Haves have nots

This is a tale of two crises at Duke. The first is the kind we hear of the vast majority of the time: crimes against victims we can sympathize with, perpetrated by people or forces with whom we can't. With vigils, lectures, publications and other vital efforts, we condemn sexual assault, rapists and bigots. Global disease comes next. With no one to blame, exactly, for HIV and AIDS, we condemn the diseases themselves and pray for a cure.

The second crisis is the one that erupted last spring: the Duke lacrosse case. For the first time, the tables turned. We found a "crime" whose alleged perpetrators we knew, and whose alleged victims we didn't. That the crime turned out to be fiction didn't matter: suddenly, a year ago, reality began to run "off script." If anything, rather than repeating the dominant narrative, most students rejected it, supporting the accused lacrosse players even as ESPN and much of the mainstream media slammed Duke.

Suddenly, in the Duke lacrosse case, shared experience forced some students (but few faculty) to reprogram their "thoughts." Suddenly, we saw these "haves"-young white men playing a historically elite sport-as something else: as fellow dorm-mates, as fellow Duke students, as fellow humans.

In American academia today, countless faculty, administrators and students reflexively-if unconsciously-insist that in any conflict, the "haves" are guilty, and the "have-nots" are innocent. The "haves" are normally one of the following: white, straight, middle class and male. The "have-nots": not white, not straight, not middle class and not male.

When the "haves" are abstract entities, the intelligentsia treats their guilt as a foregone conclusion. But when the "haves" are familiar faces, the voices of condemnation are shouted down by friends of the accused. We vacillate between two equally unacceptable forms of response-blindly accepting the dominant narrative, or questioning it solely because of personal relationships.

To make clear: we must still condemn racism, bigotry, sexual assault and the other evils Duke students have traditionally campaigned against. And we must continue defending the falsely accused, as the Duke lacrosse players were-many of us rallying behind their cause without knowing the players at all. But in either event, we must pick a side out of reverence for the truth, not merely because it fits either our political or personal purposes.

In international affairs, we rarely know the players personally. As individuals we don't usually know a given terrorist in the news, a particular American soldier, or the people caught in between. As a result, the same mythic thinking that slammed Duke lacrosse continues unchecked. In far too many classrooms, the "haves"-America, Europe, Jews, Israel-are invariably oppressing the "have-nots"-the Middle East, Arabs, Muslims. With an infinite amount of facts, and a finite reader attention span, there is always enough room to leave things out.

But reality almost always outruns dogma. How many Duke students realize, for instance, that according to an April 2 article in the Daily Mail, British schoolteachers are eliminating lessons on the Holocaust "for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial?"

Throughout history, progress has come through thoughtful dissent. By promulgating the reductionist "have"-"have not" narrative in an era of conservative government, Duke faculty and journalists alike seem to fancy themselves as today's dissidents. In reality, they are today's orthodoxy chorus.

I urge Duke students to question all doctrine-and without resorting to personal connections to do so. To do anything less is devastating. Just ask a lacrosse player.

Andrew Gerst, former managing editor of Towerview, graduated from Duke in 2006 and now lives and works in Washington, D.C. His column runs every other Monday.