Guest FC: Human rights concerns surround Fuqua's entrance into Kazakhstan

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✔✔ By a member of the faculty: The Fuqua partnership to run a business school with Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan should raise eyebrows.

First reported by Fact Checker on August 9, it was confirmed by the administration for publication in The Chronicle and the Triangle Business Journal, conveniently just as students return. It allows Duke to trumpet its international reach and conveniently distracts attention from Fuqua's Kunshan project, widely seen as dead in the water with the departure of Dean Blair Sheppard of Fuqua and nigh-on insurrection among its faculty.

But perhaps the rather more sordid story is the willingness of Duke to cavort with Kazakhstan's leader, Nulsultan Nazarbayev -- who built the Nazarbayev University and had it named after himself -- and associate itself with Kazakhstan's less-than-gleaming human rights record.

The international monitoring group Freedom House categorizes Kazakhstan as "not free" on a score of the country's political rights and civil liberties record, rating its political rights as being second from worst on its scale, and civil liberties only a notch higher. In its 2010 report, Freedom House notes that these assessments continue on a downward trend due to media crackdowns, arbitrary arrests and "grossly deficient judicial proceedings" against a human rights activist, Yevgeny Zhovtis.

In a 2011 report, the US Diplomatic Mission to Kazakhstan lists an even greater litany of complaints about human rights abuses: "severe limits on citizens' rights to change their government; military hazing that led to deaths; detainee and prisoner torture and other abuse; unhealthy prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of an independent judiciary; restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and association; pervasive corruption, especially in law enforcement and the judicial system; prohibitive political party registration requirements; restrictions on the activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); discrimination and violence against women; trafficking in persons; and societal discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender persons, and those with
HIV/AIDS."

Administrators in the Fuqua Business School have sought to assure faculty and students that they would not enter into partnership with an institution if, according to a report in The Chronicle, "they were unsure that Kazakhstan would make education and academic freedom top priorities."

The same Chronicle report quoted Dr. Michael Merson, director of the Duke Global Health Institute and interim vice president and vice provost for global strategy and programs, as describing Kazakhstan as “a region of the world that has been a bit turbulent and is trying to invest in terms of human capital.” This is an astonishing outburst of chutzpah, and a strong a contender for the most euphemistic statement of 2011. This quote might well have been applied to the US during the era of slave transportation.

Jennifer Francis, senior associate dean for programs and Douglas and Josie Breeden professor, and Valerie Hausman, assistant dean of global business development and executive education, are the Fuqua administrators behind the plan and are less shy about their descriptions: “Fuqua believes that in order to effect change in the world, it is important to actively engage in the regions of the world that matter,” Francis and Hausman said. “We will be involved to the extent that we can help promote innovation and critical thinking around global business issues. This is consistent with our global strategy.”

It is intriguing to note that for Francis and Hausman, effecting "change in the world" means "innovation and critical thinking about global business issues."

Global businesses have consistently been at the bulwark of thwarting human rights, and the only "innovation" in changing the world has usually been to find ever more cunning ways to get round the weak international standards that do exist. Their further comment, that Kazakhstan "could be a major player in the world economy because of its wealth of natural resources, including oil" belies the real thrust behind the current Duke administration's extension of its international tentacles.

All this suggests that either Fuqua has a cavalier attitude towards human rights, and is happy to engage with odious dictators with the right money, or that, despite the spin, entities like Fuqua are driving Duke's global strategy even while, with the departure of Dean Sheppard, they remain effectively rudderless. Either interpretation does not bode well for the current administration, Duke's academic reputation, or its "global strategy".

Masked gunmen holds up three grad students just off West Campus

✔✔✔ The semester was barely five days old when three female grad students were held up at gunpoint by a man wearing a mask over his face.

This Durham on Duke Violence happened at 1 AM Saturday about half a mile off campus, near an apartment complex filled with Dukies at 2750 Campus Walk Avenue. (Please note: despite the name of the street, these are privately owned off-campus apartments.) We anticipate Duke will omit this crime from its Clery Report, a federally required tally of crime on and near campus that is full of loopholes.

