On Tuesday evening I spoke at Duke University as the guest of the Duke Conservative Union. The crowd was small, making up in warmth what it lacked in size. The audience included Power Line readers Dr. and Mrs. Barry Farris as well as Jon and Kay Ham, the parents of Hugh Hewitt blogger prodigy Mary Katharine Ham.
The president of the Duke Conservative Union is senior John Korman; the vice president and president-elect is junior Peter Magnuson. Following the talk, we had dinner with DCU members Stephen Miller, James Dickey (the grandnephew of the poet), Dustin Willard, John Schronce, student body president-elect Elliott Wolf (only a sophomore), and Jessica Zinck. These students are in the thick of things on a campus unfriendly to conservative views, yet are among the most bright, pleasant, and committed college students I have ever met.
Duke of course has been in the news lately because of the rape charges involving the Duke lacrosse team. Yesterday the lacrosse coach resigned as an e-mail surfaced in which a team member wrote of “killing” strippers “to cut their skin off.” On the DCU’s Duke New Sense site, the DCU has been providing excellent coverage of “Lacrossegate” and the dangerous campus atmosphere precipitated by the rape charges. Please check it out.
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