Updates

Three brief items:

1.) The N&O reports that Crystal Mangum, in papers filed by her de facto attorney, Sydney Harr, has demanded that her bail be reduced (to $50,000) and that the murder charges against her be dismissed, on grounds of self-defense.

The Harr/Mangum team had already made requests along these lines; chances of getting a better outcome this time seem doubtful.

2.) Speaking of Harr (a local retiree best-known for heading a committee of die-hard Nifong fanatics): the Durham News reports that the State Bar will investigate him for practicing law without a license. Harr had admitted that he had "helped" Mangum write her previous legal filings, but argued that he did so after informing her he wasn't an attorney.

“You can’t disclaim the unauthorized practice of law simply by saying I am not an attorney,” David Johnson, deputy counsel for the State Bar, told the Durham News.

Harr (hilariously) claimed he wasn't aware of the rule. (This is the same figure who has termed himself so expert in ethics rules that he can demonstrate the incorrectness of Nifong's disbarment.) He also has told the Bar he won't practice law again--a promise that would seem to be undermined by his delivery of the most recent batch of Mangum papers.

3.) Continuing the practice of Duke elevating Group of 88'ers into positions of authority, as of July 1 the Duke Sociology Department will have a new chair--Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, one of the two or three most extreme members of the Group. In addition to signing the Group statement, Bonilla-Silva had signed onto an even more extreme case-related document, a May 1, 2006 letter that could only be described as willfully ignorant about events in the case.

I looked at Bonilla-Silva's scholarship and teaching record in this post. To give a taste: in a syllabus (a legally binding document between university, the professor, and students), Bonilla-Silva wrote, “We conclude the class with a discussion of some of the solutions that have been proposed to deal with the racial dilemmas plaguing the United States of Amerikkka (I will remove the three Ks from this word when the USA removes racial oppression from this country!).” And, as an example (he said) how he wasn't biased against white people, the chairman-designate noted, “Historically, many good people supported slavery and Jim Crow”—just like the “good people” in the current environment who “oppose (or have some reservations about) affirmative action.”

Imagine the (appropriate) howls of outrage if a university like Duke named as a department chair someone from the far right whose views and rhetoric were as extreme as Bonilla-Silva. Perhaps Bonilla-Silva is being prepped to succeed Paula McClain when his Group colleague steps down as graduate dean.