A group of approximately 90 faculty members calling themselves "Concerned Duke Faculty" posted an open letter addressed to the University community online Tuesday.
In the letter, the signatories affirmed their support for the authors of an ad published in The Chronicle in April 2006 titled "What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like?" which highlighted concerns brought to light by the lacrosse incident about racism and sexism on campus.
The signatories of the recent letter stated that the original ad has been widely misinterpreted in discussions about the lacrosse case and the University.
"We stand by the claim that issues of race and sexual violence on campus are real, and we join the ad's call to all of us at Duke to do something about this," the authors of the open letter wrote.
By yesterday afternoon, 90 professors and lecturing fellows appeared on the list of signatories to which the letter links. Of them, 64 were among the 88 signers of the ad printed in April.
"I think that another letter has been needed for months," said Ronen Plesser, associate professor of physics, who signed both the letter and the ad. "What held it up was that it's a complicated thing to do, and nobody wanted to get started."
Plesser said the timing of the letter's publication was unrelated to recent developments in the legal case against three members of the 2005-2006 men's lacrosse team.
He noted that the letter's authors began circulating drafts around the time of Winter Break and have been trying for some time to publish the article in local venues.
"This is not an organized effort," Plesser said. "My personal hope is that this will be the basis for a conversation on campus... a conversation that will eventually lead to some understanding."
Elizabeth Clark, John Carlisle Kilgo professor of religion and one of the recently published letter's co-authors, said she signed the letter to show she supports efforts for change on campus.
"When the situation becomes such that honored members of the faculty are being attacked on blogs in very personal ways, I think it's perhaps time to say that we join in... the struggle against racism and sexism at Duke," said Clark, who was not among the 88 who signed the original ad.
Twenty-four of those who signed the April ad are not currently listed among the "Concerned Faculty." Among them is miriam cooke, professor of Asian and African languages and literature, who does not capitalize her name. She said she signed an earlier version of the recent letter, however, and continued to support its contents.
"Each one of us has received messages that run the spectrum of polite requests to demur... to rude, aggressive, threatening letters," said cooke, referring to the 88 faculty who signed the April ad. "I hope that will stop."
Several of the other signatories of the April ad who did not sign the recent letter no longer work at the University.
The letter appears on an independent website, http://concerneddukefaculty.org.
Plesser explained that he would have preferred not to publish the letter on the Internet.
"We were unable to find a venue locally first. We tried," Plesser said.
Acting on behalf of the signatories, Plesser submitted a draft of the letter to The Chronicle as an ad last week. The Chronicle offered to run the letter on the condition that the authors accepted certain editorial changes to wording that posed legal risks for the newspaper. Plesser and his fellow signatories ultimately rejected The Chronicle's offer.
In an e-mail to The Chronicle, Laurie Shannon, associate professor of English, criticized the newspaper for not giving due weight to faculty members' right to freedom of expression.
Writing in another e-mail, Kenneth Surin, professor of literature and religion and critical theory, said the paper's "censorship" of the ad was "very disturbing."
The Chronicle has customarily reviewed ads of this nature and required advertisers to make changes.
"What The Chronicle has to say about why it made its choice-that's the paper's decision," Plesser said.
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