The Duke University Chronicle
Posted: 6/21/07
At last week's disciplinary hearing for Mike Nifong, Mecklenburg County Assistant District Attorney Marsha Goodenow detected a possible positive outcome. "If this case," she testified, "has caused DAs to be more complete in turning over discovery, that's a good thing."
Peter Wood
In a best-case scenario, Goodenow's comment, slightly modified, could apply to campus life as well. Duke, like most universities, has a faculty handbook. It affirms that "students are fellow members of the University community, deserving of respect and consideration in their dealings with the faculty."
Too often during the past 15 months, some Duke professors have acted as if the Handbook's provisions did not apply to them. To take a few egregious examples: In August, history professor Peter Wood told The New Yorker that a lacrosse player had spoken favorably of genocide against Native Americans. Wood's evidence? An anonymous comment on a student evaluation form, which could have come from any of the 65 people in his class.
Karla Holloway
In January, English professor Karla Holloway sent a mass e-mail suggesting a heretofore unrevealed witness who would testify that racial slurs were uttered during the lacrosse party, perhaps even by one of the accused players. No such witness emerged.
In April, literature professor Grant Farred informed an audience at Williams College that unnamed lacrosse players had perjured themselves. Farred cited no evidence to substantiate his claim.
Grant Farred
It seems unlikely that Wood, Holloway or Farred ever will acknowledge their apparent breaches of the Handbook. Nor, it seems, will those who signed a January statement expressly refusing to apologize for the Group of 88's ad. The April 2006 document, which relied solely on the version of events presented by Nifong, affirmed that something "happened" to Crystal Mangum and thanked "the protestors making collective noise."
To paraphrase Goodenow, if the lacrosse case has caused professors at Duke, and other elite institutions, to show more respect for all their students, that's a good thing. Some signs do exist of precisely this effect. The highest-profile example, of course, came in January, when 17 economics professors issued a public letter expressing regret that, in light of the Group of 88's actions, "The Duke faculty is now seen as prejudiced against certain of its own students." The signatories promised to "welcome all members of the lacrosse team, and all student athletes, as we do all our students as fellow members of the Duke community, to the classes we teach and the activities we sponsor."
In one important respect, however, Goodenow's comments do not apply to the situation at Duke. Her testimony came in open court, as part of what Disciplinary Hearing Commission Chair Lane Williamson correctly described as an example of due process in action.
No procedure, on the other hand, has ever been established to examine the faculty's rush to judgment regarding lacrosse-related events. There was a time when President Richard Brodhead showed no reluctance to appoint investigative committees-in April 2006, after he canceled the season and demanded the resignation of former men's lacrosse head coach Mike Pressler, Brodhead appointed five committees to investigate the lacrosse team and issues surrounding the case.
But the president has shown little, if any, curiosity as to why-in the highest profile case of prosecutorial misconduct in modern American history-so many Duke professors made statements or took actions that attorneys for Duke students considered highly prejudicial to the victims of Nifong's misconduct.
Moreover, while Brodhead has publicly suggested on at least three occasions that critics of the Group of 88 misinterpreted the ad's words, the administration's actions reflect a different recognition. The recently signed settlement between Duke and the three accused players contained a clause shielding all members of the Group from potential lawsuits-an implicit recognition that the Group's critics might have been right all along.
In his closing remarks at the Nifong hearing, Williamson noted, "Those who made a rush to judgment based upon an unquestioning faith in what a prosecutor had told them were made to look foolish and many still do look foolish." Academics, of all people, should be able to resist the passions of the mob, avoid a rush to judgment and stand up for due process.
This week's settlement has minimized the institution's liability in acknowledging shortcomings in the faculty's Spring 2006 behavior. The Brodhead administration should take advantage and explore why so many of its faculty members found so appealing the metanarrative misleading offered last spring by Mike Nifong.
KC Johnson is a history professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. Since last April, he has regularly commented on the Duke lacrosse case in his blog, "Durham in Wonderland."
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