Letter to the editor
(04/22/16 5:51am)
To The Editor:
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To The Editor:
I'm writing to take issue with an insinuation given by my friend and colleague Mike Munger in the Sept. 8 Chronicle article, "Prof. admin contributions lean to the left." It is a mistake to equate a person's campaign contributions to their political leanings. If Munger, the Libertarian candidate for North Carolina governor, would simply look at the list of contributors to his campaign, he would find ample evidence to refute the impression he gave in his statement to The Chronicle. People contribute to politicians and campaigns for a host of reasons. Supporting like-minded folk may be chief among them, but it is not the only one, and it is difficult to determine why an individual has contributed in any give instance simply by highlighting their name on a list.
In an Oct. 25 article in The Chronicle, "Faculty Push For Voice in Culture Talk," a reporter grossly mischaracterized comments that I made in the town hall meeting that was the subject of the article. I never said that trustees and alumni encouraged the drinking culture at Duke. Nor did I say that the trustees and alumni "need to get moved along or left behind." What I did say was that based on my experience as a member of the Lacrosse Ad Hoc Review Committee, I believe that the nostalgia for "Old Duke" on the part of some trustees and alumni made it difficult to deal with the drinking culture on campus. I said that I learned that past efforts by the administration to curtail excessive drinking had been met with "push back" from alumni and trustees, and that we needed to either "bring" them along or leave them behind in our efforts to change the culture at Duke. I was surprised to read the reporter's characterizations of my comments, but even more surprised when she and her editor refused to correct the record.