Three professors urge Keohane to back strong rhetoric with action

Editor's note: The following is a complete transcript of the letter submitted to President Nan Keohane by professors John Barrow, William O'Barr and William Reichert and signed by about 250 non-minority members of the faculty.

Dear President Keohane:

We, the undersigned faculty and administrative staff of Duke University, write to express our strong support for the statement made by the nineteen Black faculty members who wrote to you on May 12, 1997, concerning the incident between Mr. Calvin Harding, a Trinity College freshman, and two Duke University police officers. No Duke student, faculty member, or employee should suffer the kind of indignity experienced by Mr. Harding, a student in good standing who was carrying out his assigned duties.

We as a community must take steps to address the underlying causes of such incidents to ensure that they do not recur. Beyond lending support to our nineteen colleagues, this letter is a specific call for you to make the elimination of racism at Duke a top priority immediately.

Your official apology to Mr. Harding is a significant action, and the subsequent suspension of the officers appropriate. However, we wish to underscore the point of the May 12 letter that simply treating the symptom(s) will not cure the terrible disease of racism that infects our campus. More specifically, racial incidents cannot be treated as isolated cases, and the issue of racism at Duke cannot be considered closed as a result of your actions to date regarding the Harding incident.

The legacy of the Harding incident should fall nothing short of the wake up call that finally forces Duke's rhetoric and actions on race to converge, thus becoming a place where ALL OF US are treated with dignity and feel welcomed to study, work, and learn. You have demonstrated strong leadership in other areas of University life. We are counting on you and your leadership to bring the same enthusiasm and creativity to solving this terrible problem and we are prepared to join you in this extremely important endeavor.

Sincerely,

The Committee Against Racism at Duke