed" from baker to which fau purportedly replied. 2:32 suggested that kc's characterization of the pfau response letter was incorrect because baker's "screed" was not penned in the context of the "listening statement". i simply want to know exactly what baker said in his "screed" so that i can judge for myself its relevance (or not) to the "listening" ad.

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  36. 8:38

    If your spouse really asked you about the infighting, s/he is not v. creative, since that remark has been around for ages. At least since Donald Kagan.

    While you can probably critique some of the 88's relative lack of scholarly productivity (I wouldn't bother Claudia Koonz here; she's way productive), I'm not sure how you are judging the relative merit of their teaching, except that of spousal hire Kim Clark. Have you seen their evaluations? Do you know how many graduate students they've worked with? How many they've placed, how many letters of recommendation they've written,etc. There is much that constitutes teaching.

    When you want to criticize, stick to what you know.

    Finally, d'you know how Napoleon Slakov--the local football team--has been doing?

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  37. 8:37
    Why would Thomas Sowell or anyone of his talent want to set up shop at Duke?

    He's have to work with Mr. "Luv" Hardt and Kim.

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  38. Another great piece KC. It is amazing the depth of this craziness.

    It was a shock to see that Lubiana told the potential signers of the document that their names would not be listed. Wow! They must have been surprsed to see the ad.

    Unbelievable. And Brodhead is a woman's studies prof?? No one could possibly make this stuff up.

    Boys and the Boy Crisis Conference

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  39. 8:51

    Dear Kilgore,

    It may surprise you, but as a legitimate academic area, a women's studies program may well have male affiliates. Why not?

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  40. 8:45
    Yup, I got your intent - all good questions. I was adding to your questions - wondering how many in the Dept. actually agreed with Mr. Pfau's sentiment. He made it sound like a plurality.

    I'm with you: I'd like to read Baker's letter. Perhaps someone will post it?

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  41. I left academia because of this crap. Let's face facts. Humanities programs in every university have been gutted by race and sex quotas, and by the incompetent hucksters who benefit from those quotas.

    While I admire K.C. Johnson for fighting it, the fix is in. If you are a white, hetero, Christian man, you cannot get a job on the faculty of a humanities department.

    Nothing is going to change. The fact that Brodhead remains in office says it all. The situation is completely hopeless. All that can really be done is to ignore it.

    I moved into a technical field, where the pay is much better and the ass kissing is much diminished. I'm satisfied with this deal. Let these Stalinist stooges have their fiefdom. They cannot be dislodged.

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  42. I think that Brodhead's statement " whatever they did was bad enough " is a bumper sticker of his subconscious for not being able to rationalize a proper response to criticism of his and his 88's judgements , statements and actions .

    This is a statement that you could not pull out of him with sodium pentathol had " they" been black and / or female . in Brodhead's worldview there is nothing that CGM could do that rises to the level of " bad enough'.

    Those at Duke and the Alumni understand that this slip of the tongue revealled a bias so deep that he cannot continue to manage and represent what is theirs . He will indeed move on .

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  43. Dear Shouting Thomas,

    I don't know what you mean by Humanities, but pretty much every department in the College of Liberal Arts where I teach is predominantly--to overwhelmingly--white male. Heterosexual? This I don't know, but many have wives and children. And, I don't think we're the exception.

    Remember: there are more women than men, an estimated five-to-ten percent of the population is gay, and if you don't subscribe to the notion that men are somehow just smarter than women, why would white, heterosexual males dominate any Humanities department and why would you expect them to?

    In my field of humanities, at least, brains seem to trump everything else.

    ReplyDelete
  44. 8:56

    If you'd ever been to a faculty meeting, you'd know departments weren't Stalinist fiefdoms. There's way too much disagreement for any comparison to a monolithic communist apparatus...

    ReplyDelete
  45. Shouting Thomas re: 8:56
    "I left academia because of this crap...they cannot be dislodged."

    Cascara Sagrada is an excellent natural stimulant for the treatment of underactive peristalsis.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Wonder if it works on Brodheads and Lubianos?

    ReplyDelete
  47. Wouldn't it be really cool if some Duke IT guy dug up the faculty email archives from the past year or so and posted them somewhere?

    ReplyDelete
  48. 9:06

    You must be the exception. Most of the members of the so-called humanities courses are too much like the lackies in the Women's Studies and AAAS at Dook. Much more PC driven than concerned about truly education kids. The difference is that these little Adolph's are subsidized by the federal government. So ironic. It is time to cease these hate-driven indoctrinations to our young people. Broadhead is an enabler if not an active participant.
    Our federal tax dollars at work.
    Tenure has festered like a boil on the butt of education. It was instituted to protect teachers to guarantee the free expression of education. Unfortunately, along the way it was highjacked by politically driven "intellectuals" (boy was that a contradiction to rationality). It's time to re-evaluate tenure. The ACLU should take up the cause but it would step on too many of their toes and is not a liberal enough cause.

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  49. A third possibility exists: Brodhead's simply an opportunist. He doesn't really endorse the radical Women's Studies mindset, but believes that doing so - and cosseting the 88 - will establish his bonafides with the people that count and solidify his position.

    To me, that's more disturbing than KC's options 1 and 2.

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  50. 8:53 said: "It may surprise you, but as a legitimate academic area, a women's studies program may well have male affiliates. Why not?"

    I am not surprised at all. I know several male women's studies profs and frankly find them lacking.

    My surprise was that Brodhead would identify as a women's studies affiliate professor.

    Women's studies a legitimate academic study? I am far from convinced of that. I have read through a couple of women's studies texts on amazon and from my perspective rather than celebrate the uniqueness of women and girls they portray them as "worthy victims" of the terrible males who have oppressed them for centuries. Go to amazon, choose a women's studies text and search on the word OPPRESSION. See what you find. It is an eye opener.

    I have a wife and a daughter whom I love deeply. Their beauty is not reflected in what I see in women's studies. Women's studies has more to do with resentment, anger, payback, and power/control. Seems to be a fraud to me and a fraud based on serious psychopathology.

    Boys and the Boy Crisis Conference

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  51. KC - There had been much speculation that the Duke BOT would meet during this first week of July, and name a replacement for Robert Steele as board chairman.

    Is there any validity to this speculation. Will Steele be replaced, and if so, when should we expect to see this happen?

    IMO, the removal of Brodhead as president of Duke will require first the replacement of Steele as BOT chair.

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  52. 9:06

    What are little Adophs? Do you mean Adolf, as in Hitler? I think that is probably a bad comparison, given that many Women's Studies Programs work as collectives and one of the hallmarks of the Hitlerian regime was control over many aspects of the party and the state, ie, NOT collective.

    I'm wondering why you're so frightened on Women's Studies programs. They have produced much good scholarship over the years. Are you afraid of Gender Studies, too?

    What about area studies, the happy little product of the Cold War?

    And, no, my department/college is no exception as you'd know if you had a clue about universities.

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  53. Three comments:

    1. Of all the things that G88 members did throughout the hoax, using departmental funds to support the ad and claiming endorsements of departments that never took a vote were among the most despicable to me as an academic. I would be screaming at my dept chair if he or she were to claim departmental support for anything like this without a full and complete discussion in the department. In fact, were I chair, I would demand unanimity, not just a majority, before lending my department's name to any such document, regardless of content.

    And the use of university funds for the listening ad is clearly a breach of ethics and apparently Duke procedure.

