Posted by Jim Lindgren:
KC Johnson on New Duke Hoax Scholarship.--
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_05_04-2008_05_10.shtml#1210225198
KC Johnson has a [1]long post taking apart a recent scholarly article
on the Duke Rape Hoax by three faculty members -- Wahneema Lubiano,
Michael Hardt, and Robyn Weigman -- the first two of whom were
involved in stirring up hatred against the Lacrosse players.
Apparently, some of the [2]Social Text article is unintentionally
funny:
Lubiano, Weigman, and Hardt had little difficulty in identifying
the true victims of 2006-2007 events in Durham�themselves, and
their fellow members of the Group of 88.
The victimizers? Not Mike Nifong, or Sgt. Gottlieb, or Duke
administrators who failed to enforce the Faculty Handbook. Not the
Duke professors who rushed to judgment or abused their classroom
authority. No, the victimizers, according to the Lubiano Trio, were
�the blogs.�
According to the Lubiano Trio, �the most extreme marginalization
was reserved for the faculty whose professional expertise made them
most competent to engage the discourses on race and gender
unleashed by the inaugurating incident � scholars of African
American and women�s studies. Instead, administrators, like the
bloggers themselves, operated under the assumption that everyone
was an expert on matters of race and gender, while actually
existing academic expertise was recast as either bias or a
commitment to preconceived notions about the legal case. Some
faculty thus found themselves in the unenviable position of being
the targets of public discourse (and disparaged for their expertise
on race and gender) without being legitimate participants in it.�
If the Group�s expertise made its members �most competent to engage
the discourses on race and gender unleashed by the inaugurating
incident,� there was nothing, to my knowledge, to prevent them from
doing so. Instead, of course, Group members by and large pursued an
opposite approach. They rushed to judgment in issuing their
statement when most people presumed the lacrosse players guilty�and
then, when the case started to collapse, they either refused to
explain their earlier position or offered almost comical
rationalizations for their spring 2006 statements and actions.
The Lubiano Trio�s new narrative requires some . . . creative . . .
re-interpretations of the past. To take some examples:
The Group of 88�s Ad
Here�s how the Lubiano Trio�s article described the Group of 88�s
ad: It �sought to grapple with issues of campus life and the
cultures of privilege sustained by elite institutions such as Duke
University.�
Yet here�s how Lubiano herself described the ad in early April
2006, when she invited people to sign: �African & African-American
Studies is placing an ad in The Chronicle about the lacrosse team
incident [emphasis added] . . . We will not be listing the names on
the ad itself (only the supporting departments and program units).�
The Lubiano Trio�s article makes no mention of this inviting
e-mail, nor the ad�s unequivocal assertion that something
�happened� to Crystal Mangum, nor the ad�s thanking��for not
waiting and for making yourselves heard��the protesters who had
presumed guilt, nor the ad�s claim that five departments officially
endorsed its contents even though none of the departments actually
voted on the matter. It remains unclear how any of the above items
relate to �issues of campus life and the cultures of privilege
sustained by elite institutions such as Duke University.�
The Blogs
Intoned the Lubiano Trio, �The latter framing [focusing on the
accuracy of the allegations] was embodied most prominently by
Friends of Duke University, an organization formed to raise money
for the defendants.�
What are they talking about? FODU, a grassroots organization of
Duke alumni and supporters, was created in summer 2006 not to raise
money for the defendants but to urge the Duke administration to
publicly demand that Durham authorities accord to Duke students the
same due process rights granted to all other Durham residents.
The Lubiano Trio appears to have confused FODU (which wasn�t a
fundraising organization) with the Association for Truth and
Fairness, the organization that did raise money to help defray the
defendants� legal bills.
The only problem: the ATF wasn�t a blog�which makes its existence
irrelevant to the Lubiano Trio�s commentary on the blogosphere.
The Media�s Role
The Lubiano Trio informed their readers that �the television
newsweekly 60 Minutes aired five segments on the topic, and stories
appeared in the New Yorker, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and Sports
Illustrated, on the editorial pages of every major newspaper in the
country, and on local and national evening newscasts.�
Actually, 60 Minutes ran three, not five, segments on the topic.
And the New York Times, which most people (especially, I suspect,
members of the Group of 88) would consider a �major newspaper in
the country,� did not publish an editorial on the case.
