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Duke faculty should be shunned by students
Accountability finally came to Durham County District Attorney Michael Nifong last month, when he was disbarred as an attorney and forced to resign as a disgraced public officer. Last week he issued an apology and a full retraction of the rape accusations against three Duke University lacrosse players.Now, with students heading to Duke in just a few short weeks for the beginning of the fall term, the time is at hand to demand some accountability for Nifong's academic enablers. Eighty-eight members of the Duke faculty publicly promulgated a dreadful letter, enflaming a premature and prejudicial atmosphere against their own students. Yet, their conduct is largely shielded from accountability. Equally troublesome, their ironically and suddenly protective university masters executed a confidential settlement to further immunize the Duke cabal from civil liability exposure. The 88 are thus granted a kind of institutional immunity, a corruption of process all by itself because it sidesteps a day of public reckoning. But although the group can't technically be charged with crimes - though abandoning your young and endangering youth sure do come close to real definable crimes - there are ways these professors can be held accountable. The identities of the 88 professors should be posted in significant ways and places, including in the media and on the Internet, so that they may be known for what they have done. The likely howls of protest from the tenure police, university guild apologists and free-speech absolutists notwithstanding, the professoriat should not be shielded from appropriate public condemnation for their misconduct. Their dormant consciences and sensibilities should be reawakened to the abhorrent nature of the actions they inflicted on their own students. But even belatedly squirming consciences are not enough to compensate for the betrayal of fundamental principles involved here. Because the identities of this "Group of 88," as they have been dubbed, are blurred by their group anonymity, they should not be allowed to get away with their prejudgment - a brazen violation of the presumption of innocence, despite later protestations to the contrary. Their roles as teachers should have included special protection of their pupils from mob hysteria and media hype, not collaboration in the spectacle. These 88 and the rest of the Duke "family" stood in loco parentis - in the place of the parents who entrusted their youngsters to Duke's professionals, with substantial tuition payments. The parents' trust was painfully misplaced, and their children suffered irreparable reputation injury and a fundamental breach of duty. The courses and classrooms of these 88 professors should be emptied. The university's academic leaders should consider assigning them to teach only elective courses. No students should be forced to sit through mandatory courses with professors who evidently believe more in their ideologies than in their human charges. Next, when students select among their electives, they should shun these professors and their courses - a good, old-fashioned revived remedy of accountability. Shunning is, under these circumstances, a proportionate penalty for the sin of heedlessly injuring young people placed in one's care and charge. These 88 would thus be professionally disenfranchised, and as they look out at empty rooms and seats, that lesson would be felt and take hold. The university's powers that be are unlikely to have the backbone to employ this measure, based on their lack of spine throughout this debacle. But, it's an idea - and aren't universities supposed to be all about openly and courageously exploring ideas? Duke and especially its 88 should-have-known-better professors were responsible for aiding and abetting Nifong's "crimes" against his Duke student targets. The DA has had his day of reckoning for what he perpetrated; the 88 should, too. They flunked with a capital "F" the course in Principles of Justice 101, whose first lesson is the presumption of innocence and protection of innocents. Everyone should be held ultimately accountable for their actions, even the hostile unintended consequences thereof, lest, in the future, hubristic ideologues, invested with power and fiduciary responsibilities, think that they, too, can act irresponsibly, with impunity and immunity. Posted by: lotp 2007-08-04 |
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