    So much else of what people complain about the G88 doing can reasonably be seen to be legit, if ugly, behavior for faculty. But claiming non-existent departmental support (or a chair giving it without a discussion) and using university funds for a clearly partisan ad are both totally beyond the pale.

    Were I a Duke faculty member, I would be in the dean's or provost's office immediately.

    2. The stuff about government contracts is such horseshit. At best, it applies to any grant money that involves a specific contract with the federal government. It does NOT have *anything* to do with departmental hiring at a private university. Duke's efforts at affirmative action are driven by their own desires to diversify. Whatever the value of that, there's no sense in which gov't contracts demand it.

    3. Shouting Thomas says white, hetero, Christian men can't get hired in the humanities. True story from my institution:

    About four years ago one of our humanities departments made two hires, both were males and both were non-white (I don't know about their orientation or religiosity). At mid-probationary review, one of the two was not renewed. Evidently his teaching was very problematic. This past year we hired his replacement: a white, hetero, male (Christian but non-practicing as far as I know).

    So, Thomas, it does happen. And believe it or not, there are humanities faculty who see diversity as contributing to, but not overriding, Quality.

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  54. Kilgore,

    I wouldn't admit to reading something on Amazon. That's worse than Clif's Notes.

    I'd suggest sitting down with some monographs written by those affiliated with Women's Studies. Hold your fire until you've read enough to have an informed opinion. The work is hugely varied.

    Some of it may not be any good in your opinion. But that's true of a lot of work in a lot of programs.

    ReplyDelete
  55. I look at my department in a public university and we just kept hiring and hiring white men. No one minded because they thought they were good candidates (not necessarily better than some others who were not white males). If people--white, male, whatever--don't get tenure in my department, it's most often because they didn't get into the habit of publishing.

    Point of fact: it would be illegal to ask about someone's sexual orientation at a job interview. I don't know how you can tell that white heterosexual males aren't getting jobs in academe. Where is a sexual orientation list posted?

    ReplyDelete
  56. If W.L. included in her ad departments that did not vote to be included, I should think she'd have big legal problems. Even if no one in the relevant departments complained.

    KC, is anyone checking up on this?

    ReplyDelete
  57. "Student articulations?" My--what big words she uses!

    Fire her. Then fire the rest of these 60's aging hippie/leftist/phony 5-figure socialist dinosaurs and replace them with sane middle-of-the-road, well educated people. They exist! Some are (gasp) black too! Gay too!

    Howabout replacing all this kill whitey bullchit that nobody wants to hear anymore with REAL black history? You know, like a genuine history of Africa, and a genuine history of blacks in America? The story is fascinating but it isn't being taught in universities.

    And then replace the Feminist, 60's male-bashing lesbian bullchit with REAL history of what life was like for gay people in this country before they were accepted by the main culture. The story is fascinating. If you actually sit down and talk to a gay man in his 70's or 80's, there was an entire "secret culture" with codes and norms that have all but been forgotten by mainstream gay culture.

    All of this amazing history has been replaced by stale, phony identity politics and make no mistake, all of it is centered around hating white males--or conservatives of any color. Political Correctness is subtle fascism and the worst thing about it is EVERYBODY hates it. Blacks hate it, whites hate it, gay people hate it, and yet we go along with it. It's crazy.

    The internet is the great leveler, my bruthas! It has almost completely neutered the mainstream press with it's phony PC doctrines and thought policing! Do you all really think we'd have ever learned the real scope of Nifong's duplicity and evil without blogs like this one? Do you really think the absolute TSUNAMI of outrage over illegal immigration would have ever happened had blogs and websites not gotten the word out about how bad the situation has really gotten in the past 5 years? Nope! The mainstream media would have fed us pre-digested, PC fluff as Rome continued to burn!

    This is an exciting time in American history. We ordinary people have the power again. Use it. It will be a great day in America when Reverend Al and jesse Jackson no longer have any pulpits on which to prolong their undeserved control over all matters racial. They need to be GONE. The Group of 88 hacks too.

    Bob Cooksey
    Lewisville Texas

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  58. 9:27
    "Collectives?"

    Can anyone say "Stalin's little dupes?"

    Perhaps you meant "collectibles," such as Hummel figurines, or things you might find at finer yard sales everywhere.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Note about 9:27
    She uses the word "frightened" - as they always do - as a means of intimidation and emasculation:
    "Why are you so frightened?"

    Missy, why are you and the 88 so frightened of the truth?

    ReplyDelete
  60. Addendum: meant "facts," not "truth."

    Oh, I forgot the obligatory sniff when asking why she and the rest of the 88 are so "frightened" of the facts.

    ReplyDelete
  61. KC...

    Just a superb, cogent, and irrefutable essay. Some of your finest writing since the outset and a credit to the blogosphere!


    I agree! KC has worked long and hard to get to the truth of the details and background of the "Listening Statement" Wahneema concocted.

    KC is not 100% there yet, but he is close..

    *Student statements made up.
    *Signers misled about their names not being published.
    *Department endorsement Wahneema claimed was a lie, misrepresentation and a big academic breach.
    *Departmental funds WERE used to fund the ad, in violation of policy.
    *Because Negros, Feminists, and Hard Lefties did it - Duke did not discipline - and most faculty went into a submissive mode and raised no protest. Good 'ol Stalinist solidarity prevailed.
    *Brodhead is either gutless or a collaborator.

    By omission though, it appears KC IS saying that Romance and AAS did take a vote to endorse Wahneema's work product?

    I do think the Group of 88 was partially protected by Whaneema's incoherent writing style from greater liability. I can see the lawyers suing Duke saying - "Whatever Wahneema wrote and 87 endorsed - though no rational human can make full sense of it - it was bad enough."

    ReplyDelete
  62. Steven Horwitz 9:28 said...

    ...This past year we hired his replacement: a white, hetero, male (Christian but non-practicing as far as I know).
    ::
    How does one know if someone is something but ...non-practicing?

    And, how does one defend himself (herself) from such a statement?

    Yikes!
    ::
    GP

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  63. Mac,

    How much Russian/German/French do you read? I'm wondering this in terms of what you know about Stalinism & thus how STUPID it is to attack faculty members--in any department--as Stalinist anything. This doesn't help any discussion and makes you look really stupid to those of us who really know about Stalinism and how to apply the term in ways other than as an insult.

    ReplyDelete
  64. Mackie white-boy,

    You'd be why a lot of people don't bash white men. You are a racist misgynist.

    ReplyDelete
  65. *So you don't need bashing. Your actions speak for themselves. You're a loser. I hope you haven't reproduced/aren't planning on it.

    ReplyDelete
  66. The alternative secret history of the world according to progessives by Oleg Atbashian.
    -------------------------

    The reason we never heard of Atbashian's name before is quite clear from his stupid essay. It is when I read such stupidity and such fiction that I almost prefer to be on the side of the 88ers and Brodhead. Let us not get too carried away with such false rhetoric. You forgot to mention Atbashian is Armenian. His essay should be judged based on the biases he brings to the table.

    ReplyDelete
  67. 10:02
    Wonder how much Russian/German/French Wahneema reads?

    ReplyDelete
  68. 10:02
    How many Gross Anatomy classes have you attended? Do you know your cranium from your ischium?