Directions to this location: from the Law School, go out Tower View Road, which soon becomes Morreene Dairy Road. Campus Walk runs to the right, to connect with South LaSalle Street. Loyal Readers will recall several serious crimes last year against Dukies on South LaSalle within a half mile of Saturday's location -- including the robbery of two friends from China on consecutive nights.

The victims this time were also Asian. The gunman described as black. He took personal belongings and fled on foot. There were no injuries.

Following this, we got the usual pap from the Brodhead Administration. Extra patrols.

We had been assured last year that this precise area was going to get extra patrols by both Durham and Duke Police. But Deputy Fact Checkers who spent hours there at night saw only minimal police presence -- presumably also the observation of local thugs.

In fact, this is just one of four areas that Duke Police have promised supposedly "extra" patrols. The Administration has refused and refused to answer our questions about where this manpower was coming from -- if some other areas were being stripped.

The administration has also refused to answer our questions about the overall strength of the department, and to see whether it includes as many officers as the latest Clery Report states.

Sounds like a good project for student government.

Duke dining: administration eats crow. After not announcing changes, there is no announcement of their withdrawal either

Loyal Readers will recall last week's major essay on the lack of student input into decisions directly affecting their lives.

This was sparked by significant changes in Duke dining -- including manipulating the "merchants on points" program in a way that would have made it impossible for some eateries to continue to participate. The changes would also have put new restrictions on delivery hours to dorms.

(For Dukies puzzling about Merchants on Points, this allows some dollars in pre-paid Duke dining plans to be used off campus, in eateries that have a deal with Duke.)

The changes were not announced to students. People trying to order food found out.

And now, while students were eating mystery meat in Marketplace and the Great Hall, the administrator at the heart of this fiasco has been made to eat crow.

After negotiations described as intense with student government, the changes were rescinded. At least for this year.

Guess what, no one announced this either.

The administrator running this show is assistant vice president Rick Johnson, head of housing and dining under VP Larry Moneta. He's destined to rise in the Allen Building ranks -- because faced with the lack of student input, he cited a meeting last spring that he did not attend as proving there was consultation.

Nice try Rick. Next time you dine in the Great Hall, I hope they give you two lumps of gravy instead of one, as a thank you.

First Nifong. Now Cline. In Part 1 of series, Raleigh News and Observer points to illegal conduct by Durham DA

✔✔✔✔✔
✔✔✔✔✔ Michael Nifong needs no introduction. Durham District Attorney in 2006, he falsely accused three white members of the Duke lacrosse team of raping a black stripper at a house party, roiling town and campus alike. The players were declared "innocent" by the state Attorney General and they are now suing. Nifong was later stripped of his law license, sent to jail for a symbolic one day for criminal contempt of court; today he's morally if not financially bankrupt as he claimed.

And now his elected successor, District Attorney Tracey Cline, is under fire for very similar conduct: misstating facts to judges and failing to provide evidence favorable to defendants as required by North Carolina law.

Part one of a three part series called "Twisted Truth" in the News and Observer on Sunday says Cline is under investigation in at least six cases.

Example: Cline stated to a judge that the state crime lab was to blame for years of delay in tests on crucial evidence in a burglary and home invasion prosecution. In fact, the newspaper reported, Cline waited more than three years to submit the evidence to the lab.

And when the evidence was finally tested, none of it matched the defendant.

Another example: a judge found that Cline and a deputy violated the rights of a man charged in the death of a two-year-old girl. Result: the defendant was set free when the judge found that prosecutors deliberately withheld information they were obliged to give the defense under North Carolina law.

"I would not sit in a courtroom and lie. I wouldn’t," Cline told the newspaper in an email message. "That is not who I am. And anybody that knows me will tell you that. But people make mistakes.’"

Here's a link. This is Pulitzer Prize stuff:

http://www.newsobserver.com/twistedtruth/

Communist Party stirring for new crackdown on internet in China.

Loyal Readers have sent us several news articles this weekend about a new crackdown on the internet that is possible in China. This seems to set up a collision: on the one hand, President Brodhead's assurances about full access on the Kunshan campus, and on the other, the Communist Party and its grip on government.

