Phillip Kurian II

Here is Phillip Kurian's follow-up piece.

If you think you hate him, please read it. This incident has really caused him a lot of pain and sleepless nights. And if you think, "Good!", then that's okay too. Just do me a favor and read it.

An interesting response, with its own compendium of responses, to the earlier essay by Philip.

My own view? People are right to be mad at Duke, and other "elite" universities, in this sense: we aren't teaching our students the standards of argument. Philip was making a claim, which might in principle be true or false. (I happen to believe it is false, if that matters). But he larded up the claim with a bunch of gratuitously insulting stereotypes and simple non sequiturs.

Would people would have been just as angry at him if he had NOT included all the personal attacks? If he had just argued his main point, which is that organized Jewish political groups wield influence disproportionate to their numbers? We'll never know. And that is in large measure Duke's fault, for patting him on the head when he made unsupported claims like this, in class or in some professor's office. There is no other explanation for why he was surprised (and he was surprised) at the reaction.

I think he should sue, for nonperformance of the educational contract. More and more, faculty on the left just want students to have the "correct" conclusions, like a memorized catechism, instead of making sure the students can defend those conclusions in a debate. And students on the left are the ones who pay the price.