"Rarely have I been so transformed as when I am angry."
I wrote that line in my senior column last year. As much as I loved Duke, I was sometimes disgusted by its hypocrisy. For a school that tosses around the term "diversity" more often that it mentions Mike Krzyzewski, Duke did a poor job of defending anyone whose opinions were obnoxious to the ideological mainstream. Too often, the University did not foment ideas, but orthodoxy. To Duke's credit, my anger gave me direction: I decided to spend my legal career defending freedom of speech.
For the students calling for Professor of Cell Biology Mike Reedy to be kicked out of Duke, I wonder if they see this as their transformative moment. I wonder if their outrage has helped them find their calling in life, if it has helped focus their passion into something meaningful.
When I look at their tactics and see the University's response, I'm afraid this won't be a positive learning experience for anybody.
Some of the ideals loosely invoked on these flyers are those most admirable in students--recognizing racial privilege and acting to dismantle it, opposing institutions that are inimical to their sense of justice and equality, speaking out.
Yet, thrilled as I am to see free speech in action, there must be accountability for what is being said. Speech and expression should be defended absolutely. But violence--and the threat of it--is not mere expression, and action "by any means necessary" is not what's needed here.
Reedy, apparently, has taken accountability for his statements and apologized. If all he did was express an offensive opinion--as professors do all the time--then that would be enough, or all he could do, at least. However, his statements showed a penchant to discriminate on the basis of race or national origin, which renders him unfit for any position involving hiring and might well give the University cause to remove him from its teaching faculty.
Regardless of how Duke handles him, Reedy is sure to be sanctioned. The label "racist" is far more damning than any scarlet letter, and informal, social punishment can be the worst of all. Students will know what he did when he teaches them; colleagues may well avoid him for fear of being branded "racist" themselves.
That is precisely why the anonymous student campaign against Reedy is so misguided. In their instinct to act, these students invoke--albeit inarticulately--the lexicon of 1960s radicals. Those radicals' tactics were borne of their complaints; they opposed a system that was aligned against them, that they felt offered no recourse.
Today's Duke is much different. Reedy hardly represents any systemic bias--his own department acted immediately to distance itself from his comments, and nobody is defending his statements. Those who want Reedy removed are hardly faced with the same situation as, say, Rosa Parks. There are a myriad of formal channels in which to lodge complaints; even occupying the Allen Building is no longer punished. For these students--writing anonymously--to imply a threat of violence is beyond cowardly and unnecessary. It is stupid, offensive and ought to be punished.
The University's inept disciplinary apparatus sees this only as a "damage issue." Just as President Nan Keohane referred to physical threats against right-wing students a few years ago as "blowing off steam," it seems that Duke doesn't see fit to punish brutish conduct so long as it is in line with the University's ideological biases. Had these threats been directed at ethnic minorities, homosexuals or other traditionally underprivileged groups, I have no doubt Duke, as it should, would have been sure to find out who said what and punish them for the content of their threats, not the glue that posted them. Safety should not vary by which side of the aisle someone is standing on.
It will be up to Professor Reedy to repair the damage he has caused himself and the pain he has caused others. For the sake of his career, I suspect he'll do his best. I wish I believed the administration would do the same.
Jonas Blank, Trinity '01, is the former editor of Recess.
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