Reuters, the international news agency, says there are "signs that Beijing, jolted by the growing audience and influence of Twitter-like microblogging websites, is weighing fresh ways to tame and channel online opinion."

Several party leaders joined in a long op-ed in the People's Daily -- the main newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party -- warning that Party control is at risk unless the government takes firmer steps.

"Among the many controversies stirred up on the Internet, many are organized, with goals and meticulous planning and direction, and some clearly have commercial interests or political intentions in the background," said the commentary.

"Unless administration is vigorous, criminal forces, hostile forces, terrorist organizations and others could manipulate public sentiment by manufacturing bogus opinion on the Internet, damaging social stability and national security."

China already heavily filters the Internet, and blocks popular foreign sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

The commentary listed a string of offending actions that have had their origin in microblogs. The first was the public outrage over a fatal crash on the bullet train -- the very train that former Dean Blair Sheppard touted as giving Dukies in Kunshan 9 minute access to Shanghai.

The bloggers aimed outrage at government officials for evasive statements, safety failures and feverish expansion of high speed rail. The trains now have been slowed down.

"In Internet battles, usually negative views crush positive ones," said the People's Daily, adding that extreme online opinion abounded with "unvarying suspicion of government policies, official statements, mainstream viewpoints, the social elite and the well-off."

The commentary said that the Chinese government had shot itself in the foot by letting Internet technologies take off and win huge followings before effective control was in place. That must change, it said.

"We have failed to take into sufficient account just how much the Internet is a double-edged sword, and have a problem of allowing technology to advance while administration and regulation lag," said the commentary.

Once the government tries to control an Internet technology that has already become popular, it faces "fierce resistance and a backlash" from users, and also international criticism, said the newspaper.

"Clearly, in the future when developing and applying new Internet technologies, there must first be a thorough assessment, adopting even more prudent policies and enhancing foresight and forward thinking in administration."

Hmmm we used to be Blue and White

From WRAL TV's website

"The Blue Devils warmed up in their traditional blue jerseys and white pants, but they returned from the locker room with a new look. Duke's players donned black jerseys and black pants, running back onto the field as "Back in Black" by AC/DC boomed out of the speakers just before kickoff."

I am not sure what I think of this!!

A new academic year, but the same old tune for student rights

Three posts this morning, two of them about football, highly appropriate for the weekend of the first home game. One post is sad: the expansion of the UNC football scandal into the Afro-American studies department. Another is hilarious: a Brodhead Administration's sell-out on Tailgate. The almighty dollar $$$$. Be sure to scroll down

✔ ✔ ✔ Good day Loyal Readers and all Dukies who are new to this blog and the university. This is FC. Probative. Provocative. Pro-Duke. The blog that is read first thing every day in Allen Building!

On the third day of the new semester -- which is to say, in record time -- the president of Duke Student Government, Pete Schork, confirmed that the Brodhead Administration had made major decisions directly affecting students without consultation.

The decisions involve student dining.

First decision: changing the way the "merchants on points" program works, which is to say sharp, new limitations on how a student's pre-paid meal plan can be used with off campus eateries, including those that deliver to dorms. Said Schork: "We were taken aback... just like you were.”

Second, there were also changes involving two on-campus eateries, the Tower and the Devil’s Bistro, news to Schork. "It is certainly troubling... You have to consult students first. It’s not okay to act first and notify students later.”

All this must be particularly frustrating for Schork for a number of reasons.

This is the same Pete Schork who has focused on "campus services" during his entire political career here, becoming the student government's vice president in this area as a sophomore, insuring he is totally familiar with dining options and might have been an excellent resource for administrators.

This is the same Pete Schork who drew this headline in the Chronicle during his junior year campaign for president: "Schork looks to increase student stakeholder voice." And who told a reporter his goal is to see students "empowered in ways they haven’t been before.”

The reporter wrote, "He also plans to improve the way... students help create policy."

And this is the same Pete Schork who now has a new vice president handling housing and dining policy -- mirroring the latest configuration in Allen Building so communication and consultation should be a given constant.

✔ ✔ Schork's predecessors got run over too by the Brodhead juggernaut. But not in the first week of the semester.

