Duke lacrosse: President Brodhead’s rank hypocrisy

This Robert KC Johnson post points out that Duke’s president is not always a passive bleating sheep when it comes to students victimized by questionable procedures and suspect legal systems. He was more than willing to get involved in a case in Armenia. Armenia!

It is only in Durham, apparently, that he feels compelled to be a bystander.

I also have a hard time reconciling this. When he was at Yale, he wrote to the New York parole board on behalf of Kathy Boudin:

Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, who signed the letter pressing for her release, said in an e-mail that he was deeply moved by the story of her rehabilitation.

"This case raises in a very deep way the question of rehabilitation, the question whether punishment and suffering can work a change that makes further punishment just vindictive," Brodhead said. "Maybe I'm just a man who has taught 'The Scarlet Letter' too often, but I thought this was the case this time."

At Duke, he sat by while the Durham police targeted his students for arrest and confinement.

(You can read about Kathy Boudin's "rehabilitation" here.)