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Excellent Resource on Duke Lacrosse Case

Mar 28, 2008
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Law, Politics & Current Events

K.C. Johnson's blog Durham in Wonderland was an invaluable resource throughout the disgraceful Duke lacrosse case, and his writing had a substantial impact on how that grim matter eventually played out. Though the heart of the case is over — the players exonerated, the dishonest prosecutor disgraced — Johnson still updates the blog periodically. Two recent entries are worth a look — this entry noting the Presidential candidates' positions on the Duke lacrosse case, and more importantly this impressive and useful glossary of many different aspects of the case, with links to Johnson's coverage. It's a must-read for anyone interested in the case.

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  1. Patrick  •  Mar 28, 2008 @10:35 am

    Love the blog and have from the day it hit my radar. I hate the audience and have from the day I delved into its comments.

    To put it another way, while I deplore the way the case was handled by the county (of which I'm a resident), the university (where my wife is employed), and the media, I know that a substantial part of the outrage this case drew was from people who would have been hollering loudly for blood had the defendants looked more like the sort who typically appear in superior court.

    Those are some of the loudest adherents of Dr. Johnson's blog.

  2. Grandy  •  Mar 28, 2008 @1:43 pm

    I mostly stayed away from the comments. I didn't go to the liestoppers forums that often either, but it seemed like that's where the strong community was.

  3. Robert  •  Apr 13, 2008 @10:21 am

    Durham-in-Wonderland is an excellent resource, but when it comes to academic matters, Johnson is a demagogue. It's not a coincidence that he's gathered that particular crowd of devoted fans–he tells them just what they want to hear, and not because he has any great devotion to the truth.

    If you doubt, take a look at my blog. Or, to put his book and the case in perspective, track down the fine review of his book in the Nation online, sometime in early March.

  4. Patrick  •  Apr 13, 2008 @11:05 am

    Gosh Robert, while I agree with you that Johnson goes too far in some of his criticisms and that he plays to an audience hostile to academia in general, if by pointing that out you mean your audience to take away the impression that the behavior, on the whole, of the Duke administration and faculty (of those who spoke up) was anything less than atrocious, I disagree rather strongly.

    On those points, Johnson is absolutely correct. Those Duke professors (with a tiny number of exceptions like Coleman) who weren't silent presumed guilt and said far worse than that, about their own students, when to be charitable they were completely ignorant of the facts (in the first month), or when they should have known better (after the first month). The administration, in its tolerance of this, its own statements, its expulsion of a student/player for the offense of merely writing a tasteless email, and its firing of Mike Pressler, was complicit in this professorial misbehavior or worse.

    I don't need to rehash specific incidents because the professors' own words are quoted at length, and in context, on Johnson's blog and in the book he wrote with Stuart Taylor. Readers who are curious can go to the blog and read for themselves, but I will add one thing that doesn't come through the internet, about subjective impressions.

    I live very close by Duke, in a neighborhood full of Duke professors, and my wife works in their library. This is the subjective part where you're just going to have to take my word for it. The "vibe" I gleaned from conversations with these people, flyers posted on telephone poles, and myriad other little details at Duke was one of unquestioned guilt. The case was emblematic of race and gender relations, privilege, and oppression in Durham and throughout the South.

    No doubt Durham and the South have a terrible history regarding race relations and class issues, and the whole world does regarding gender issues, but this case (as it actually was, not as it was portrayed at the time) was not emblematic of anything, because nothing happened except that a gang of drunk kids said some rude things to a pair of strippers who'd gypped them when one of them showed up drunk and high and later decided, based on God knows what psychopathology she suffers, to confabulate a rape case out of it.

  5. Robert  •  Apr 13, 2008 @1:32 pm

    It turns out there's no direct tradeoff here–Johnson can be dismissed as a miserable, self-serving analyst and professors and administrators at Duke can still be held responsible for jumping to conclusions and persecuting the players. Among the things that makes Johnson a very successful demagogue is that he's good at convincing everyone that criticism of him is automatically defense of the "Group."

    One thing you're wrong about is that on Johnson's site "professors' own words are quoted at length, and in context." Sometimes they are, I'm sure, but he has a very poor record when it comes to context. He sees what he wants to see and manipulates facts and quotes to make sure his readers see exactly the same thing. I've laid out several cases in detail on my blog.

    I don't have to take your word for the subjective part–I also live at Durham and teach part-time at Duke. It's absolutely true that many people around here went overboard in their reactions, and reflexively cast the lacrosse team as representatives of all that's wrong in the world. I've been critical of that in my blog, as well. My feeling is that the vibe you're talking about is mostly generated by extreme voices (people who put flyers on telephone poles, for instance).

    For me personally, it's Johnson's Duke-in-Wonderland, that gives off a strong vibe. It's a cartoon world staffed by good guys and bad guys, with nobody in the middle. It's not a reflection of reality as I know it but of Johnson's impoverished imagination and agenda-driven analysis. It must be awful for your wife to work at such a depressing institution. I have very mixed feelings about the school where I've been teaching for almost 10 years, but it's a much more interesting place.

  6. Patrick  •  Apr 13, 2008 @2:58 pm

    On the contrary, the library's a wonderful place Robert. Haven't you ever visited it?

  7. Robert  •  Apr 13, 2008 @9:21 pm

    If my comment about the library was obnoxious, I'm sorry–I should have made the point more directly. Of course the library is a fine place, and not all that different from the academic departments it serves. Did you and your wife come in contact with a lot of people at the library who behaved atrociously?

    When I first read Duke-in-Wonderland, I thought that, no matter how abrasive and judgmental he was, Johnson must have been fairly close to the mark with his take on many of those he singled out as extremists. But when I scratch the surface what I find is misreading, misrepresentation, cheap shots, and character assasination. If you can point out what I've missed or why I should believe a word he writes anyways, please do.

    As you probably know, James Coleman–the shining exception to the general rule about Duke faculty–cowrote a letter to the Duke Chronicle last October criticizing Johnson and Taylor for a "tragic rush to judgment" in their broad condemnation of Duke faculty. Johnson dismissed Coleman and Kasibhatla's criticism with the same kind of blustery evasions that he's used to write off every other objection to his crusade. I've found no sign that he or any of his loyal readers even paused to consider in light of Coleman's criticism. If you're as wedded to the story as they are, nothing that I say is going to change your mind. But I think you're more flexible than that.

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