What about the Gang of 88? part 2

Thomas Sowell characterizes a reckoning with the gang of 88 radical professors who supported the lynch mob at Duke “unfinished business.” Sowell writes:

The 88 Duke University faculty members who took out a hysterical ad, supporting those local loudmouths who were denouncing and threatening the Duke students, have apparently had nothing at all to say now.
***
Nor were the 88 Duke faculty members who promoted a lynch mob atmosphere naive. Most were from departments promoting the “race, class, and gender” vision of victimhood.
This case served their purposes. That trumped any question about whether the charges were true or not.
Don’t expect any of these people to recant or apologize. But be aware of how wide and how deep the moral dry rot goes.
That such people are teaching students at an elite university is a chilling thought. That they promote a campus atmosphere where political correctness trumps the search for truth is painful.
That such attitudes and such atmospheres are not peculiar to Duke University, but are common on elite college campuses from coast to coast is a time bomb with the potential to destroy individuals and ultimately undermine the whole society.

Sowell also discusses the New York Times’s contribution to the lynch mob atmosphere. At NRO, Peter Wood follows up with a discussion of loose ends as well. Until Professor K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor finish their forthcoming book on the Duke case, Charlotte Allen’s Weekly Standard article “Duke’s tenured vigilantes” remains the essential account of the case.
To comment on this post, go here.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses