Blogs > Cliopatria > Duke Lacrosse in Retrospect

Sep 16, 2007

Duke Lacrosse in Retrospect


by Cliopatria


Eighteen months ago, my friend, Another Damned Medievalist, sent me an e-mail asking why no one at Cliopatria had posted about the breaking story of the Duke lacrosse case."I'm surprised no one at Cliopatria has picked up the Duke Lacrosse team story yet," said she,"since it does seem to be all about class and race ...." As the only Duke graduate among us, I replied to her with"Duke Lacrosse," Cliopatria, 30 March 2006. I'm neither proud of nor embarrassed by that post. Of course, it doesn't foresee how the case would develop. At that point, no one could foresee it. Maybe someday, members of Duke's Group of 88 will gain the humility to admit the folly of rushing into a current crisis with a preframed narrative. The historians among them ought to have had greater appreciation of the wisdom of restraint. I am proud that one of my colleagues, KC Johnson, would write the book on the case. I'm waiting for my friend, ADM, to e-mail her congratulations.

Charlotte Allen,"Durham Bull," Weekly Standard, 24 September, reviews Taylor and Johnson's Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case. The Weakly Standard isn't my favorite read, but I'll take praise where I can get it. Take Allen's penultimate paragraph, for example:

... just a few days ago, Group of 88 sympathizer Scott Eric Kaufman, a journalism instructor at the University of California at Irvine, posted an entry on his blog, Acephalous, calling for Johnson to be ostracized by the prestigious [SIC!] history website Cliopatria, even though Johnson has a doctorate from Harvard and is the author of four scholarly books.

Now, my friend, Kaufman, claims that he's been smeared by Allen and explicitly denies having called for ostracizing KC. I don't know how else he would have expected Allen, Johnson, me or anyone else to interpret his opening sentence:"With all due apologies to Ralph, Scott, Timothy, Miriam, and the rest of the good folk at Cliopatria, I've got to say: keeping K.C. Johnson on the roster does the rest of the contributors a disservice." But I accept Scott's assurance that he didn't mean that.

As I said to ADM,"I can't speak for my colleagues ...." None of us can. Some of them hold to outlandish doctrines, but I learn from them whenever they post here or on their own blogs. We are diverse and have been intentionally so from the beginning. Without celebrating the cult of diversity, we try to model it. It isn't easy. If it means that we will be criticized for it, I'll play defense.

On another front, Shadow, the toy doberman pinscher who lives across the street from me in Atlanta, wants to lodge a complaint on his behalf with another of Cliopatria's old critics, Major Computer Technician at Ivy League Institution. I won't link to his post, but he writes thusly:"... I found myself baited continuously by the founder [of Cliopatria] Ralph Luker, a minor academic figure with the personality of a toy Doberman pinscher." [You can google the quote if you care to know who MCT@ILI is.] My friend, Shadow, wants MCT@ILI to know that Shadow has more charm in his bobbed tail than Ralph Luker has in his whole being.


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Andrew D. Todd - 9/18/2007

So are the big Dobermans, come to that. They're prone to tip over garbage cans of course, and to borrow lamb chops from the kitchen table, and even to climb, feet-first, into the refrigerator if they think they can get away with it, but that's another matter, within the range of normal dogginess. The Border Collie once ate a whole stick of butter that someone unwisely left in a dish on the coffee table, and a friend's Weimaraner used to be in the habbit of waking up the toddler at three in the morning so that they could raid the refrigerator together.

Edward Carson - 9/17/2007

I addressed this topic a while back on my blog. I focused more on the element of black's anti-Duke attitude and historical elements as a shaper of the most recent events.

The issue: Another example of class and race in America. Remember, a number of professors signed against not only the players, but the community.

http://ecarson.wordpress.com/2007/04/13/thoughts-on-duke-class-and-race/

Ralph E. Luker - 9/17/2007

Good point, Adam. I meant no dig at his level of education, certainly. I probably should just have ignored his comments, which were, at this point, quite gratuitous. And, off the mark. In my experience, toy dobermans are very sweet-tempered animals.

Nonpartisan - 9/17/2007

Is it productive, or fair, to attack your assailant's mode of employment in your final paragraph? I've had run-ins with the same individual myself, so I'm not disagreeing with your take on him, and he was certainly nasty enough to you in his post, but how does sinking to his level by insulting his education help anybody?