In the wake of the 2006 lacrosse scandal, Duke University has more or less tried to sweep its misdeeds--and accountability for them--under the rug. There was a confidential settlement with the three indicted players. There were vaguely apologetic but largely spineless quasi-expressions of regret by Duke president Richard Brodhead, but no real acknowledgment of wrongdoing. The outrageously inappropriate faculty members who formed the Group of 88 were never sanctioned; neither was Houston Baker, who supplemented public rantings about the putative wrongdoing of innocent athletes with private email berating the mother of a lacrosse player for being the parent of a "farm animal." And Duke carried on, apparently in the arrogant expectation that bygones were now bygones and that no real accountability was ever going to be exacted. But Duke was wrong.

Thirty-eight former Duke lacrosse players are now suing Duke and the city of Durham for defamation. The complaint is available here, and makes for very interesting reading--especially if you've read KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor's magisterial Until Proven Innocent. That book--which was dismissed out of hand by ideologues invested in a certain outcome and by apologists for Duke--was a masterpiece of documentation; the complaint reads like a compressed version of the book written in legalese.

I took a look at it because I wanted to see how the suit framed the problem of accountability within Duke. I wanted to see who was actually named in the many counts of wrongdoing, and I wanted to see, too, how the suit handled the rogue faculty members who took it upon themselves to pillory the lacrosse team as a bunch of white male always-already-guilty oppressors, placing their own ideological agendas ahead of due process, fair procedure, and professionalism. Would they be named? They were. Would they be named as defendants? No--that honor was reserved for Brodhead and select Duke administrators, who misbehaved in their own right and who also failed in their supervisory duties when they gave a free pass to faculty members whose behavior patently violated Duke's harassment policies.

All very interesting indeed--especially if you follow debates about academic freedom. That's a phrase that does not cover anything and everything a faculty member says and does. It has a very specific, professional meaning and does not in any way license the sort of behavior Duke faculty engaged in. But my hunch is that confusion among faculty members and administrators about where "academic freedom" begins and ends had a lot to do with why Duke officials sat on their hands while the faculty formed the academic equivalent of a mob. And in this sense, the Duke case may well have broad implications for internal accountability at colleges and universities across the country.

Be sure to read the complaint soon, as it may not be online much longer. Duke is trying to suppress it, along with the blog set up to chronicle the case at dukelawsuit.com.

UPDATE: At Prawsfblawg, Howard Wasserman asks parallel questions about academic freedom:

Many of the harassment claims focus on Duke's failure to control its faculty, which, of course, raises questions of academic freedom. What does it mean for academic freedom if Duke potentially could be held liable for failing to silence faculty members who wanted to speak out on a matter of public concern on campus. This is not to defend what many of the faculty members said, some of which was extreme and wrongheaded and, ultimately, factually wrong. It is to suggest concern at the incentives created if a university can be held liable for failing to silence its faculty. Of course, this problem is present in all the cases F.I.R.E. tracks--a university that fails to stop a white supremacist professor from speaking may find itself at the wrong end of a similar suit brought by African-American students. But because it now is white male athletes bringing the claims for speech that allegedly harassed them, university administrators may begin to see the problems with such overbroad harassment standards.

Why hasn't Duke reprimanded faculty members who've voiced criticisms related to the lacrosse team?
Duke is a university, and one of the greatest strengths of universities is their commitment to free speech and academic freedom. Faculty, students and other members of a university community are all free to express their opinions; indeed, they are encouraged to do so. Universities must remain committed to free speech, even when it makes others uncomfortable. The appropriate response to an opinion is not to suppress it but to respond with one's own views and evidence. At times when emotions are running high, as during the lacrosse incident, faculty simultaneously should take care to "provide our students with a classroom climate characterized by the respect and sensitivity necessary to foster their understanding and growth" - a point that Duke's dean of arts and sciences, Bob Thompson, made in an April 3, 2006 letter to the faculty. The university's senior academic officer, Provost Peter Lange, made a similar point to the Arts and Sciences Council in January 2007, saying, "When we hear things we don't like, even things with which we strongly disagree, we need to judge the substance and not the person, assume the better rather than the worse of intentions."