Update: McClain--Duke's De Klerk?

Last week, Group of 88 stalwart and current Academic Council chairperson Paula McClain spoke to the University Faculty meeting. After framing events at Duke in terms of the history of South Africa, she quoted Nelson Mandela: "'The time for healing of the wounds has come.... The time to rebuild is upon us.'"

At first glance, the comparison between Duke and South Africa doesn't seem immediately obvious. It is ironic, moreover, to see McClain quote Mandela given that she and her colleagues in the Group have shown no signs of embracing a Duke version of South Africa's Truth and Reconcilation Commission, which Mandela understood was necessary to achieve genuine healing after the fall of apartheid.

In this respect, McClain might have been better served had she chosen to quote not Mandela but F.W. De Klerk; indeed, her current situation resembles that of De Klerk in the early 1990s. The last president of apartheid South Africa, De Klerk presided over a movement that had been discredited by events and that had proven itself bereft of ideas. Such a description certainly could apply to the Group of 88.

In other matters, Bill Anderson provides what I fear is a prescient analysis on why a criminal investigation of the Nifong/DPD/DSI misconduct looks increasingly unlikely.

Baldo has his latest very funny Liestoppers cartoon.

An excellent response to Charles Piot's Transforming Anthropology "representative" scholarly publication. Piot, meanwhile, continues (in his capacity as chairman of the African-American Studies Department) to suppress the "Shut Up and Teach" video upon which his talk was based.

Durham received an extension, and will not file its reply to the players' civil suit until Dec. 10.

Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson recently observed, "The prosecutors and police are not the people the public wants to see investigated. But I think with the abuses we've found with evidence, sometimes they need to be investigate." After events in Durham over the past 18 months, he has just come to this conclusion?

Finally, my colleague Stuart Taylor will be speaking at Duke on Nov. 2, courtesy of Duke Students for an Ethical Duke. Information is available here. Stuart has offered to forgo a speech and instead conduct a debate around the themes of the book. So far, Bill Chafe hasn't seized the opportunity to advance his neo-Prohibitionist agenda. No word, either, from Wahneema Lubiano and why it's her "privilege" to use Duke's dollars to engage in political activism. Nothing, likewise, from Prasad Kasibthala on how the Group of 88 represent "mainstream voices of reason" in the academy.