We’re Listening
The Duke Chronicle reports that applications for admission to Duke are down, and I think we all know why. But Duke professor of philosophy Alex Rosenberg has stepped up to help.
Let me set the stage. K C Johnson’s Durham-in-Wonderland blog is the go-to place for information about the Duke Lacrosse fiasco. Professor Johnson has, among many other things, written to Duke professors asking them to explain their rush to judgement, a flagrant example of which is the infamous We’re Listening advertisement.
The New York Sun writes:
A professor of philosophy, Alex Rosenberg, said he received an e-mail from Mr. Johnson accusing him of prejudging the case. Mr. Johnson noted that Mr. Rosenberg signed the letter supporting the “We’re Listening” advertisement. Mr. Rosenberg said he did so because he was concerned with the prevalence of alcohol on campus and bothered by “affluent kids violating the law to get exploited women to take their clothes off when they could get as much hookup as they wanted from rich and attractive Duke coeds.”
Who knew? Alex, you go, dude.
Strange thing for a professor to be worried about. I guess Professor Rosenberg is a thrifty guy who can’t see the point of wasting money on strippers when coeds are free. Funny thing, though. The We’re Listening advertisement doesn’t say one single word about alcohol on campus or women taking their clothes off. It is just a series of mostly unsourced allegations of white racism. It’s hard to see how this goes to the professor’s point.
I had a bit of a time finding a copy of We’re Listening. It used to be hosted by the Duke African and African American Studies department. But their copy is gone. Vanished. They seem to have misplaced it, along with the list of people who signed a statement in support of it. Fortunately, Google still had copies cached. I was able to rescue both these priceless documents, and have assured their continued presence on the web.
If you would like to try a little Google cache fishing yourself, use this search string at Google:
cache:www.duke.edu/web/africanameric/listening.pdf
For the list of signatures, try
cache:www.duke.edu/web/africanameric/supporters.pdf
There is no need for Duke University to thank me. Really.
[tags]Duke lacrosse nonrape[/tags]
Posted on December 20th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: General
Entries RSS
Great work picking up that ad. I had done some searching myself with no luck. Sounds like we’ll be having FriedFong before long.
Thanks, I appreciate it. It does appear that Mr Nifong is going down. I wonder how hard. I expect he will be disbarred, but doubt that he will do any prison time.
[...] It kind of makes me wonder. Would the G88 have issued this new statement had that mysterious, brutally handsome blogosphere critic not saved the We’re Listening document from oblivion? culture humorShare and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]