Duke Faculty Still Not Doing Well

KC Johnson has an update on the activities of Duke Professor Grant Farrad, whose membership in the Group of 88 is bad enough, but he seems to be the ringleader on "racial stupidity." Johnson writes:

Even in an atmosphere of extreme and indefensible statements by members of Duke’s arts and sciences faculty, Literature professor Grant Farred has distinguished himself for his extreme and indefensible statements. The Group of 88 stalwart published what is arguably the most outrageous faculty op-ed of the entire case, denouncing the hundreds of Duke students who registered to vote in Durham as carriers of “secret racism.”

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Farred’s basic thesis: the players were guilty, maybe not of rape, but of “white privilege,” and so Roy Cooper’s decision to pronounce them “innocent” was wrong. Moreover, unnamed members of the team were—according to Farred—perjurers. And Cooper should have investigated Reade Seligmann, Dave Evans, and Collin Finnerty for committing a hate crime, since the three are modern-day versions of old-time Southern racists.

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Farred concluded his remarks by linking the three falsely accused players with two prominent white men who made racist statements—Don Imus and Michael Richards. That none of the three players made any racist statements—and that no one apart from the utterly discredited Nifong and (sometimes) Mangum has ever accused the players of making any racist statements—appears not to have troubled Farred. After all, the three players represent “white privilege.” So they cannot be innocent.

Go read the whole thing.