National Journal’s Stuart Taylor has detailed what’s wrong on Duke University. It’s not the lacrosse team, he finds, but the appallingly biased faculty that has been quick to indict its young white males as sexist, racist thugs without considering the evidence. Taylor highlights several examples of how the university have smeared the accused:
“Three academic departments, 13 programs, and 88 professors at Duke took out a full-page ad in the campus newspaper on April 7. Treating the truth of the rape charge almost as a given, and applauding protesters who had put lacrosse players’ photos on “wanted” posters, the ad associated “what happened to this young woman” with “racism and sexism,” implausibly complained of “racist classmates,” and falsely suggested that white lacrosse players were getting privileged treatment.”
Taylor writes that based on his review of the available evidence he is “about 85 percent confident that the three members who have been indicted on rape charges are innocent and that the accusation is a lie.” Of course, justice must take it’s course and we’ll have to wait to see all the evidence to have a better understanding of what really happened. But the evidence is already in when it comes to the media and university’s treatment of the Duke lacrosse players, and they are guilty of gross bias.