Regarding the case of the Duke lacrosse players, Stuart Taylor at the National Journal criticizes the report on Duke’s handling of the case by former Princeton University president William Bowen and Julius Chambers, a civil-rights lawyer. Stuart calls their report ”a parody of race-obsessed political correctness.” They uncritically repeat unnamed “community” members’ views that the lacrosse team is “a manifestation of a white, elitist, arrogant subculture that was both indulged and self-indulgent.” Bowen and Chambers go on to recommend as a remedy to such supposed behavior more “diversity” and more racial and gender preferences. Taylor continues, still speaking of the Bowen/Chambers report:

The report unsurprisingly commended Duke President Richard Brodhead, who had appointed Bowen and Chambers. They especially liked Brodhead’s “eloquent” statements implicitly associating the lacrosse players with rape and “dehumanization,” with “memories of … systematic racial oppression,” with “inequalities of wealth, privilege, and opportunity … and the attitudes of superiority those inequalities breed.” The two did criticize some Brodhead subordinates — for inadequate “sensitivities” toward minorities, of course. These sins included giving credence to the Duke campus police report that the accuser was not very credible because she had initially said she had been raped by 20 men and then revised it to three.

As an antidote, Taylor quotes another report by seven Duke faculty members and chaired by James Coleman, a black professor of law, which, except for alcohol abuse, testifies to the good character of the lacrosse team. As Taylor puts it, “Alcohol aside, this report’s findings are a stunning vindication of the characters of a group of kids who have been smeared from coast to coast as racist, sexist, thuggish louts.”

William Bowen no longer needs to think, it seems. All his answers come prefabricated from “oppression studies.”