RICHARD BRODHEAD’S BELIEF IN THE GUILT OF THE LACROSSE PLAYERS : IN HIS OWN WORDS

RICHARD BRODHEAD’S CERTAINTY THAT THE LACROSSE PLAYERS WERE GUILTY: IN HIS OWN WORDS

In April 2011, now that Judge Beaty has ruled that two lawsuits against Richard H. Brodhead can proceed to “DISCOVERY” on the charges of “obstruction of justice” and “constructive fraud,” it is time to look at a fact generally overlooked in the mainstream media, television news, and the Duke Chronicle--the fact that Brodhead was sure that lacrosse players were guilty of gang rape, vaginal and anal.

Many have pointed out that Brodhead could hardly have behaved so heartlessly (as in refusing to let parents show him exculpating evidence) if he had believed the students to be innocent. I want to look closely at Brodhead’s own words for evidence that he was convinced, from the moment that he heard the allegations, that the lacrosse players (whichever ones might be identified as the actual culprits) were guilty.

Brodhead’s July interview with Peter J. Boyer for the 4 September 2006 issue of the NEW YORKER seems to contain a highly self-conscious excuse for his leaping to conclusions the previous March:

This is Boyer for the next four paragraphs:
Brodhead reflected on all that had happened as we chatted in his office in July, and said that it brought to mind Shakespeare’s “Othello”—not for its obvious associations with interracial passions and violence but for its lesson on prejudgment. The scene at the beginning of the play, he said, was particularly instructive. Desdemona’s father hears about his daughter’s relationship with the Moor, and he sighs, “Belief of it oppresses me already.”

“He doesn’t say, ‘Oh, now I see what you’re getting at,’ ” Brodhead said. “He’s saying, ‘Now I realize that I always believed it’—‘Belief of it oppresses me already.’ It’s probably, to my mind, the greatest literary image of the action of prejudice—how a story is told to engage something in the mind that brings with it absolute certainty that derives from the nature of the stereotypes.”

He had located a clarifying point of reference in the lacrosse ordeal, and he became animated. . . .

“‘Belief of it oppresses me already,’ you know?” he continued. “And the thing is, we actually can’t blame people for being subject to this, because it is so deeply human. And if, from day to day, we’ve seen people in the throes of this, we recognize that as a dimension of our humanity. At the same time, it really is our obligation to resist it, because, you know—truth and justice, they are cant phrases unless we try to take the trouble to make them have a reality to them. And what do truth and justice mean? Truth and justice mean something opposite from our preconceptions.” [This is the end of the section from Boyer.]

Here Brodhead is explaining something in the roundabout way characteristic of him when he feels cornered by an irrefutable accusation. I point you to the very peculiar circular way he defends himself in the preface to his THE SCHOOL OF HAWTHORNE for holding to the canon of famous dead white male writers. When Brodhead knows he is being accused of something he is guilty of, he characteristically pours down words circularly, as in coming back again and again in July to “belief of it oppresses me already”—words I assume had sprung to his mind in March.

Let’s look at what Brodhead said on 5 April 2006 in his “Letter to the Duke Community,” for there also he gives lip service to the idea the lacrosse players charged with the most heinous crimes should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Yet he cannot refrain from loading his words against the players: “We can’t be surprised at the outpouring of outrage. Rape is the substitution of raw power for love, brutality for tenderness, and dehumanization for intimacy. It is also the crudest assertion of inequality, a way to show that the strong are superior to the weak and can rightfully use them as the objects of their pleasure. When reports of racial abuse are added to the mix, the evil is compounded, reviving memories of the systematic racial oppression we had hoped to have left behind us.”

From that, Brodhead goes on about how serious the allegations are and the punishment that will follow if the students are convicted. He was certain that beyond the allegations of vaginal rape and sodomy were other, earlier acts: “it is clear that the acts the police are investigating are only part of the problem. This episode has touched off angers, fears, resentments, and suspicions that range far beyond this immediate cause. It has done so because the episode has brought to glaring visibility underlying issues that have been of concern on this campus and in this town for some time—issues that are not unique to Duke or Durham but that have been brought to the fore in our midst. They include concerns of women about sexual coercion and assault. They include concerns about the culture of certain student groups that regularly abuse alcohol and the attitudes these groups promote. They include concerns about the survival of the legacy of racism, the most hateful feature American history has produced.”

All these “issues” are real, for Brodhead; they are real as background to the specific crimes of which the students are accused. At bottom, the issues are class-based, rich students vs. poor Durham townspeople: “Compounding and intensifying these issues of race and gender, they include concerns about the deep structures of inequality in our society—inequalities of wealth, privilege, and opportunity (including educational opportunity), and the attitudes of superiority those inequalities breed.”

Brodhead here takes onto himself collective guilt for Duke and universities like Duke: “whether they intend to or not, universities like Duke participate in this inequality and supply a home for a culture of privilege.” Then, having taken on this guilt, Brodhead continues in a damning passage:

“The objection of our East Campus neighbors was a reaction to an attitude of arrogant inconsiderateness that reached its peak in the alleged event but that had long preceded it. I know that to many in our community, this student behavior has seemed to be the face of Duke.”

Is it clear what Brodhead has just said? “The East Campus neighbors” are Durham citizens who live near 610 North Buchanan Street, where two stippers were hired in the expectation that they would be competent enough to perform a dance in front of members of the lacrosse team. Brodhead is talking about an attitude of “arrogant inconsiderateness” which he says the lacrosse players displayed toward their neighbors. He says as a fact that the attitude of arrogant inconsiderateness “reached its peak in the alleged event.” NO, NO, NO!

Brodhead’s use of “alleged” does not negate the purport of the previous part of the sentence. The attitude of arrogant inconsiderateness (the attitude of the lacrosse players) reached its peak in the March event. It is this attitude that the neighbors are reacting to, the attitude of arrogant inconsiderateness.
BRODHEAD MIGHT HAVE SAID THAT THE NEIGHBORS (JUDGING HASTILY BY WHAT THEY HAD HEARD ABOUT A RAPE COMMITTED AT 610 NORTH BUCHANAN) HAD DECIDED THAT THE ONGOING ARROGANT BEHAVIOR OF THE LACROSSE PLAYERS HAD PEAKED IN THAT ALLEGED RAPE.
But Brodhead does NOT say that the East Campus neighbors decided that what they considered a long-standing attitude of arrogant inconsiderateness had (in their hasty or too-hasty minds) reached its peak in that alleged event.

I DON’T SEE HOW YOU CAN READ THIS AND NOT THINK BRODHEAD IS TELLING THE DURHAM EAST CAMPUS NEIGHBORS THAT HE BELIEVES THE “ALLEGED EVENT” TOOK PLACE: OTHERWISE HE WOULD NOT HAVE SAID THAT THE ATTITUDE OF ARROGANT INCONSIDERATENESS PEAKED AT THE [alleged] EVENT. HE WOULD HAVE PUT THE ONUS ON THE NEIGHBORS FOR BELIEVING TOO HASTILY THAT A BAD ATTITUDE HAD PEAKED THEN, WHEN THEY RUSHED TOO HASTILY TO BELIEVE THE REPORT THAT THERE HAD BEEN A VIOLENT CRIME AT 620 NORTH BUCHANAN.
Brodhead’s rhetoric trips him up: He had prejudged the lacrosse players. Belief of their guilt had oppressed him from the moment he began to hear the allegations against them. Whatever they did, as he later said, was bad enough.