Monkeys of Duke, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Chicago

It is getting to the point that thoughtful parents can no longer trust a university -- any university -- with the education of their children. Too many university faculty and staff members are ideological jihadists in disguise -- indoctrinators and political activists rather than educators. Here is a followup on the 88 monkeys of Duke:

You might think that a university whose students were victims of the most notorious fraudulent rape claim in recent history, and whose professors -- 88 of them -- signed an ad implicitly presuming guilt, and whose president came close to doing the same would have learned some lessons.

The facts are otherwise. They also suggest that Duke University's ugly abuse in 2006 and 2007 of its now-exonerated lacrosse players -- white males accused by a black stripper and hounded by a mob hewing to political correctness -- reflects a disregard of due process and a bias against white males that infect much of academia.

In September, far from taking pains to protect its students from false rape charges, Duke adopted a revised "sexual misconduct" policy that makes a mockery of due process and may well foster more false rape charges by rigging the disciplinary rules against the accused.

Meanwhile, none of the 88 guilt-presuming professors has publicly apologized. (Duke's president, Richard Brodhead, did -- but too little and too late.) Many of the faculty signers -- a majority of whom are white -- have expressed pride in their rush to judgment. None was dismissed, demoted, or publicly rebuked. Two were glorified this month in Duke's in-house organ as pioneers of "diversity," with no reference to their roles in signing the ad. Three others have won prestigious positions at Cornell, Vanderbilt, and the University of Chicago. _StuartTaylor

KC Johnson's award-winning coverage of the Duke case
Look here for legal comments on the issue at Volokh Conspiracy
Indoctrination into PC intolerance at universities in North America is at a critical level. Parents need to think long and hard about whether they will go into debt for years to finance the indoctrination and mind-warping of their child.

Rand Simberg has some interesting comments about the education bubble

These academic monkeys have been throwing shit at students -- making the students pay for it and forcing them to eat it -- for far too long. It is time for some creative payback.

More on the 88 Monkeys of Duke

What did the infamous 88 Duke University faculty accusers say, when Mike Nifong's case against the athletes began to collapse? "I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions without evidence?" Hardly.

--History professor Peter Wood claimed, in an interview with the New Yorker, that a lacrosse player advocated genocide against Native Americans. His evidence: an anonymous student evaluation in a class of 65.

--Literature professor Grant Farred published an October 2006 op-ed accusing Duke students of “secret racism” for seeking to vote Nifong out of office; in April 2007, he publicly deemed unnamed lacrosse players guilty of “perjury.”

--Houston Baker, by this point having been hired away by Vanderbilt, suggested that the lacrosse players might have been guilty of other rapes (he supplied no evidence) and e-mailed one player’s mother that her son and his teammates were “farm animals.”

Such statements seemed to violate the spirit if not the letter of Duke’s Faculty Handbook, which contains the following passage: “Members of the faculty expect Duke students to meet high standards of performance and behavior. It is only appropriate, therefore, that the faculty adheres to comparably high standards in dealing with students . . . Students are fellow members of the university community, deserving of respect and consideration in their dealings with the faculty.”

Yet — as our book makes clear — the Brodhead administration had shown no willingness to enforce the Handbook’s provisions at any point in the lacrosse affair. In spring 2006, at least three History professors used class time (in classes with lacrosse players) to deliver guilt-presuming lectures, including one who offered what he termed the findings of his “research” — that an “ejaculation had occurred.” An anthropology professor dismissed her class so the students could go outside and watch an anti-lacrosse rally. And a political science professor — after sending an e-mail in which she described the two lacrosse players in her class as accomplices to rape — gave both students an F on the final paper. One sued Duke; in an out-of-court settlement, Duke publicly announced that the grade had been changed (to a “pass”) and paid an undisclosed sum.

Group members disinclined toward unsubstantiated attacks or unprofessional behavior engaged in an Orwellian attempt to redefine the past. Perhaps the best example came in a January 2007 op-ed from English professor Cathy Davidson, who rationalized the Group of 88’s statement as nothing more than saying “that we faculty were listening to the anguish of students who felt demeaned by racist and sexist remarks swirling around in the media and on the campus quad in the aftermath of what happened on March 13 in the lacrosse house. The insults, at that time, were rampant. It was as if defending David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann necessitated reverting to pernicious stereotypes about African-Americans, especially poor black women.”

These claims were absurd: in late March and early April 2006 virtually no one was publicly defending the lacrosse players “on the campus quad” or anyplace else, much less using racial stereotypes to do so.