    ReplyDelete
  69. Thanks K.C. for your well-reasoned and well-written analysis of the failures of Duke's leadership. In addition to taking a close look at Broadhead and the G88, what are you thoughts on the Duke Board of Trustees? It seems blame ought to be laid on their doorstep in equal measure to Broadhead and his lackeys.

    ReplyDelete
  70. 10:05
    We should likewise be careful to consider the biases Joseph Conrad and Nabokov bring to the table?

    ReplyDelete
  71. In reviewing the comments, I find one very interesting observation:

    7:43 stated:

    "... So, why doesn't [Broadhead] critcize the Group of 88? Possible reasons:
    1. Brodhead is a white male. A white male criticizing a group made up largely of "protected" wont' be tolerated. It doesn't matter if the criticism is justified."

    One could postulate that Brodhead's unprotected status is more a function of his inability to articulate moral truth than of his Caucasian manhood. But when moral truth is heard only in the silence, then the white male is singularly unprotected. Brodhead (et al) clearly communicates such a status by his silence.

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  72. 10:05-who-calls-me-a-"loser":

    What are you so frightened of and threatened by?
    (bad grammar: mea culpa)

    Et vouz:
    Besse moi derriere, sil vouz plait.

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  73. Mac:

    Does "besse moi derriere" mean "kiss my arse"?

    I know no french other than the fries, but some things have a universal meaning.

    Geezer

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  74. The simple fact is that Universities came under immense pressure a few years ago to drastically increase the numbers of women and minority faculty and to do it quickly they took what they could get.
    Think about it. How many AA or female PhDs are there in hard science/engineering looking for a job in Academia? Maybe they will exist sometime in the future but they did not exist when Duke, etc. needed them in quantity. "Professors" of Anger Studies were the only available source of the numbers they needed to avoid hostile scrutiny from the Feds (and others).

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  75. KC said,

    ...Beyond Brodhead, the list of Women’s Studies affiliated faculty reads like a Who’s Who of the Group of 88.
    ::
    This is probably a natural phenomenon associated with hiring faculty (and staff) who have no understanding and no experience what-so-ever with male students who play Beer-Pong!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_pong

    They are the Who's Who of the faculty who are terrorized of pesky boys and their competitive games.

    Self protection as it were until they can replace the athletes with more appropriate scholars.
    ::
    GP

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  76. The men (boys?) on this post are so cute. And soooooooooo stupid. And your French sucks. Shall we try your German next?

    They don't do foreign languages so read stuff in translation & only know a popular bit about a particular historic figure--in this case, Josef Stalin--yet, they want to apply the name "Stalinist" to others as an insult. I think some of you are Stalinist. You want to keep white (heterosexual) males in all positions of so-called power without any proof that such men are actually the "best" for the positions.

    If you look at the Chronicle of Higher Education, you'll realize that white men still hold the vast majority of teaching positions--even in the Humanities. So, your little bitty penises (penisi?!!) needn't deflate in fear of Amazon women & black men taking over the world. What's with you guys? Do you really think you're the only smart people around?!! Sad, very sad.

    Bye, bye!

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  77. GP,

    Beer Pong is an appropriate metaphor for the 88 and the DPD lineup: to see whose balls could be tossed into a cup.

    ReplyDelete
  78. 10:33
    Bye-bye, Missy Troll!
    Have you found your lost ischium yet, or has no one untied both hands and turned on the lights?

    Still resorting to "short-dicked white-boy comments," Kim? What are you so afraid of?

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  79. Is Oleg Atbashian saying the former European slaves of Turks have done really well; why are the former African slaves of the United States not doing so well? Even leaving aside the gross factual errors in Atbashian�s assertions, this argument does not fly. This is an easy give away to 88ers and Brodhead to laugh at our faces. Yes, they can laugh at these childish rants and they should along with all the other grown ups -- Arabs made me do it! I am not the first one, others have done it too!

    This stuff has no place in the lacrosse debate. The lacrosse case is a legitimate issue where �wrongs� were done not �imagined� such as the slavery of the Europeans by Turks. What a good laugh that one is! Newly created history � fresh out of the oven. I was purchasing antics in Bali once, years ago. I laughed when my friend pointed out that the antics we were buying were being made in the back room as we waited.

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  80. I hate to break it to you, but women with PhDs in the humanities from Ivy League universities existed well before the era of AA/EO. They just didn't get jobs because the political will to employ them wasn't there.

    Are you asserting that all women with PhDs have them as a result of AA/EO? I hope none of you have daughters who have/want doctorates to teach...otherwise, they'd be the same, no? Or are they different, because they're your kids?

    Some of you do hate studies. This is an advanced form of anger studies.

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  81. re: Cederford

    *Student statements made up.

    That's my take too.

    I wonder if all of the racial problems that they talk about are real or if they are manufactured so that they can provide a solution.

    I went to Boston College when it was in its irish Roman Catholic heyday and minority students were few and I didn't see any racial conflict there. You went there to study, play sports and/or go to a party.

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  82. 10:37

    You're not implying the Turks are Arabs? The Ottoman Empire was run in part by Armenians, Greeks, Jews, and others. And, the Europeans in southestern Europe were not "Slaves." You might want to read any good Balkan history. The Jelaviches from Indiana have a classic one. It may be outdated, however.

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  83. 10:37
    I have no beef with female academicians; I don't like pretenders.

    ReplyDelete
  84. But, Mac, You seem to consider "Pretnders" to be anyone with whom you disagree.

    What's your criteria for "Pretender"?

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  85. 10:37
    Purchsed "antics?" Sorry, but you repeated the spelling. Wahneema, is that you? (I'll be your spell-check, baby!)

    ReplyDelete
  86. I have a question for the advocates of white males. Where do Middle Easterners fit in your typology? There are plenty of them in the hard sciences and engineering. Just wondering.

    ReplyDelete
  87. 10:40
    I disagree with lots of things that lots of people write on these blogs (such as Polanski) but I respect his intellect. Yours?
    See if your academic credentials match up with his.
    I would never call Polanski a pretender.

    ReplyDelete
  88. There are three 10:37 posts. I couldn't find "Purchsed 'antics.'" What is this?

    Thank you.

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  89. re: 10:33

    My son (starting college this fall) is finishing up a course at UIUC and told me that he was a little fuzzy on orthogonal function spaces. I suggested that he contact his mentor but that would probably take a week due to the holiday.

    Since you appear as a great scholar, perhaps you could write up a few paragraphs on this topic that a high-school student could understand.

    ReplyDelete
  90. 10:43
    Do you mean some of the best early scientists and mathematicians in history, or those who advanced Gross Anatomy years before India, China and the West?
    Those Middle Easterners?

    ReplyDelete
  91. 9:27 --

    I speak only as one who's gone through academia as a student a couple of times, neither time in an (officially) politicized program, but the following is a completely true story:

    I attended a workshop class with a woman who let us know up front that her undergraduate education had been in Women's Studies, and that it was that training in Women's Studies that helped her realize that she was a lesbian, and also recognize how deeply male oppression throughout her early life had scarred her. (And let me clarify one thing here: I did not, at this point, disbelieve her. I survived an abusive childhood that scarred me and as such I have respect for the variety of things that really can cause serious psychological problems later down the road.)

