Black Duke University Professor Resigns from Race Relations Committee

Dr. Karla Holloway, Professor of English and Law at Duke University, has resigned from the university committee on race relations in protest against Duke's decision to readmit two of the accused lacrosse players back on to campus.

Her official statement:
“The decision by the university to readmit the students, especially just before a critical judicial decision on the case, is a clear use of corporate power, and a breach, I think, of ethical citizenship. I could no longer work in good faith with this breach of common trust.”

Holloway, who is black, had agreed to head one of the four committees formed by Duke President Richard H. Brodhead late last spring. She says she’d hoped to improve the racial climate on campus after a Black exotic dancer accused members of Duke’s men’s lacrosse team of rape and racial slurs — prompting a media frenzy and nationwide accusations of racism against the university and its students.

Diverse Online article

Durham-in-Wonderland blog on the Duke/Nifong case

It would seem some have welcomed Holloway's departure. Her comments have not been fruitful in the past nine months such as below.

With regards to male athletes:
“The ‘culture’ of sports seems for some a reasonable displacement for the cultures of moral conduct, ethical citizenship and personal integrity,” reinforcing “exactly those behaviors of entitlement which have been and can be so abusive to women and girls and those ‘othered’ by their sports’ history of membership.”

To those that defended the lacrosse players:
Those who defended the players targeted by Nifong? They believed that “white innocence means black guilt. Men’s innocence means women’s guilt.”

To the women's lacrosse players who supported the male players:
She denounced their “team-inspired and morally slender protestations of loyalty that brought the ethic from the field of play onto the field of legal and cultural and gendered battle as well.”

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Such a strange with human nature. It does wonders when most of the student body, professors, staff and administrators initially supported the women, and placed the presumption of guilty on the Duke lacrosse players.

Now with the case falling apart and the dropping of rape charges, the administration is doing an about-face. Support among the student body and professors have switched sides to the lacrosse players. Even with the kidnapping and assault charges, the evidence is pretty weak, and it is very likely that the three players will see all charges dropped against them. Now some profs and students are blaming those that thought the players were guilty.

Then all we have left are the individuals who are so steadfast confident that the lacrosse players are ultimately guilty and that the black exotic dancer is now the target of some big-schemed conspiracy.

Quite an unfair debacle. That's human behaviour.