The Defense Attorneys and the Group of 88
After scouring the defense attorneys� change-of-venue motion, the
Lubiano Trio concluded, �Since its publication, the ad has figured
prominently in both campus and media debate and was cited as
evidence in a defense motion for change of venue, on the assertion
that the accused players could not receive a fair trial in a town
in which prominent community members, including faculty, had failed
publicly to defend their innocence.�
In fact, the December 2006 defense motion contained no such
assertion. (The Lubiano Trio�s article contains a footnote citing
the defense motion, but the authors, perhaps unsurprisingly,
elected not to specify a page number in which this assertion
allegedly was made.) To my knowledge, no defense lawyer, at any
stage of the case, stated that �prominent community members,
including faculty, had failed publicly to defend [the players�]
innocence.� Defense attorneys spoke about the presumption of
innocence�a far different thing than an outright declaration of
innocence. And many critics of the Group of 88, including me, spoke
of the need for academics, of all groups in American society, to
speak up for due process�which is also a far different thing than
an outright declaration of innocence.
That the Lubiano Trio equated calls for professors to defend due
process and the presumption of innocence with demands that
academics actually affirm the players� innocence gives a sense of
how skewed were Group members� conception of the justice system. .
. .
Blog Criticism of the Group
Blogs, according to the Lubiano Trio, used �powerful tactics of
harassment� against members of the Group. �Typically we [Group
members] should . . . work as maids for the players� families [or]
return to the slave quarters.� Group members �have also been found
guilty of numerous crimes, including treason, sedition, and tax
evasion(!).�
Although the Lubiano Trio�s article does contain footnotes, the
Group members elected to supply not even one citation for any of
these outlandish claims. It doesn�t take a Ph.D. to figure out why.
What does the inclusion of these unsourced ramblings say about the
editorial policies of the Duke University Press journal Social
Text?
Here is what the scholars wrote in Social Text regarding the Group of
88:
[They] would become the objects not simply of hostility, on campus
and off, but also of enormous faux-juridical speculation that sets
forth the �legal� case against them and establishes the terms of
the judgment they �owe� to make amends. (Typically we should
resign, work as maids for the players� families, return to the
slave quarters, apologize, or simply hide in shame. At the very
least, as Joseph W. Bellacosa has argued in a Newsday opinion
piece, �Duke Faculty Should Be Shunned by Students.�). . . . In the
language of the blogs, we were not just communists but traitors,
and the fields of study we occupied were not areas of scholarly
inquiry but pathological hothouses in the service of anti-American
sentiment and reverse racism.
Here is the confusingly written footnote supporting the last quoted
sentence:
A number of blogs have focused on discrediting the scholarly
projects of specific members of the so-called 88 as a means of
casting suspicion on their possible standing in the Communist Party
and their complicity with terrorism and anti-Israeli sentiment.
They have also been found guilty of numerous crimes, including
treason, sedition, and tax evasion.
First, I strongly doubt that suggestions that the offending professors
should "work as maids" or "return to the slave quarters" were
"Typically" offered by their critics. Indeed, in a very quick Google
search, I couldn't find any instances of these two suggestions. Such
disgusting insults must have been relatively rarely made by their
editorial and blogger critics, if made by them at all.
Second, the way that the comment about being communists is presented
makes it appear that such claims are ridiculous. But according to a
mainstream [3]news magazine review, Michael Hardt is a "self-described
'joyful communist.'" Is Hardt now implying that he was misquoted, or
is he objecting to people describing him in the same terms that he
describes himself? Or is he (again) trying to mislead readers?
Third, as KC Johnson notes, it was bad form for the professors not to
have supported their claims about the blogs with actual citations to
the offending posts. Assuming that the professors are not engaged in
their own little hoax, I wonder whether their complaints about blogs
aren't mostly about commenters to the blogs, rather than the actual
posts of actual bloggers. Given the three professors' documented
sloppiness with the truth and their unusual claims, the editors of
Social Text should have required citations before allowing them to
make such claims in a scholarly article.
References
1. http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2008/04/lubiano-publication.html
2. http://socialtext.dukejournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/25/4_93/1
3. http://www.metronc.com/article/?id=1448
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