    We got along fairly fine through the major portion of the class; the nature of the subject was not such that it had to bring people into conflict often; people were just expected to contribute their perspective, whether that was their perspective from personal experience, from formal education, et cetera. Somehow at just about every turn, we would end up hearing how this woman's perspective was, on the issue at hand, shaped by her learning in Women's Studies. And to clarify -- at that point, I did not find that other than legitimate. Yes, I thought she would have been well-advised to start developing aspects of her identity other than as a lesbian, a Woman's Studies major, and a survivor of male oppression, but merely being less well-rounded than you could be is not itself a crisis situation.

    What really capped the situation, though, was what happened in the second-to-last class. The subject under discussion, as I remember, was the behavior of a man who was a participant in some event that had been written up by one of the workshop group, who was also a participant in the event. Everyone seemed to be seeing the man's behavior as callous and unfeeling, which was not an unreasonable interpretation.

    To broaden the perspective, I wanted to introduce the notion that perhaps the man's behavior could be explained by the fact that most men are raised to believe that their role -- what is desired from them, by both women and men -- is not commiseration about how bad a situation is, but solutions to that situation. I began by saying "perhaps we're judging him too harshly by thinking he knew that people were expecting him to express his feelings. One of the things we've learned from Men's Studies is that --" and I swear to you I got no further than that because the interrupting words that flew immediately from the Women's Studies major's mouth were "Oh how can you make fun of Women's Studies that way?!"

    She was serious.

    She sincerely believed that it was a good and valuable thing to have academic departments that studied the social role of women in our society, the experiences which are unique to them, the issues that they confront in disproportionate numbers to men...

    And she really, sincerely, actually believed, without apparently ever having even questioned it, that men could not be worthy of similar study; any suggestion that men might be facing issues and difficulties unique to manhood that have received insufficient study because they are particular to men was, to her, obviously only a joke, a crude jeer at the world of women whose issues did deserve such study.

    Maybe there are some Women's Studies departments that operate on a sane basis. That say "all right, let's study what issues are faced by women in particular, while remembering that our discipline is only one among many. We may discover legitimate grievances, but let's not mistake them for automatically the worst offenses any human has ever suffered, or as something that someone else should have been aware of and been settling for us long ago. Let's not abuse them as excuses to throw pity parties, or as shortcuts to self-righteous martyrhood." But a department which turns out graduates who never question that women are worthy of study and men utterly unworthy is a department that's a fart in the face of intellectual honesty and academic integrity.

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  92. KC, you have a long history of mysogynist behavior, words and deeds, which is part of what got you into trouble at Brooklyn when your scholarship should have allowed you to sail through your promotion review with no problems. You were a polarizer in that department, to the extent that conservatives wanted you gone too. Any google search picks up on it immediately, even in stories that are very sympathetic to how you were wronged in your tenure case: you have a penchant for taking absolute stands, judging others relentlessly, and harassing them in contemptuous, unprofessional ways when they don't give in to you. Your obsessive need to be right, and defeat other people who you don't know suggests an inability to actually deal with people as equals. You are reputedly a great teacher: but students aren't equals, are they? And a teacher always gets to be "right."

    What is particularly grandiose and arrogant about this post, and is typical of much of your endless harassment of Duke faculty, is that you create "mysteries" that you then purport to solve. It's a very strange trait for a professional historian, even in a blogger persona. Why not ask people why they did and said what they did and said, instead of creating hostile situations where you get to be the "hero" of the right and make dialogue impossible? Everything you assert about Lubiano, Broadhead, et. al. is pure conjecture in terms of why they did what they did and what it meant to them. It's not a good excuse to continue a shrill shouting match endlessly by just saying "They started it" over and over again.

    Why not just go back to writing history? The Duke lacrosse case is over. Don't prolong this by an increasingly meaningless attempt to "purge" people from academic life who you have no power over.

    signed,

    Another Academic

    ReplyDelete
  93. I think Polanski is a man. You were referring specifically to women, unless I misread your sometimes bloated prose.

    And, Mac, I'm v. comfortable with my credentials. And, I suspect mine surpass his because I am an academic, while he is not. But, as you know, life is not only about degrees. Nor was I comparing myself to Polanski. Why would I?

    Are you changing the subject? I was asking about your "Pretender" remark.

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  94. Either of the reasons cited in the post, by itself, would be sufficient to cause Brodhead's response to the Listening Ad. Together they comprise the foundation for a position that will never permit Brodhead to call the actions of the G88 what they are -- despicable. He is too cowardly and too resistant to self-examination to be a participant in cleaning up this mess. He'd rather use OPM to hush it up and move on.

    In the first instance, Brodhead saw what happened to fellow "elite academic institution" president Larry Summers when the latter had the audacity to make an un-PC statement. That's the cowardly part of Brodhead's make-up. He doesn't want to lose his job, so he goes along to get along and the infection that has taken over academia continues to fester.

    As to the second, had Brodhead been a faculty member, he would have been invited to sign the Ad and would have done so without hesitation. He believes the race / gender / class BS with all his heart and soul. He'll never do the self-examination necessary to see how wrong he is. Why? Go back to # 1. Because he's a coward.

    Too bad Brodhead finds himself stuck in DIW. Could Brodhead transport himself to Oz, he might find himself a wizard that could bestow on him a dash of courage.

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  95. Dear Michael,

    If you want a specialist for your high-school son on a particular subject, go to his high school teacher/s for the relevant subject and ask.

    Otherwise, I'm sure Illinois-Chicago will have a tutor for him. Maybe even a black one.

    ReplyDelete
  96. 10:45
    "Purchased antics." A little difference between missing a letter and a gross misspelling, repeated.

    "I was purchasing antics in Bali,
    years ago. I laughed when my friend
    pointed out the antics we were buying..."

    ReplyDelete
  97. Dear Another Academic,

    I suppose some of KC's behavior qualities--which he's pretty much kept under control here--are reflected in some of the bloggers here.

    That being said, I wouldn't send my kids to Duke. I know people who teach there & I respect them. They weren't part of the 88. There really should be something done about that manifesto. As long as it stands, it provides space for some of the bloggers who froth here to continue that behavior.

    An academic as well.

    ReplyDelete
  98. 10:48
    I asked you for your credentials:
    even if he is "not an academic" he has credentials, and is not a pretender.

    Still haven't found your ischium yet?

    ReplyDelete
  99. 10:51

    Does the poster mean antiques? I was thinking s/he meant antics, as in prostitutes.

    ReplyDelete
  100. 9:29 - It sounds like you don't know much about amazon. They have a "search inside" feature which allows the creative reader to read as much of the book as is desired. Better yet you can search on keywords and it will allow you to read about three pages surrounding that quote. It is not a matter of reading reviews or marketing hype, you can basically read the book. Have a look at this one

    Women's Realities, Women's Choices and search on OPPRESSION. How about that! 65 references to oppression appear and you can read each one. Have fun.

    We're not in Kansas anymore Toto. OMG we're in Durham....

    Boys and the Boy Crisis Conference

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  101. 10:55

    10:37 is a fine example of an academic imposter, a pretender.

    ReplyDelete
  102. Mac:

    Tenured professor; PhD from an Ivy League university.

    Multiple books and chapters in book from reputable academic and univesity presses. Some in classroom use. Articles in double-blind reviewed journals.

    Reviewers don't usually condemn me as a Stalinist or anything else that I know of.

    D'you want a list of grants? Suffice to say, multiple outside.

    My credentials probably aren't important to you, since you attack anything and everything you disagree with.

