Duke Raped: Social Justice for the Gang of 88.

Cathy N. Davidson is a Professor at Duke and a member of the "Group of 88" who signed an ad in April of 2006 denouncing the “Duke Lacrosse Team rape” that never was.

But the larger point the "Group of 88" were making was not about the rape. That was the take-off point. The theme was about oppressed black people and women and racist, sexist, rich white men. The three lacrosse players were the Duke faculty’s “Great White Defendants” straight from Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities.”

It was about “social justice.” A justice that allowed OJ Simpson to get away with murder because he was black and it was time to put one over on “The Man.” Here we have the mirror image, the doppelganger of OJ, a group of rich white jocks accused by a black stripper of rape. And although DNA, the magic bullet of modern criminal forensics clears them, their individual guilt or innocence is not, has never been, the issue. For the “Group of 88” the hypocrisy of tenured elites knows no bounds. For them the issue is white male guilt, forever and always. And if it means putting three innocent white guys in jail for the rest of their lives; well, as John Dewey said about Stalin's brave new world, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Racial, sexual and economic justice will be served over the lives of the three white guys. It's a price Cathy and the "88" are glad to pay.

So now we have Davidson defending the “88” with an impassioned appeal in the Raleigh News & Observer. She refers to the actions sparked by the Duke rape allegations as a “social disaster.”

And it is. Because she and 87 other members of the Duke faculty conspired to create this social disaster. But the social disaster is more than just a group of privileged, high influence, highly paid members of the intellectual community creating a lynch mob that took to the streets and called for the castration of the lacrosse players.

There was not time for the truth to be discovered:

We’re turning up the volume in a moment when some of the most vulnerable among us are being asked to quiet down while we wait. To the students speaking individually and to the protestors making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard. [from the manifesto of the "88"]

It is symptomatic of the social disaster that has befallen the American university system where tenured radicals play with the minds of our children. Where student enter believing in America and leave hating our culture, denigrating our past and agitating to create a future that is based on systems that have failed, and failed spectacularly, in other places and times.

It is a social disaster that has elevated the likes of Cathy Davidson who said:

To the students speaking individually and to the protestors making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard."
--Group of 88 statement, April 6

And today claims:

I am positive I am not the only professor who was and continues to be adamant about the necessity for fair and impartial legal proceedings for David, Collin and Reade."
--N&O, today

This is not the writing of someone who is aware of the world, who realizes that the past is not dropped down the memory hole but can be resurrected and held up to her and in her own words accuse her of leading an academic and racial lynch mob.

Read the manifesto again and note:

If it turns out that these students are guilty, I want them expelled.

The “if” is a sop to the rule of law, the sifting of evidence. But there is no question that the manifesto assumes the "white, rich, privileged" lacrosse players guilt. The “if” is a sick aside about seeing justice done while mobs are urged to take to the streets.

It is the Cathy Davidsons of the world who have created the social disaster that allows a creature like Mike Nifong, the Durham District Attorney, to believe that by pursuing a false charge against the lacrosse players that he can win an election. And he was right. He knew his constituency. It is the social disaster that even now provides cover for the ongoing persecution of the three lacrosse players when everyone except the “88” and the race hustlers of Durham know that no crime occurred.

There is a social disaster occurring. Cathy Davidson, living in the Duke echo chamber, where everyone is diverse but everyone thinks exactly as she does, can not see that she is part and parcel of the ongoing social disaster that is the American academy. I demand Social Justice for Cathy Davidson and the "Gang of 88." Good and hard.