Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Richard Brodhead, President Emeritus of Duke University, Who Skates Through Life Leaving Victims Behind

In 2002 Richard Brodhead lied about me in the New York TIMES, saying that only I in my "black hole" had heard of Melville's 1860 POEMS. In fact, every scholar had known about the lost book since 1922 and knew Melville's memorandum to his brother Allan on the publication of his verses as well as letters about publishing them. Melville was sailing away with his youngest brother and leaving the publication in other hands. Every scholar knew, and Brodhead lied about me as an inventor or loony biographer who lived in a "black hole." He was so powerful that Andrew Delbanco (who was writing a biography without new research) echoed the lies, and Elizabeth Schultz did. In 1998 Brodhead ruined Van de Velde's life, Van de Velde felt for a long time. I know I never slept a peaceful night for 5 years after Brodhead trashed my reputation in the New York TIMES--not until 2007, when Michael Gaynor published his piece, still up, "Richard Brodhead Targeted Hershel Parker Before Duke Lacrosse." He also targeted, I found, James Van de Velde.
People in New Haven are still protecting Brodhead. He is not mentioned in this long article.

https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Jovin-murder-mystery-continues-20-years-later-13438017.php


Jovin murder mystery continues 20 years later
By Randall Beach
Published 4:03 pm EST, Sunday, December 2, 2018
This longish article in the New Haven Register does not mention the Dean of Yale College, Richard Brodhead—the man who could have saved James Van de Velde’s reputation and career, but did not. 
These are my comments:
Only James Van de Velde could tell you the baseness of Brodhead's treatment of him; his lawsuit was reinstated in December 2007 . . . .. His life was ruined he said, by Brodhead's firing him; he made a new life for himself, but it is not the grand life he was moving into in 1998, before a student of his, Suzanne Jovin, was murdered. Van de Velde was not "one of them" at Yale, and Brodhead seized on the hapless announcement by the New Haven Komedy Kops that Van de Velde was a murder suspect because he knew the victim. This was enough for Brodhead to cancel Van de Velde's Spring 1999 class, saying that knowledge of the murder was "in the air as a matter of speculation," but, nevertheless, "cancellation of the course doesn't follow from a judgment or a prejudgment of his hypothetical involvement in the Jovin case."
Brodhead as a dean at Yale. A dean at Yale was presumed to know how to deal with New Haven policemen with low professional standards and to give advice to teachers working under him, to guide Van de Velde in ways of dealing with the reckless rumor-mongering by the incompetent local police and to protect his good name from assaults. A manly dean would have walked into class with Van de Velde holding his arm (since he was too short to put an arm around his shoulders), and addressed the class openly and honestly, saying the students could get over any uneasiness: here was a great young teacher who was being tied to a stake by the local police. Brodhead, instead, weaseled his way through the weeks after the murder sheltering himself in the role as dean. Brodhead did not protect Van de Velde but on the contrary sacrificed him for his own interests. Whatever his motives were in depriving Van de Velde of his occupation and his reputation we may never know, but the parallels are strong between his treatment of Van de Velde and his treatment of the lacrosse players (and Coach Michael Pressler. For this see the fine book UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT by Johnson and Taylor, and the reviews on Amazon, such as mine:





September 15, 2007


            UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE SHAMEFUL INJUSTICES OF THE DUKE LACROSSE RAPE CASE. UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT is more terrifying than any thriller you will read this year. Stuart Taylor, Jr., and KC Johnson trace what happened when three young men were falsely accused of rape. Rather than being defended by Duke University, they were defamed, threatened with castration, thrown to the rogue prosecutor. Many Duke professors as the "Group of 88" egged on the mob who had begun to harass the lacrosse players. There were almost no heroes at Duke, although a very few professors ultimately spoke out against the rush to judgment which proved to be a rush to the wrong judgment. The women's lacrosse coach Kerstin Kimel is depicted here as the kind of person you wish you had been when you look back at a crisis you lived through. Her decency and bravery shine in this dark book. KC Johnson is another kind of hero: the American professor who sensed that something wrong was going on at Duke and set out to document the events in a blog that ultimately helped turn the tide against the Duke mob. One of the most terrifying sections of this book shows that rather than being punished after the truth was undeniable these professors in the Group of 88 were rewarded with greater control of Duke committees. One of the most exciting sections shows how bloggers became heroes when the national media, including Nancy Grace and the New York Times, had joined the mob. This section gives hope that other national lies will be exposed promptly and exposed repeatedly until the country pays attention. The times have changed for the better in this regard even if the Times has not.
            Knowing that Brodhead, the master of sly innuendo, as a literary critic habitually ignored the facts and rushed to judgment, whatever the cost to his victim's reputation (see Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 62 [June 2007] pp. 29-47), I recognized the weakling Taylor and Johnson portray in "Richard Brodhead's Test of Courage": "Confronted with a crisis of epic proportions, with Duke's hard-won reputation at risk, he faced his ultimate test of courage. And in an extraordinary moral meltdown, he threw in his lot with the mob." The only criticism I have of this book is that the publishers should have put "Rape" in quotation marks, since no rape occurred.

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