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  103. To 10:37
    Maybe if I type a little slower you can follow my point.
    Of course there have always been women/minorities in Academia. But when there was sudden, intense pressure applied to drastically increase their number, those numbers more or less had to be in the humanities(broadly defined) because there are so few candidates in other fields.
    But you probably read me right the first time. So you attempt to discredit the concept by forcing the silly notion of "all women are Affirmative Action hires" - when I said no such thing.
    And I do have a wife and daughter. One is an M.D. and the other is in Med. School.

    ReplyDelete
  104. 10:58
    What's your field of study?

    ReplyDelete
  105. 10:57 which 10:37 and what is an academic imposter? Is it someone without a PhD claiming to have one? Pls. clarify!!!

    ReplyDelete
  106. Kilgore,

    I do rather know something about Amazon. Not all books--many, in fact--don't permit the feature you're mentioning. And, it's limited. You can't read the entire volume.

    ReplyDelete
  107. Hi Mac,

    I'll let you guess!!!

    ReplyDelete
  108. re: 10:51

    Are you saying that you can't handle high-school math? As a person with an academic background?

    He understands enough of it to complete the assignment but I like him to have real fluency in whatever he learns and I like him to have decent exposure to theory which has been deemphasized in recent years.

    The people that I work with have masters and Phds and we get a few from acadamia from time to time that want a shot at a comfortable life in an intellectually stimulating atmosphere.

    ReplyDelete
  109. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  110. 11:02

    No, what I'm saying is if he doesn't understand it perfectly, he needs someone with a math education background to help.

    Would you go to a French professor if you didn't understand an art assignment? Perhaps, not.

    ReplyDelete
  111. Does anyone but me think that mac is just KC comenting under another identity? I think he does that a lot -- including, I am pretty sure, a lot of the trashy, harassing emails people get from the supposed "supporters" of KC are actually him operating under other email accounts. I keep getting snail-mail letters from someone who mysteriously has no return address, and yet keeps demanding replies. And if you look at the times on KC's posts, and at the times the emails were sent, it is clear that they many of them are sent in the middle of the night, and I happen to know -- from an article written about him in the Chronicle that you can google easily -- that he sleeps almost not at all.

    Another Academic

    ReplyDelete
  112. 10:58
    You seem to have a bit of a reading comprehension issue, don't you?
    I said: I disagree with lots of folks on this blog, but I don't find their comments disagreeable enough to engage.
    I like differences of opinion.

    You just haven't got an argument, other than:
    "What are you short-dicked-white-boys so afraid of?"

    With that level of discourse, you have micturated on your own cap'ngown.
    Aren't you the one who can't spell "antique?"

    Maybe that's your evil twin. Hard to tell you apart,
    since you all look alike on these pages without an identifying name.

    ReplyDelete
  113. Another Academic,

    Thank you so VERY much for the compliment. (I doubt KC thinks it's a compliment, but...)

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  114. Dear 11:06,

    This is an interesting idea and one I hadn't considered. I hope you're wrong, because Mac and some of the others seem to be racist and misogynist. (I'm willing to grant that they consider themselves really nice guys and upstanding citizens, etc.) I can't imagine the Brooklyn College students would tolerate someone like that.

    AA2

    ReplyDelete
  115. No, Mac,

    I'm the one who noticed the posting misspelled purchasing and thought the poster was buying prostitutes, ie, antics. I can spell antique. No problem. It's a Latin root word.

    ReplyDelete
  116. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  117. the problem with affirmative action is, it got perverted..... from a system of everyone having an equal shot at the starting line to one where there is now a quota system at the finish line.

    ReplyDelete
  118. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  119. Hello, Polanski,

    That's an interesting idea, but what would be the basis for the proposals? And how would the geniuses be chosen? D'you really think geniuses are the best/only people to come up with ideas for what constitutes a great university?

    I'm not attacking your proposal, just wondering.

    ReplyDelete
  120. AA2
    Nope. Not misogynist at all. Nor racist. I live in a lower-middle class, working-class neighborhood and I like nearly all neighbors -
    except, perhaps, the work-less class. And those are of all races.

    Easy to throw around labels, Wahneema, but harder to prove. Facts matter, sweetie, fact matter.

    ReplyDelete
  121. No Justice, No Peace --

    Thank you for linking Oleg Atbashian's article.

    Interesting perspective from a man that comes to the US from a country (former USSR) that our progressives called a workers paradise and our economic equal during the 60s through the 80s.

    Turns out they were wrong then and they're wrong now.

    ReplyDelete
  122. Dear Mac,

    I'm sure Hitler & Stalin liked their neighbors, too, doll heart.

    ReplyDelete
  123. So 11:01 did you read the 65 entries that came up with the search on "oppression" in the linked women's studies textbook? What did you think of that? Is that the women's studies you seem to support? Do you believe that sort of thing?

    Your avoidance is telling.


    Boys and the Boy Crisis Conference

    ReplyDelete
  124. KC,

    Editorial suggestion. Do not delete antiwhite posts. They are important as they add to the discussion.

    P

    ReplyDelete
  125. Another Academic:

    Rather than attacking Professor Johnson (and others) personally with your inane and paranoid rants, why don't you try responding to his actual arguments? I know it must be difficult to defend the indefensible, but simply changing the subject does not help your case.

    ReplyDelete
  126. 11:16

    While in the 1930s, many wrong-headed idealist lauded Soviet Russia, I don't think any of the Sovietologists//and they come in all political stripes//was calling the USSR our economic equal in the 1980s.

    ReplyDelete
  127. 11:13

    10:33 and Kim Roberts, performer extraordinaire seem to think so.

    The terms "short-dicked-white-boys" and 10:33's variation are
    both racist and sexist and display great hatred and violence.

    Plus they're not funny.

    ReplyDelete
  128. To Another Academic
    1. Prof Johnson is not the only one who is still obsessed with this case and it is a long way from being over.
    2. Being an effective polemicist is not the same as being "misogynous", even if the target of effective polemics happen to be feminists.
    3. "Mystery" is a pretty good word to use when people like Brodhead, who are presumed to be smart, say things that turn out to be horribly wrong and stupid in the light of unfolding events and who then proceed to give a series of obviously dishonest explanations for doing so
    4. You say, "Why not just ask these people?" You are obviously new to this story. The bad guys virtually never responded to inquiries, even when they were still commenting on this matter in public.

    ReplyDelete
  129. 11:17,

    I just tried this & it didn't post...Could you list some of the times of the antiwhite posts? I've missed them in here.

    ReplyDelete
  130. 10:39 Thanks for the tip:

    "Jelaviches from Indiana have a classic one. It may be outdated, however."

    I will check that out. Actually, I was only trying to point out the multitude of historic confusions and contradiction in that essay. Yes, Arabs are not Turks. And, yes, Europeans were not enslaved by anyone let alone Turks. I think the author of that essay is either a bit confused or less than honest about his real motive in writing it. He is mixing apples and oranges in a big way. If he was more transparent or sincere about his motives, perhaps his message would not have been as confusing to the uninitiated.

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  131. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  132. Hi Mac,

    I think they're pretty funny. I guess it's never funny when the names are applied to you or a group you identify with. That'd be worth remembering...

    ReplyDelete
  133. 11:04

    Polanski is the only troll on this blog. Why even speculate on Johnson's emails if you have not a scintilla of evidence?

