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{ Tag Archives } Duke University

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 […]

Also tagged culture war, Duke lacrosse case, Michael Gustafson

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 […]

Also tagged Duke lacrosse case, Karla Holloway, KC Johnson

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 […]

Also tagged Duke lacrosse case, KC Johnson

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 […]

Also tagged bullshit, Duke lacrosse case, Karla Holloway, KC Johnson, Kerry Haynie, Mark Anthony Neal, Richard Brodhead, Wahneema Lubiano, Wiegman-Lubiano-Hardt

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 […]

Also tagged bullshit, Duke lacrosse case, Karla Holloway, KC Johnson, liestoppers, Mark Anthony Neal, potbangers, Tim Tyson, Wahneema Lubiano

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 […]

Also tagged Alan Kors, culture war, Duke lacrosse, Erin O'Connor, intellectual diversity, KC Johnson, Michael Gustafson

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 […]

Also tagged Duke lacrosse, KC Johnson, Robert Perkinson

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 […]

Also tagged Duke lacrosse, KC Johnson, liestoppers, Robert Perkinson, William Anderson

Professors debating badly

A few weeks ago I wrote about Tim Tyson’s answers to a reporter’s questions about the lacrosse case, and about KC Johnson’s response (the interview with Tyson, originally on a News & Observer blog, made it into print a few days later). Among other things I was disappointed that Tyson wasn’t willing to think more […]

Also tagged Duke lacrosse, KC Johnson, Tim Tyson

The trouble with tribalism

The word of the day is “tribalism.” I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Kenya, where there’s no way to avoid the word—certainly not after the post-election violence at the beginning of this year. In a New York Times op-ed a few months ago, Roger Cohen takes the idea of tribalism on a whirlwind […]

Also tagged Alan Kors, Barack Obama, culture war, Duke lacrosse, Erin O'Connor, KC Johnson, thefire.org, tribalism