It was in December before president Awa Nur was rolled over, ironically also on a dining issue, two years ago. Her words: "I want to make my position on that clear... There is no way in hell that I am going to support that."

FC applauded her determination. She enjoyed all but unanimous student support. But it did no good; Allen Building rolled as it wanted.

✔ ✔ There are many other examples too.

Students returning two years ago for the fall semester discovered weekend housekeeping in the dorms had been eliminated -- no consultation -- assuring that vomit deposited on Friday night festered until Monday.

Yes, 2009 was a banner year. Duke Conversations, which allowed students to invite speakers for, of all things, a dinner round-table which sounds like precisely the atmosphere the administration seeks, was sliced and diced by 33 percent. No consultation. The impact was actually more than one third: fully half the Conversations had to be cancelled, and there was no more dining in the gracious and expensive Washington Duke Inn, although our Trustees feasted there on Duke's dime later that very week.

The administration also "merged" International House and the Center for Multicultural Affairs with great insensitivity to both students and staff, closed the student health pharmacy making a hassle to get a prescription filled, and even reduced the level of campus cop patrols while Durham hoodlums were having target practice with Duke students.

The granddaddy in FC's opinion was the construction of the new Keohane Quad dorm. We have no idea how this bubbled up as top priority. But when it did, The Supreme Undergraduate Dean Steve Nowicki (who apparently no longer tells freshmen to "Call me Steve") appeared before Campus Council with great fanfare, to invite students to join in the planning. Three weeks later, the guy down the Allen Building hall, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask, let slip that the architect was all but done with his work -- contributions of students be damned.

We subsequently wrote Steve, telling him we wanted to do an essay on student contributions to the dorm, what ideas had been accepted. And guess what, Loyal Readers, we're still waiting to hear from him three years later. Shame on you, Steve.

✔ ✔ The latest dining changes are the culmination of a lot of juggling and power-grabbing.

The story begins when Trask canned his vice president for campus services, Kemel Dawkins. T3 -- his initials and the insider's handle -- of course did not use the word "canned," but anyone who studied the arcane federal tax Form 990 could see what was happening to Dawkins salary. Oh you didn't study the 990? Luckily you have a Deputy Fact Checker on your side!!

The next to go was Eddie Hull, executive director of housing. Dispatched with great warmth by the Brodhead Administration's principal spokesman, Michael Schoenfeld: "He's chosen for personal reasons to move on to some new opportunities. If there's anything more specific, you'd have to talk to him about it."

✔ And now Jim Wulforst, the respected 15-year director of dining. Vice President for Student Life Larry Moneta spoke, parroting the words of Schoenfeld as if they have become part of this administration's operating manual: “It was a personal decision on his part to leave his current position. I can’t speak for his reasons.”

Wulforst actually listened to students. Not only that, he sent an e-mail to FC when we first started this blog, giving us contact information if at any time we had a question about dining. Unprecedented. I mean, unprecedented!

Wulfhost might have sensed trouble when L-Mo (Moneta, for people new to Duke) picked up some of Dawkins responsibilities, reorganized them and basically sought to give a new person the same job title as Wulforst. Sadly, nasty in fact, T3 and L-Mo and their ilk -- surely knowing what was afoot -- made Wolforst sit on the search committee to find his executioner.

✔ ✔ As Loyal Readers know, Wulforst was killed off last week. Timetable for departure immediate. By now, the man the search had uncovered, Rick Johnson, from that well known culinary masterpiece, Virginia Tech, had been on the job for nine months.

When Johnson first came in, he sat for an interview with the Chronicle's thoughtful and perceptive columnist, Gregory Morrison, who earns even more FC praise because he was the only op-ed contributor last year who regularly showed signs of actually doing research. Morrison served this university and his fellow students well as executive vice president of student government as a junior. He told FC he tired of elective politics and thus did not seek the presidency in his senior year.

In the Devil's Bistro, Morrison listened and then wrote: "Johnson will take a 'student focused' approach, in which incremental changes are tested with students to 'make sure we’re going in the right direction.'”

Hey, don't blame Morrison. That's what Johnson told him.

