Curious Commentary

[Update: I have retightened comment moderation in light of the off-topic comments.]

A few instances of . . . curious . . . commentary over the last couple of weeks: two items prompted by the settlement of the Carrington suit; the third by continued debate over the OCR mandate for colleges to lower due-process protections for students accused of sexual assault on campus.

The Chronicle featured what could charitably be described as a limited take on the settlement of the suit. Keep in mind: though the paper’s title remains the same, no undergraduates who currently write for the Chronicle were students at Duke during any element of the lacrosse affair, except for the now-all-but-routine promotions of various Group of 88 members to key administrative positions. During the lacrosse case itself, the Chronicle's coverage was unmatched in its excellence among the traditional media.

“As we reflect on this incident in which exotic dancer Crystal Mangum falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape at a 2006 team party,” an unsigned editorial noted, “its place in the broader history of Duke becomes clearer. We can begin to see how it has molded and continues to mold our campus culture to this day. For many people both within and outside of the Duke community, this case continues to define Duke’s identity.” All quite true.

In what ways did the case “define Duke’s identity”? Dozens of “activist” faculty members willing to run rough-shod over the requirements of the Faculty Handbook, exploiting their students to advance their on-campus pedagogical or personnel agendas? An administration so terrified of the faculty mob that the president seemed unwilling or unable at critical points to articulate even a formulaic support for due process? Town-gown relations so warped that the university had entered into a (secret) agreement with the local police to allow for Duke students, and only Duke students, to be prosecuted with the maximum harshness for certain crimes?

No. The lacrosse case “unfortunately had a stifling effect on our administration” by scarring “the administration’s ability to comment on Duke’s social culture.” (Of course, the administration did “comment on Duke’s social culture,” first through Richard Brodhead’s infamous April 2006 campus letter and then through a Campus Cultural Initiative run by some of the most extreme anti-lacrosse voices among the faculty. Does the current Chronicle support any of the CCI’s recommendations, such as reorienting Duke’s athletics program in such a way that would all but certainly require withdrawing from the ACC?) “The lacrosse scandal,” according to the Chronicle, created an “enduring narrative . . . of rowdy, belligerent parties—with sexist and racist overtones—and the entitled students who attend them.”

To the extent this narrative took hold, it’s a development fueled by misplaced initial media coverage, followed by the conscious efforts of Duke’s own “activist” faculty (beginning early on, with William Chafe) to transform the event into a character assault on the lacrosse players to avoid accountability for their own rush to judgment. But this “historicizing,” to use the Chronicle’s word, is of little interest to the current editors. Instead, they worry that Brodhead has been too “shy” in commenting about matters related to campus culture.

A second Carrington‑related item came from Washington Monthly, a publication I read regularly for its quality political analysis. This piece, however, fell well below the publication’s usual standards.

Daniel Luzer, the Monthly’s web editor, informed readers that Crystal “Mangum, a black single mother, got into an argument with several lacrosse players and accused several members of the team of rape.” (Kim Roberts, of course, got into an argument with several lacrosse players; no evidence ever surfaced that Mangum did.) More: “Several players were arrested anyway, none were found guilty.” Actually, the three falsely-accused players received a declaration of actual innocence from the AG, a far different standard that being not “found guilty.” And lest any reader fail to detect Luzer’s spin, he concluded his piece by quoting commentary on the lacrosse players’ character from “one columnist,” who he declined to identify. The columnist turned out Hal Crowther; the quoted column, from the Nifong-backing Independent, might have been the single worst piece of commentary produced in the case.

Luzer appeared uninterested in exploring whether Crowther’s (and Indy’s) seeming ignorance of Nifong’s ethical misdeeds or the criminal case’s non-existent basis rendered less-than-credible their cultural analysis of the case. Indeed, Luzer’s post offered no hint of why, of the hundreds of pieces on the case, he chose Crowther’s as the single analysis from which to quote. Did Luzer find persuasive Crowther’s claim, in the same column, that those who criticized Nifong’s ethical misdeeds needed to “catch a glimpse of your inner racist in the mirror”? Does Luzer agree with Crowther’s characterization, in the same column, of the lacrosse players as “subhuman”? If not, why did he find Crowther credible as a source for cultural analysis of the case?

I e-mailed Luzer to ask if he, in fact, had any evidence that Mangum “got into an argument with several lacrosse players,” and noted that the players were deemed innocent, rather than “found” not guilty. He replied that he didn’t have evidence of his former claim, and ignored the latter point, but was willing to edit his post to eliminate the reference to a Mangum argument. The new post, however, did not indicate anywhere that a correction had occurred. That Luzer initially presented events at the party in an inaccurate fashion that rendered Mangum’s tall tale at least somewhat more credible, by inventing an argument involving her that never occurred, readers of non-cached versions of the Washington Monthly will remain ignorant.

A sense of non-accountability links the Chronicle and Luzer items: Indy seemed oblivious to Nifong’s misdeeds, and published wildly slanted (and in some cases, simply wrong) attacks on the lacrosse players, but still can be cited by a well-regarded publication as a reputable source for cultural analysis of the case. Brodhead’s belated one-paragraph apology was stillborn, and his campus culture initiative misjudged the faults that existed in 2006-7, but Chronicle editors can still yearn for his commentary on campus culture, without any indication or reason to believe that Brodhead learned from his past mistakes.

Then there’s adjunct law professor Wendy Murphy—who, if nothing else, is an expert on making mistakes. In an interview with AJR shortly after the criminal casecollapsed, Murphy justified her performance by citing the structure on TV or cable news programs: she was, she said, booked to argue the prosecution’s side of things. If she had to make things up to do so, it seemed, that was just part of the game.

Surely someone who made things up as much as Murphy did should forfeit all future credibility with the mainstream press. Yet last year, there was Murphy, invited to guest lecture by none other than Poynter, an organization supposedly devoted to good-journalism principles. And a couple of days ago, there was Murphy, an invited columnist for the New York Times’ “Room for Debate” section, opining on the government mandate for colleges to lower due-process protections for students accused of sexual assault.

Even more incredibly, Murphy’s piece was one of two presented in opposition to the government policy—on grounds that campus judicial procedures (in which accused students usually can’t have lawyers, often can’t cross-examine their accusers, and always can be convicted at a 50.1% threshold) don’t do enough to secure convictions.

“Fair and balanced,” Times style.