Silly Little Country

What's Up With the Duke 88 Bullies and Charlatans?

K.C. Johnson, who stalwartly blogged through the original shameful lacrosse 'rape' farce, expounds some details. He summarizes:

In any other profession, behavior as outrageous as that exhibited in the lacrosse case by the faculty in Duke's humanities and (some) social sciences departments would have prompted at the least intensive soul-searching and (in the corporate world, at least), dismissal. Principles of academic freedom, appropriately, guard against retaliatory action toward professors who take ill-conceived positions. But with the rights of academic freedom are supposed to come responsibilities as well---including open-mindedness in pursuit of the truth. The Group's utter lack of accountability---and what it says about the state of the fields that they dominate---reflects the malaise that continues to beset contemporary higher education.

The moral poverty of the academic environment these people work in is stunning; read the whole thing. It leaves me profoundly depressed but rather glad I did not stay in academia, though of course I was not in the social sciences or any faculty holding any of these people.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 10:35 AM