Finding the Scapegoats

The Duke Lacrosse Scandal has been one strange affair from the get-go and as time goes on it gets stranger and stranger. Part of the strangeness is a result of hubris. Collectively, the Duke community has a swelled head and they aren’t so much embarrassed by the scandal as they are indignant about all of the negative publicity.

I saw this before at Stanford in the last 1980s with regard to a scandal of its own. In that case, the scandal was about misuse of government funds related to overhead. Just like Duke, Stanford’s arrogance and hubris played right into the hands of the press. The issue just grew and grew and ended up becoming the stuff of an embarrassing congressional inquiry. It’s telling that to this day, Stanford leadership is indignant about its overhead scandal. Mention it and hackles raise. A little contrition would be a good thing.

When the scandal hit Stanford, its leadership felt the need for a scapegoat. They found it in their communications/public relations officer. A long-time employee of Stanford, which had formerly celebrated its openness to the press, he was forced to resign. Stanford has not been open with the press since. Ultimately, the scandal grew so large that the president resigned as well. I don’t think that Brodhead, president of Duke, will resign. It’s just not Duke’s way of doing things. But I’d bet five grand that he won’t last the standard ten years.

At Duke, the initial scapegoat was predictable, the coach of the lacrosse team. Like Stanford’s p.r. officer, he was someone who up until the scandal was adored. But love is fleeting in the world of business, and Duke needed someone to blame this mess on that wasn’t too high in the chain of command.

Both at Stanford and at Duke there was the need not only to find a scapegoat in the administration, but one from the faculty as well. At Stanford, it was a physics professor. At Duke, it was Houston Baker, prominent member of the English department, who went ballistic in response to the Lacrosse Scandal. He wrote a scathing letter to the provost at Duke and talked freely to the press about his anger and resentment.

I can’t say that I agreed with much of what he said. For those who are interested, you can easily find out all he said by a google search. But I was more than willing to cut him slack for his outside the lines views. Baker is an older black man who grew up in Louisville, a town heavy with history of racism. His wife has been the victim of rape. Putting myself in his shoes, I just might go ballistic as well. The event would just be too close to home.

For example, a couple of years ago, Duke was dumb enough to pay for and host an anti-Semitic conference. I’m proudly Jewish. My parents both lived through hell in Europe. Most of my relatives were murdered in WWII. I watched this conference take place and watched a few self-loathing, non-practicing Jews in Duke leadership bend over backwards to praise the conference. This was not the first time I’d seen this bunch openly display their self-loathing. I bit my tongue. Then, a very nasty anti-Semitic op-ed, entitled The Jews, appeared in the Duke student newspaper at the end of the conference. I went ballistic and said things I shouldn’t have said. It was all too close to home for me.

Now one would think that Duke would have both big enough collective compassion for a human being and a commitment to free speech to let Professor Baker vent his emotions. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the provost of the university – someone who has a tendency to throw temper tantrums that would make a two year old envious – publicly lambasted Professor Baker. In response, alumni and students joined the “get Baker” bandwagon. There were calls for Baker’s resignation in Duke’s student newspaper. Duke had a new scapegoat.

Professor Baker, faced with such ugliness on the part of the provost and the Duke community, did what most anyone else would do. He found a job elsewhere. Next year he and his wife will both be professors at Vanderbilt. I wish them well. The provost and the Duke community owe them both an apology. But that doubtless will not happen. Duke found their scapegoats. In times of crisis, institutions are usually far more interested in defending themselves from real and perceived slights than they are in doing the right thing.