Friday, December 13, 2013

Accountability

The post below reflects on the almost utter lack of media accountability regarding those who got the lacrosse case wrong. Selena Roberts is Exhibit A for the pattern--a figure who rushed to judgment and then has offered wildly misleading accounts of what she had written, apparently believing that readers can't read for themselves what she wrote in 2006.

A lack of accountability has been a major theme in the academic world, as well. The Group of 88 ad violated Duke procedures; the public statements of several Group members (plus Peter Wood) seemed to violate Duke's Faculty Handbook and Student Bulletin. Yet to the best of my knowledge, there never was any discipline against a Group member.

Perhaps one reason for this lack of accountability is that discipline would have needed to come from a deeply compromised figure himself, Richard Brodhead. The lacrosse case probably finished any chance of another university hiring Brodhead as president, but otherwise the man who reacted to the first two arrests by asserting of his students that whatever they did was bad enough has seen his career flourish.

The latest: The Carnegie Corporation recently conferred upon Brodhead an Academic Leadership Award (there were four recipients), designating him among the "exceptional leaders in higher education." Imagine if one fact in the lacrosse case had been reversed: that to prevail in the 2006 primary, Mike Nifong had needed white votes rather than black votes, and therefore had manufactured evidence against black Duke students, and then-President Brodhead, as he did in the lacrosse case, had joined the rush to judgment against his innocent students.

Does anyone believe that such a record would not have permanently (and appropriately) disqualified Brodhead from future prestigious academic leadership awards?

In American Thinker, Bernie Reeves has an excellent column on this issue, and takes to task a forget-the-past editorial hailing Brodhead from the N&O.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

So how much did duke pay carnegie to give broadhead that award?

Do you think he actually earned it from his own meritorious actions and leadership in education - or for his ability to lie and get away with things that harm others for duke, and to lead the manipulation of others into giving duke massive donations?.

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skwilli said...

Thinking this way in today's environment, with the Obama Administration and its willing Press cheerleaders, means you will be labeled a Racist again. It's really "all they got". But unfortunately, it's all they need nowadays. A few of us know better.

Anonymous said...

Is Richard Brodhead a Communist?

jim2 said...

If I recall correctly, someone at Duke in a position of power:

- illegally gave student personal information (key card data) to the police,

- then sent out letters to students/parents saying that that info had been requested by the police and that this info would be turned over unless there was an objection,

- objections were filed.

- a legal hearing was held, Duke attorneys asked for permission to give over the info but attorneys for the students prevailed and Duke was told not to give this info to the police, and

- then it came out that the info had been handed over at the time of the request.

Has anyone ever been held accountable?

Anonymous said...

"Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to lose his soul for the whole world... but for Wales??"
--Thomas More to Sir Richard Rich, in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seaons

Should we update that, to include another "Richard"?

Anonymous said...

Should we update that, to include another "Richard"?

I would prefer Dick.

Anonymous said...

Where was this protest when Duke attempted to do the exact same thing to KC?

"Scholars at 24 higher-education institutions have urged Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina to speak out against a conservative group’s pursuit of public records belonging to a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the News & Observer reported."

"Thirty Chapel Hill professors have already objected to the institute’s request. And on Monday a left-leaning organization called Scholars for North Carolina’s Future released a letter (posted online here by WRAL.com) from faculty members at two dozen institutions that called the institute’s request “retribution” for Mr. Nichol’s criticism of the governor."

http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/scholars-ask-n-c-governor-to-speak-out-against-public-records-request/70579?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Duke Prof

Anonymous said...

If you do not include Obamacare in your outrage over the lacrosse case and why it was done - you are being as wrong about the show as any other.