Towards an academic theory of justice Tom Smith
And now our peripetetic tour of American justice takes us to Duke University, where, I can only say it appears, an insane prosecutor is engaged in one of the more shocking examples of demagoguery and abuse of power, at least against college students, which I have ever heard of. The Scottsboro Boys in Reverse, some commentator dubbed it, appropriately enough. But what I find really troubling is this:
The Duke arts and sciences faculty, seven months after the fact, still contains not a single memberwho has publicly criticized Nifong s procedural irregularities ordefended the lacrosse players character. Indeed, the professoriateappears frozen in time, circa April 8: the leaders of Duke s CampusCulture Initiative include the team s most vitriolic critics, such as Peter Wood and Karla Holloway.The continued prominence of figures such as Wood and Holloway shattersthe argument that the Group of 88 and their supporters were just caughtup in the heat of the moment when they denounced the lacrosse playersin the print. Holloway s remarks, for instance, came long afterevidence of the players likely innocence and Nifong s certainmisconduct had emerged but she treated both of these developments asessentially irrelevant. Justice, Holloway claimed, inevitably has anattendant social construction. And this parallelism means that despitewhat may be our desire, the seriousness of the matter cannot be finallyor fully adjudicated in the courts. Therefore, she continued, sincethe presumption of innocence is neither the critical social indicatorof the event, nor the final measure of its cultural facts, judgmentsabout the case cannot be left to the courtroom.
The Brodhead/Steel administration, operating from the premise that atrial gives the players a chance to be proved innocent, has attemptedto rewrite the historyof American higher education, rationalizing its own passivity on thegrounds that professors and academic institutions should not comment onprocedural abuses in the criminal justice system.
Social construction? Parallelism? Oh dear. Ideas have consequences, but most of them are bad. And those darn administrators. Just want to see justice run its course, no matter how brave that requires them to be. It’s downright inspiring. How about an alternative explanation? Perhaps rather than fearing their intervention, which would be no more than speaking out against some pretty flagrant abuses, might cause justice to miscarry, what is really going on is just cowering before the crazed forces of political correctness, and what is worse, political correctness expressed in silly philosophical jargon. (Just once, I would like to be morally shocked without having my intelligence insulted at the same time.)
That’s bad, of course, but even more, why would any parent who cares about his or her son want to send him to Duke after all this? Seems like a bit of a market failure. I am confident that my sons would never assault a woman, but that apparently is no defense against being branded a rapist at Duke. If all it takes to be branded a rapist is not being one, that doesn’t leave you a lot of room to manuever. I don’t imagine the father and mother of a boy who has his alibi on tape, and still can’t get one of his professors to speak up for him, are feeling like their tuition money, or their trust, was very well placed about now. Students come and go, I suppose, and some even go to prison, but professors, having tenure, stay, and must be appeased, no matter how deranged they may be. It’s just that darn parallelism of social construction, I guess. Cynicism and and being, let us say, spineally challenged, are not unknown among university administrators. But golly. Maybe the facts are otherwise than as they appear. Maybe I’m reading the wrong blogs. But unfortunately, that the faculty of a great university would simply supinate as some students get ground up in the maw of corrupt local politics, lunatic leftism, and the horror of the levers of criminal law in cynical and ruthless hands, is all too believable.