While the Group members’ positions might have been divorced from reality, they had a chilling effect on campus discourse. For nearly six months, as an extraordinarily high-profile case of prosecutorial misconduct involving their own students unfolded before their very eyes, not one member of the Duke arts and sciences faculty publicly criticized Nifong’s behavior. The first who did so, Chemistry professor Steven Baldwin, also blasted the Group of 88 for betraying their responsibilities as professors. The response? The next day, the director of Duke’s women’s studies program accused Baldwin of using the “language of lynching,” while the co-director of Duke’s Center for Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender sent Baldwin an e-mail implying that they should settle their differences through violence.

Volokh Conspiracy

But the unprofessional behaviour of Duke U's faculty is par for the course for the humanities, on North American university campuses. These tenured clowns rule over their universities like monkey kings, preventing students from being exposed to a diversity of ideas--the only kind of diversity that truly counts in an educational setting such as an university.

A Song for the Pubs of Durham

Here are verses to a song to sing in all the pubs in the general vicinity of Durham, North Carolina. It concerns the 88 Duke professors whose prejudice and bigotry condemned a number of Duke students without a trial. You should easily find a likely tune to go with the verses. Feel free to make up more verses, using the pattern that I will demonstrate thus:

88 monkeys of Duke on the wall
88 monkeys of Duke
If one of the monkeys should happen to fall
87 monkeys of Duke on the wall

87 monkeys of Duke on the wall
87 monkeys of Duke
If one of the monkeys should happen to fall
86 monkeys of Duke on the wall

86 monkeys of Duke on the wall
86 monkeys of Duke
If one of the monkeys should happen to fall
85 monkeys of Duke on the wall
....

....

Regular readers of this blog should have no trouble extending the verses through several more iterations at least. The 88 Duke professors, on the other hand, will always have difficulty with any task more difficult than basic reflexes.
;-)

Durham-in-Wonderland

The recent Durham, North Carolina case against the Duke lacrosse players is a fascinating study into the US system of law, and how various factions in US society are continuously trying to influence US law--with varying degrees of success.

One particular website has captured this spectacle in all its shame and splendor--Durham-in-Wonderland. Written by a history professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, the weblog carefully documents the chronological statements and actions of prosecutors, defendants, journalists, Duke faculty members, and other important players in this drama.

The weblog author, Professor KC Johnson, has painstakingly laid out the entire scenario from start to finish--in fact he continues documenting the significant aftermath of the case, even after all charges are dropped.

Professor Johnson illustrates what academic and public scholarship should be. His weblog is far more professional than the writings of over 99% of big-publication journalists. For anyone who aspires to write a weblog, essay, or book on a topic bearing on society and the law, a study of Durham-in-Wonderland would provide a quality goal toward which to aim.

Can 88 Duke Professors All Be Wrong?

The infamous Duke lacrosse players have been cleared of all charges. But there are still some loose ends hanging around. What will happen to District Attorney Nifong, the prosecutor who abused his office to pursue a blatantly political case? What will happen to the New York Times, a newspaper that willingly served as judge, jury, and executioner of the lacrosse players simply because it could get away with it?

Most of all, what will happen to the 88 Duke Professors--the pampered sinecured monkeys who took it upon themselves to declare the lacrosse players guilty, and demand their expulsion from school? What will happen to those assholes who let their insignificant political ideas lead them to verbally libel and abuse students at their own university?

Unlike Don Imus, none of the 88 professors has apologized for what was basically an assault on the legal system. One of the 88 is an English professor named Karla Holloway. She is chair of the Race Subcommittee of Duke University President William Broadhead’s Campus Cultures Initiative. Shouldn’t she resign?

The three young men face huge legal bills and will have the stain of false accusation with them forever. The 88 faculty professors face no sanction for their behavior at all.

Source

The Duke president, no profile in courage, canceled the lacrosse season and fired the coach. As recently as a few months ago President Richard Brodhead was still defending the 88 professors who trampled on the presumption of innocence, going so far as to describe some of them as victims, too.

Source

Worst of all, this story so neatly fit the radical agenda of our "newspaper of record," The New York Times, that the paper disgustingly advanced the hoax on its front page, long after other media outlets had backed off.

In a case of "all the lies fit to print," the paper on Aug. 25 affected an air of Timesian authority in a damning article, spoon-fed by DA Nifong. It tried to put to rest some of the alarming inconsistencies in the accuser's story about the night she was "attacked."

"While there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong's case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury," quoth the Times. And, "The full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense."

Will the Times make reparations now?

Source

The shit-throwing monkeys at the NY Times, and the monkeys on the Duke faculty, are apparently made of the same material.

The double standard that allows these monkeys to hound and abuse innocent students into severe legal debt and ruination of reputation, but drives an inconsequential radio/TV clown like Imus off the air for a poorly considered joke, is something that an intelligent society would take a long hard look at.