    Is Mr Academic really Randy?

    Now, Randy, be a good boy and fetch your shine box.

    P

    ReplyDelete
  134. Because they aren't arguments. They are conjectures, and there is a different. KC has a long history of engaging in pointless disputes with people, in which he harasses people endlessly, claiming to have the "facts." It's a shuck.

    Why don't *you* stop beating a dead horse? The lacrosse case is over. Leave these people alone. Who cares what happens at Duke? How about giving a shit what happens to all those nice white -- as well as black and brown -- kids over in Iraq who are getting their legs and heads blown off at the rate of twenty or thirty a week?

    KC Johnson is a fictional character that used o be a real person who did real scholarship. Now he's just an athletic supporter with a large fan club.

    Another Academic

    ReplyDelete
  135. 11:21

    The Jelavich book is from U. of Washington, I think.

    I can't imagine someone of Armenian origin necessarily having good things to say about the Turks/Ottomans, but he might be interesting to read.

    ReplyDelete
  136. re: Another Academic 11:06

    If you can do it, then I can too. I "think" that you are actually Nifong. You are not very bright, and already said you like to do things the "old fashioned" way. That gives you the right to make things up without proof, or the use of avialable technology.

    KC does not have to do what you accuse him of. Technology affords us information so we do not have to use prejudice or ignorance.

    For this week, DIW has had 10,524 visitors. Today alone 2,451, and 409 in the last hour.

    He does not have to resort to your pathetic accusations.

    ReplyDelete
  137. 11:11
    Better look up the root word for antique. Antiquus is the root word, it's Latin. (You still don't get credit for getting half the answer correct.)

    BTW: "antic" is not a name/word for a prostitute (with the exception of CGM, who may be a
    joke-of-one, thus fulfilling the said requirements of your misapplied definition.)

    ReplyDelete
  138. "fetch your shine box?" What kind of thing is that to say about a black person?

    Oh -- I forgot, KC: effective polemics. And being a polemicist is not diametrically opposed to being a mysogynist, except in your borderline personality world.

    Another Academic.

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  139. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  140. Dear 11:25: do you mean he doesn't have to "respond" to my pathetic accusations? Well, then he should stop making them, pea-brain.

    And btw, we flaunt our credentials because we earned 'em.

    Another Academic

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  141. 11:16 said:
    "I'm sure Hitler and Stalin liked their neighbors, too, doll heart."

    The people Stalin and Hitler "liked:" do you mean the 10s of millions they killed?

    Boy, I would hate to get a Valentine from you!

    ReplyDelete
  142. 11:29
    "Earned" has so many meanings these days!

    ReplyDelete
  143. Such as, smart boy?

    Another Academic

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  144. The odds that "another academic" has some connection with duke/durham are about 100%, imho. Why else would he/she want so badly for us to think of something else?

    ReplyDelete
  145. dear hman/KC,

    Nice try. But no. And so what if I did?

    Another Academic

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  146. Another Academic re: 11:24

    Now why don't you just take your
    "there is a different" self and run along like a good little boy.
    Shoo. Scoot along now.

    ReplyDelete
  147. 10:33AM thanks. That was a thoughtful comment. Anger, bile and useless rhetoric highlight the agenda clowns For most of indivuals who have responded to KC's most recent blog concerning Duke, the 88 and the AD-listen up. The Duke profs who make up the 88 are basically irrelevant. As things change in this country, the 88 will hold less stroke and become even more irrelevant. And they already look silly. How many people take the Reverends Jesse and Al seriously when they come out on their TV spots? People think that they are self serving and silly. They look like Victoria Peterson-simply camera hogs spouting worn out phrases. With approximately 50% of the murders in the country committed by about 3% of the population and close to 70% of AA children born out of wedlock, it is hard to take the Reverends Sharpton, Jackson, Barber as well great minds such as Malveaux, Farred, Neal, Lubiano, Holloway etc, etc. seriously. Maybe if those folks focused on their own community and spent less time bashing everyone else, then the AA community would begin to thrive.

    Look at the history. Between 50% to 67% of the Western European settlers to the American Colonies came here in some of form of indentured servitude. Look at the Chinese slaves that were forced here and reflect on the discrimination that the Irish, Italians, Poles, etc suffered early on. But now look at the Chinese-descended folk in this country and what they are doing-they are thriving. And basically so are the rest. The group to watch in the future is the fast-growing Hispanic community. They are family-based, church-based, hardworking and trying to build a better life. I know many of them. They will become a powerful force in this country and I predict that we won't need to form Hispanic American Studies programs at colleges. Those folks know how to get things done. I see them as a group that accepts responsibility, and will take care of themselves. Just like there are no Chinese American Studies programs. They don't need them. They are on the ball and taking care of themselves and creating value in America.

    So don't take the AAAS crowd and the rest of the agenda clowns at Duke very seriously. They don't make an impact. The joke always has been that we were all liberals in college until we had to live in the real world and get real jobs and then all the agenda crap from college clown was useless and irrelevant. Some of these blogs are spending too much time on the 88. People don't take them seriously in Durham and at Duke and they will become less significant over time. They were clowns, they are clowns and they will continue to be clowns.

    If you want to focus on a clown, then focus on Brodhead. To me, he is the individual who has been deceptive and dishonest. Forget the 88 clowns, Brodhead is a real problem for Duke. To me, WHATEVER HE DID WAS BAD ENOUGH.

    ReplyDelete
  148. Scary, isn't it, KC, when folks get to *your* dirty little secrets.

    Another Academic

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  149. 11:37
    Thanks for the reminder. Point taken.

    ReplyDelete
  150. Another Academic:

    Sorry, but Johnson has posted dozens of entries over the last year or so that have enviscerated the claims of Nifong, Broadhead, the Gang of 88, Wendy Murphy, and others. After all this time, his track record speaks for itself. You do not challenge any of the claims or arguments that he has made. Instead, you simply resort to a pathetic attack on his character and on the character of his readers (who are probably just a bunch of racists and sexists just like those "innocent" lacrosse players, right?).

    However, I certainly understand your desire (and the desire of Broadhead and the Gang of 88) to simply sweep the whole Duke lacrosse episode under the rug and pretend that it did not happen. That would be much easier than having to face up to your own stereotypes and prejudices.

    ReplyDelete
  151. Lubiano's "purple prose"? I can think of another annoying person who uses purple prose - quite literally - and never fails to be wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  152. BTW, look at 11:25 -- that's got to be KC, writing as "anonymous." Look at the way it is written -- and hte reference to the number of hits. Who else would look that up?

    And has anyone but me noticed how the number of personae has dwindled since I started this?

    He's cracking.

    Another Academic.

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  153. I just wondered why "there is a different" Academic uses the asterisk to highlight words?

    Or does he say "Astericks" like
    some of my (white) friends from New Jersey? Aks me a question...

    ReplyDelete
  154. Why not mac -- er, KC?

    Another Academic.

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  155. Dear Mr. "There is a different"

    Look at the bottom of the main page; there are all the stats. It was pointed out to me a long time ago, when I "aksed," and it's not unusual for bloggers to refer to those.

    11:43 certainly has your number.

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  156. Seriously, why would anyone who was truly dis-interested in this matter be telling strangers to "move on, the story is over"? Why would it matter whether or not we in this happy little blogosphere spend time at our computers?
    The reason it would matter and the reason so many want this story to go away is easily sorted out. The whole PC agenda was very nearly gutted by this saga and its remaining loyalists are eager to get the world to un-remember names like M. Nifong, Crystal Mangum, and yes, R. Brodhead..

