At Duke "teaching is personal"

By Clarice Feldman

No one has covered the Duke case better than professor K.C. Johnson, owner of Durham-in-Wonderland. His latest post, focuses on the outrageous conduct of the 88 Duke Professors who rushed to judgement in this matter and have refused to withdraw their outrageous statement nor to protest the obvious violation of the defendants' due process rights by Nifong--a statement so inflammatory it forms part of the defense argument for a change of venue

I know of no other criminal case in which the statements and behavior of the students' own professors constituted grounds for a change of venue. The recent defense motion (pages 16-18) details the actions of the Duke faculty members whose irresponsible conduct has shamed the profession: Houston Baker, William Chafe, Wahneema Lubiano, Grant Farred, Peter Wood, Joseph DiBona, Karla Holloway, others in the Group of 88. These professors give new meaning to the promise that at Duke, "teaching is personal," with faculty members "committed to giving students the individual attention that nurtures ideas and pushes them to excel." The change-of-venue motion's faculty section, unsurprisingly, revolves around the Group of 88's statement. Several weeks ago, Holloway complained that the Group's critics had "displaced the actual content of the ad for the fiction of their own meagerly articulated agendas." In fact, most critics have focused on the "actual content" of the ad, which several weeks ago vanished from the Duke website."

He quotes rather fanciful accounts various of the signatories have offered to explain what they meant when they signed that now-vanished ad, but, correctly, holds them accountable for the text of what they signed. Real life isn't deconstructionist lit analysis.