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KC Johnson vs. the commonplace campus radical–Mr. Obama’s neighborhood

Until a couple of weeks ago we were supposed to be stocking up on information for “Decision 2008” (a lot of the best stuff seemed to be on “Indecision 2008”, though). According to columnist William Kristol, Sarah Palin was doing her part, “helping the American people understand ‘who the real Barack Obama is’” by raising […]

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2008 11 20 Academia
Duke Lacrosse Case
Politics Comments (0)

Run-of-the-mill stupidity

A few months ago I posted about the reactions when a Duke philosophy professor, interviewed in the campus paper, invoked a John Stuart Mill quote about stupidity and conservatives in order to explain the relative lack of conservative academics. More and more surfers have been finding that post with searches like this:

js mill conservatives stupid […]

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2008 10 14 Duke Lacrosse Case
Politics Comments (9)

Some bad satire, some good sense

About a week ago, Google dug up an odd little bit of satire in an Onion knock-off called Carbolic Smoke Ball. [The text is gone now—all that’s left is a picture of a goofy quarter.]

North Carolina’s Commemorative Quarter to Honor Duke Lacrosse False Rape Case

DURHAM - North Carolina officials proudly unveiled the state’s new commemorative […]

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2008 09 27 Duke Lacrosse Case Comments (11)

The crusade announcer

I know I’m supposed to be putting up some kind of “wrap-up” post, but somehow it’s just not happening. In the mean time, stuff like this comes up, so why hold back?
Duke’s African and African American Studies Department is getting a new chairman from Harvard—the devil incarnate, er, I mean, J. Lorand Matory. According to […]

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2008 09 25 Duke Lacrosse Case Comments (5)

The devils in the details

It’s time for me to stop the endless picking apart of KC Johnson’s blog, Durham-in-Wonderland (DIW). In fact it was probably time a few months ago. I’ll never reach the level of the poor sap who’s spent years defaming Brian Leiter, but I might end up on par with the one who got a bad […]

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2008 09 07 Duke Lacrosse Case Comments (18)

One pile after another: building a bullshit Wonderland

In the middle of my last post I promised a list of some of the bullshit I’ve come across in Durham-in-Wonderland (DIW). It’s only, what? three weeks later? not quite a month? Anyway, here it is, a collection that lends credence to Harry G. Frankfurt’s comment that the “normal habit of attending to the way […]

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2008 08 28 Duke Lacrosse Case Comments (20)

Duke’s perfect storm–too much bullshit, too few bullshit detectors

I wonder how many people at Duke read KC Johnson’s editorial about campus reactions to the allegations against the lacrosse team, posted on Inside Higher Ed on May 1, 2006 (probably at least one—in the comments there’s a brief clarification signed “Mark Anthony Neal”). It’s an editorial that deserved more attention than I suspect it […]

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2008 08 04 Duke Lacrosse Case
Teaching Comments (59)

Stupid conservative tricks

Back in 2004 the Duke Conservative Union (DCU) looked up the political party affiliation of 178 Duke faculty members in the humanities and then took out an ad in the Duke Chronicle announcing that the vast majority were registered Democrats. Only 8 were registered Republicans. A day later the paper ran a lengthy piece with […]

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2008 07 18 Academia
Duke Lacrosse Case Comments (25)

Slaves to the metanarrative–postscript

Here’s a quick follow-up to my last entry. KC Johnson has just posted to Durham-in-Wonderland his own rebuttal to Robert Perkinson’s review of Until Proven Innocent. There’s some substance to it, including a few paragraphs about the Hunt and Gell cases that go beyond the I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I rhetoric of his recent feud with Tim Tyson.
But as […]

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2008 06 30 Duke Lacrosse Case Comments (8)

Slaves to the metanarrative

For some reason a few days ago my blog came to the attention of the Liestoppers forum. The referrer links prompted me to take a look at their new digs for the first time since the old forum imploded a couple months ago. Those forums were a copious record of the grim and wacky world […]

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2008 06 20 Duke Lacrosse Case Comments (50)