    ReplyDelete
  157. To "Another Academic":

    Many thanks for the kind words.

    As to your question: "Why not ask people why they did and said what they did and said, instead of creating hostile situations where you get to be the "hero" of the right and make dialogue impossible?"

    You might have noticed in my posts that I did ask Prof. Lubiano, and she declined to respond, instead ordering me never to e-mail her again. One pattern I have held throughout this blog is asking people (including Nifong, when he was in office) for comments before I post. Only rarely have they done so; refusing to comment is their right. But it seems to me only fair-minded to follow such a practice.

    One final point: you might also have noticed that everything I post--both on this blog, other blogs for which I write, and in other on-line sites (such as Inside Higher Ed) for which I occasionally comment--comes in my own name.

    ReplyDelete
  158. 11:27

    I think the poster was noting that the root for antique came from Latin, not that the word itself was. At least, that's how I was taught to use "root word."

    You maybe wanted to correct someone too much?

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  159. KC,

    My sincerest apologies for Another Academic's slur on your good person, vis-a-vis the case of misconstrued identity.

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  160. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  161. KC: Why would people respond in an abusive format where they can't be heard? Your attacks on Lubiano are just demented.

    As to your "final point": what does this prove, except that you have some, perhaps conscious, version of multiple personality, in which you write respectably in respectabel publications and then choose other personae for your more lunatic remarks?

    And I do think that it is interesting that you are lurking on your own blog, and when pressure was put on your other personae, you abandoned them.

    Another Academic.

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  162. Mac, I read backwards & understand, so why don't you? Antics. As in being up to something. You really are a dinosaur.

    ReplyDelete
  163. I apologize for this off-topic post; its only defense is that it is about the possible origin of this whole farrago, which provided an opportunity (a favorite word in academic syllabi, by the way) to get started.

    Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who is a lawyer. He's a staunch African-American liberal Democrat - attorney for the NAACP in school desegregation, etc. ... whose main practice is criminal defense work. (NO, I never retained him to get me out of the slammer, we met in another way.)

    I knew he detested Nifong - months ago he called him "a horrible, horrible man" - but at lunch he went beyond what he had said before: he said he strongly suspected Nifong had connived to set the whole thing up; in other words, that he did not just seize the opportunity to inflame a phony rape claim, but had set the wheels in motion. The bar hearing had demonstrated how his campaign was dead in the water at the time, and he and the DPD knew Mangum and her family pretty well - he thinks he could have had her ready to go when an opportunity came up at a spring-break party.

    He was clear on the purpose: to get the vote of the black community, which he said is the most cohesive voting bloc there is. He added that blacks are now expressing outrage, feelings of having been played.

    It really struck me, because I'd had the same thought myself a few weeks ago, and wondered if it was too far out even for me. Certainly Mangum is a "safe" conspirator in the sense that if she turned on the other conspirators, who would believe a word she said?

    ReplyDelete
  164. KC -- it's clear that "Polanski" is you too. God you are pathetic. And in your color-blind world, it would matter that I am black because.....?

    ReplyDelete
  165. Hey, Mackie, It's I. I meant that I was sure there were people who liked Hitler and Stalin. Just as I'm sure there are people who like you.

    But, I've noticed that you don't think through your responses and sometimes respond incorrectly. So, I think Another Academic is incorrect, unless you're KC Light, ie, less articulate and intelligent.

    ReplyDelete
  166. Another Academic 10:48. Hey Bro, KC does not need defending. He lays out his arguments clearly and backs them with appropriate citations. A historian puts things into perspective or neo-logistically "contextualizes" them. He does that very well indeed. Are you telling KC that he has to go along to get along? Well, I guess it worked for you. Personae?? lol

    To 10:33. I don't take those fools seriously at all, but when they can mobilize a community of gullible sheep to get the ilk of Nifong elected I see a real problem. Thanks very much, here is your 5K, when will the 10 busloads of voters arrive? Give me a break.

    ReplyDelete
  167. So now in 11:57, KC is talking to himself, and managing to let us know how articulate and intelligent he is -- as opposed to the "mac" persona, a New Jersey working class person.

    Another Academic

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  168. 11:52
    I think you're right: the original
    "antic" was 10:37, and 11:11 (apparently) was giving them the benefit-of-the-doubt.
    Wrong answer, but "nothing to get hung about" as the Beatles would say.

    11:55
    Antics is not the root word of "antique." Antic is sometimes used synomnymously with "joke."
    As in: "CGM was apparently a joke of a ho."

    ReplyDelete
  169. "There is a different" 11:59,
    posting as Another Academic. Neither one makes any sense.

    ReplyDelete
  170. By the way, since "A.A." provided a rather . . . interesting .. . view of my tenure battle, here is a link to an article entitled "Tenure Madness," from the Chronicle of Higher Education--not exactly a publication most people associate with the "right."

    ReplyDelete
  171. Haskell is KC too, riffing off the name of the historian Thomas Haskel. Have you noticed that if you try to trace any of the personae with accounts, they are private accounts, with no real person attached to them?

    And I love the introduciton of the latest conspiracy, intended to divert from the issue at hand -- that it is quite likely that these different personae are utterly fraudulent.

    I recommend that all Duke faculty getting nasty email from KC and his so-called "associates" install a tracker to record IP numbers. Start matchiing them to the hate mail you are getting and see what turns up.

    Another Academic

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  172. Another Academic is really Polanski, having fun at our expense!

    Darn it, Polanski! Ya got us!
    You really are brilliant.

    Where's Debrah?

    ReplyDelete
  173. FYI

    Antics: high-jinks, mischief, buffoonery...

    ReplyDelete
  174. Another Academic,
    KC can discern your identity, too.
    (You just might want to know that.)

    ReplyDelete
  175. That's a good link KC -- exactly the one I was talking about. You don;t have to read between the lines to see that you started doing things to people that made conservatives, as well as liberals (of which there are few in that department), think that you were disturbed and divisive.

    Another Academic

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  176. To AA
    Many of have noticed that you have done a lot of posting here and have not made a single point of any substance about this matter.
    Name calling is easy even if you know nothing about the facts of this case. So far, you have not given us any reason to think that you are very familiar with this case or that you are any kind of "academic" for that matter.

    ReplyDelete
  177. Does KC know who I am, "mac"? Now how would you know that? Are you -- in his head?

    Another Academic

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  178. Duke’s President Brodhead has found a home as a citizen of Durm. The corruption just doesn’t ever end at Duke and Durm.

    Take the most recent news from Durm where their good mayor Bill Bell, chairman of the Board of Community Savings Bank, along with administrators at the neighboring Durm college, NCCU, have been cited by the FDIC and NC Commissioner of Banks for unsafe bank management (http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/626330.html). A brief list of problems are:
    * Operating with inadequate management.
    * Operating with a board of directors that hasn't provided "adequate supervision."
    * Operating with inadequate capital and reserves.
    * Operating at a loss.
    * Operating with inadequate information technology.
    * Violating law, regulations, and policy as identified in an FDIC bank examiner's report which has not been made public. Such reports contain sensitive financial information and are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, said the FDIC's Barr.

