The cable network has purchased the rights to a recent chronicle of Durham’s high-profile phony rape case.
I just finished that chronicle, Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson’s Until Proven Innocent (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007).
It offers a great guide for those of us who kept up with the case on an intermittent basis. The book’s format highlights the disconnect between the facts and the spin as the legal case unraveled.
Taylor and Johnson find plenty of people to blame for the mess, starting first with the now-disbarred district attorney. The authors also highlight the bizarre rantings of the “Duke 88,” the professors who fanned the flames of anger toward “white, privileged” lacrosse players.
Why were so many professors willing to ignore reality?
[T]he 1980s witnessed the ascendance in the academy of a quasi-religious worship of diversity, which also boiled down mostly to racial and gender preferences, and which has infected curricular matters and come to affect hiring decisions university-wide.
By the late 1980s, most colleges and universities implemented new policies designed to purge from incoming students’ minds the supposedly racist and sexist attitudes of American society. This agenda, which came to be known as “political correctness,” aimed to teach students what and how to think about contentious issues involving race and gender, often at the expense of upholding students’ civil liberties.
Whether lacrosse players committed a crime or did nothing wrong, the accuser’s story fit the politically correct story template perfectly. Why let facts get in the way of a “teachable moment”?
Stay tuned for Jon Ham’s ideas about casting for the HBO program.
