KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor's Until Proven Innocent should be required reading for anyone who wants to comment on the Duke non-rape case and its aftermath. Ironically, though, the academic blogosphere has shown a reluctance to read the book and to grapple with it--preferring, if one pursues the links that make the rounds periodically--to demonize the academic half of the writing partnership, suggesting that the book can be dismissed as agenda-driven and that the academic malfeasance Johnson uncovers in it and at Durham in Wonderland can be dismissed as trumped up. Not everyone has done this, mind you. But I've been surprised by some of the people who have, and who really should know better.

Anyhow. Part of the joy of reading the book is its systematic analysis of Duke president Richard Brodhead's non-handling of the scandal. This guy--who began as an English professor at Yale specializing in American literature, who rose through the administrative ranks to a deanship (where he made some prophetically bad decisions regarding due process and false accusations), and who then found himself leading Duke--had no idea what to do when all hell broke loose at Duke and in Durham. He responded with a combination of passivity, false promises, appeasement, scapegoating, finger-in-the-winding, and head-in-the-sanding. And he has never fully taken responsibility for his actions and inactions. You'd think he'd be out of a job. After all, other university presidents have been ousted for far less. Just ask Lawrence Summers.

But denial is a funny thing, and it can result in affirmations where censure is far more appropriate. That might explain why Duke's Board just issued a positive performance review of the troubled president.

Here's John Leo:

The Alice-in-Wonderland view of Duke University received yet another boost: a committee of the board of trustees has affirmed President Richard Brodhead's "compelling vision" for Duke and found "general support, overwhelming support, for the leadership that the president is providing."

The obvious question here is "What leadership?" Brodhead's performance during the Duke non-rape crisis was surely a disgrace large enough to get him fired immediately on any moderately alert campus.

Let's review Brodhead's dismal handling of the case. He fired the lacrosse coach without any hearing or finding that the coach had done anything wrong. He took no action and made no relevant statement when some of the hard-left professors harassed lacrosse players in class, and when one professor punitively reduced the marks of one player. (Imagine how he would have sprung into action if a gay person or a woman had been treated this way.) He refused to look at the overwhelming evidence, offered to him by defense counsel, that the boys were innocent. He made no comment when the racist black professor Houston Baker bitterly and falsely denounced the three white players. He said nothing and did nothing when death threats were made against the three. Instead of offering protection, he and his administration appointed a committee to examine "persistent problems involving the men's lacrosse team, including racist language and a pattern of alcohol abuse and disorderly behavior," a statement clearly implying that the players were racists while an out-of-control prosecutor was issuing the same untruths to voters and jurors.

Still Brodhead knows how the game is played and he surely judged his strategy by what happened to President Lawrence Summers at Harvard. Summers told many unwelcome truths and leftist professors forced him out. Brodhead told some welcome untruths and therefore kept his job. Brodhead 's performance was "a moral meltdown" of a cowardly man, in the words of Stuart Taylor Jr. and K C Johnson in their book, Until Proven Innocent. But given the moral climate of the modern university, cowardice was probably his safest course.

Just guessing.