    Is it any wonder that there is a lack of accountability by administrators at Duke and the Klan of 88? Durm is festering with corruption and criminal violence. Can anyone explain to me WHY ANYONE WOULD CHOOSE TO ATTEND DUKE UNIV AND LIVE IN DURM at the cost of close to $45,000 annually?? At least D.C. has the museums and government monuments; Duke is the only thing Durm has to offer of value and it’s getting dismantled by the intellectually elite!

    ReplyDelete
  179. I think hman has it exactly right. Just like the publicized images of firehoses, attack dogs, and other outrages exposed and delegitimized Jim Crow and legal segregation, the publicized images of potbangers, castrate signs, wanted posters, and listening statements threatens to expose and delegitimize the race/sex/class trinity. Which is why those who support and profit from it are so keen to sweep this whole episode under the rug.

    ReplyDelete
  180. "Prank, joke, put-on..."
    Yeah, I get it. (Notice "joke?" "Put-on?")

    And antique is the root word of
    antic, not the other way around.
    Hence: "I went to the antic market" doesn't wash.
    Unless you're talking in Ebonics.

    ReplyDelete
  181. 12:11:
    Quite right; Hman has it exactly right. AA is no academic.

    Aks him to prove it!

    ReplyDelete
  182. Oh please. You are just pathetic.

    Another Academic

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  183. Still think AA is Polanski (notice the abbreviation?) and he's using unfamiliar antics.
    (Except when he's assuming Debrah's identity and sending me fake "love notes.")

    ReplyDelete
  184. "Oh please. You are just pathetic."
    Good answer!

    ReplyDelete
  185. kenb @ 11:56

    That's an interesting twist on this whole charade, but truth has certainly revealed itself as stranger than fiction. One fact that would support such a theory was related by one of the victims (or one of the victims' fathers) when he stated that the Spring lacrosse party had a fifteen year history.

    If prior parties had in fact taken place, then it's not unreasonable to surmise that the DPD had knowledge of those parties (in fact, public records might disclose prior visits by the DPD or reports by neighbors to the DPD). If prior parties had included exotic dancers, then even Nifong's limited imagination might have guessed that they would be hired again. A previous nexus between Nifong and Mangum could have put Nifong in a position to manipulate the situation.

    But that would make the whole thing a criminal conspiracy, one intended to deprive the victims of the civil rights....wouldn't it? Wouldn't that be a violation of Federal law?

    Very low probability imho ... but, then again, the entire episode is populated by low probability events.

    What do the lawyers think?

    Thomas Inman '74

    ReplyDelete
  186. 11:37 very good point- you said:

    So don't take the AAAS crowd and the rest of the agenda clowns at Duke very seriously. They don't make an impact. The joke always has been that we were all liberals in college until we had to live in the real world and get real jobs and then all the agenda crap from college clown was useless and irrelevant
    -------------
    Shelby Steele is one of those. He recounts in an interview on C-Span how as a freshman he and his group made demands at his college, which he regrets the college gave them.
    --------------
    in BONFIRE OF THE HUMANITIES : I N T R O D U C T I O N
    Academic Populism and the Assault on the Classics

    ..."We believe that our students sense that many of their professors are hypocrites who berate them about race, gender, and class, and then live lives as separate from the underprivileged as those whom they castigate. And we believe that too often these professors lie to our students, citing the evils of capitalism but not the one hundred million killed by communism in this century; decrying the evils of Western culture, while failing to mention the lives that are saved and enriched when societies adopt the constitutional government, capitalism, freedom, and rationalism derived solely from the Western tradition; and denigrating the Greeks as racists and sexists, but ignoring that theirs was the only culture in the ancient world in which the condition of foreigners and women was under constant public discussion." ..."And, frankly, we are also quite tired of reading about the unfairness of American life from professors who are among the most comfortable in our country—lifetime jobs, secure suburban existences, frequent travel, summers off, ten hours or so a week in class—thanks precisely to the system of democratic capitalism which they so frequently assail in the abstract. "


    http://www.isi.org/books/content/298intro.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  187. Academic imposter- definition: One who forms an opinion without gathering the necessary creditable evidence to support said opinion.

    Two: One who refuses to change said opinion when additional creditable comes to light that proves original opinion was incorrect.


    Please note no mention is made of academic degrees.

    ReplyDelete
  188. 12:20

    Many of the professors who teach your children spend hours outside the classroom grading their papers, doing research, talking to students...their lives are not particularly comfortable.

    And, I've never heard anyone denigrate the ancient Greeks as racist (they may have been) or sexist (ditto). There is much discussion of the Greeks' homosocial culture, however. Is that what you mean?

    ReplyDelete
  189. Off topic but for your reading pleasure, Durham Mayor Bill Bell's black-owned Mutual Savings Bank is now under federal investigation for mis-management and other offenses. See News & Observer. big surprise, right?

    ReplyDelete
  190. 10:45 am
    You said:
    There are three 10:37 posts. I couldn't find "Purchsed 'antics.'" What is this? Thank you.

    I am the 10:37 am commentator who misspelled the word antique. I did not realize what a big controversy this was going to create. However, in my comment, I spelled the word “purchased” correctly. You (10:45 am) misspelled that word. Not a big deal in mind, but apparently, a huge deal in Mac’s.

    I apologize for my misspelling. When you operate in multiple languages, it is fairly easy to do. I will look elsewhere to post where such crimes are permitted.

    ReplyDelete
  191. 12:27

    Why is the word "academic" even used? It seems to me that imposter is also incorrect.

    Aren't you talking about someone who is mule-headed and stubborn, wrong-minded? Something like that...

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  192. 12:37

    Not a problem w/ the misspelling, but in which language is antiques spelled antics? Just curious.

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  193. 12:33
    Actually, I apologized for my misspelling, too. (Guess you haven't been keeping up: posts have been fast-paced.)

    Forgive me if I assumed that you were 10:40 or one of the Another
    Academic-types who've had so little to say. Yours actually had a point.

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  194. It takes a leader to be president of Duke University. Brodhead has never learned to be a leader. Oh sure he was a dean of something at Yale, but he still was not a leader. His past mistakes prove that. He was and still is an english teacher. That is why he associates himself closely with the english teachers and other artsy faculty. He cant criticize them? A leader would, an english teacher associated with the same group would not. Can anyone see the difference? Oh sure, Brodhead can talk a good game and mesmerize people by randomly quoting Shakespear and other greats of litereature. Some people like that and think that it is a sign of intelligence. Intelligence then is interpreted as leadership. It is not. Brodhead is proving that over and over again. He is not the leader that Duke BOT thought they were getting. He is the english teacher who can quote Shakespear and others rather well.

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  195. 12:35
    "Antic" is derived from the Latin word "Antiquus," from which "antique" is also derived.

    "From Italian ANTICO (used of grotesque designs on some Roman artifacts), from Roman ANTIQUUS,
    former, old...)" American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

    It might (IMO) make sense that the "antico" was perceived as an "old joke," a "ludicrously odd" design
    or accoutrement of a facade or relic, (like phallus symbol, enlarged breasts and belly on a mother-earth amulet or carving etc.)

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  196. KC, where do you find the time? In addition to being a "convener of a bizarre right wing conspiracy group"
    and managing a herd of sock puppets you some how keep this blog going and full fill your duties as a professor.


    Perhaps Another Academic will return to shed more light on the mystery of your hyper productivity.

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