✔ ✔ We can't resist inserting here the comments of Campus Council Programming Chair Betsy Klein, who sat on the search committee. She revealed what she liked most about Johnson: in the words of a Chronicle story, "a commitment to incorporating student opinions into his future plans."

Klein e-mailed the Chronicle a response to its questions: "I could tell that he cares a lot about the student voice, and I think he will take our opinions into account for every major decision he makes."

Right on, Betsy, right on. You sure read Johnson right.

✔ We conclude this essay with more from Morrison. He had advice for the student government when one of his columns took a long-range philosophical look: "A good DSG president should have perseverance in the face of adversity."

He also had faith in the new administrative structure, housing and dining together, as L-Mo described it, putting "a huge chunk of student life under one umbrella." Morrison liked the student government response, as noted above, with a new vice president with a similar role.

Wrote Morrison: "I wonder what type of plans the two might hatch together?"

Yes, we wonder too, and it is Duke's loss that we are highly unlikely to find out during the tenure of the Brodhead Administration.

Thank you for reading FC. GO DUKE! Defeat Richmond.

Tailgate resurrected.

✔ ✔ ✔ Six days ago, Dean Sue declared, “The word ‘Tailgate’ will never exist.” And Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek added, “We buried the term.”

Loyal Readers will recall the sanitized replacement: Game Day!! Whee!!!

What the Brodhead Admnistration buried, Coca Cola has now dug up. An official announcement from the Blue Devil IMG Sports Network says it will air the "Coca-Cola Duke Football Tailgate Show" live from a stage in Blue Devil Alley one hour prior to Duke home football games.

Hey they pay money! Cash! They can have Tailgate all they want!!

From the PR news release: "The show will be hosted for the 13th season by John Roth and will feature guests and interviews with a myriad of Duke University coaches, players and former players, including football coach David Cutcliffe and director of athletics Kevin White. The show will take a look at Olympic sports at Duke as well as preview and track the scores of games around the ACC."

Blue Devil Alley is located at the north end of Cameron Indoor Stadium near Krzyzewskiville. And the first show is Saturday at 6 PM, before the Duke-Richmond home game.

New troubles for UNC football, as head of African American studies "resigns" over academic "irregularities"

✔✔ The football scandal at UNC in Chapel Hill took an ominous turn yesterday, moving beyond the athletics department into the academic heart of the university. Thus, while we usually restrict ourselves to Duke, this merits a Fact Checker report.

A grim statement from Chancellor Holden Thorp revealed "irregularities" in courses offered by the University's Afro-American Studies Department, including one course taught by the chair himself and another by a sports agent who simultaneously represented UNC athletes.

Previously, some UNC fans had been able to laugh off the scandal, which, after all, in its early stages involved some one's delving into the disposition of parking tickets that football players received. But this revealed a pattern: a link to a car dealer currently in federal prison for money laundering.

One early focus: the talented receiver Greg Little who, in two months time in 2009, got 16 parking violations on a Dodge that had three different license plates. In one three day period, Little got three tickets, same car, different plate. And on the 13th unlucky day of April, he got two tickets, same car, with different plates.

With play for pay lingering in the air, there were also allegations that an assistant coach took cash from an agent; that a former UNC football player who is now an agent had access to current players in the weight room; and that numerous athletes accepted trips, parties and other perks. 14 UNC players missed part of last season, at least seven sitting out the entire season. Still, there was hope that academic integrity had not been compromised, even though all this other shit was going on.

✔✔ Yesterday, Thorp announced the "resignation" of chair Julius Nyang’oro: “Because academic integrity is paramount, we have every obligation to get to the bottom of these issues... This process has been difficult, and we’ve been through a lot this past year, but the only right thing to do is to pursue the facts and fix the problems.”

Because of the sensitivity of this move, Thorp was impelled to state he had his cards lined up, with specific support of the Chairman of the Board of Trustees Wade Hargrove and UNC-system President Thomas Ross.

Thorp followed the same formula when he had to can Butch Davis, the head football coach, on July 27: "I have lost confidence in our ability to come through this without harming the way people think of this institution. Our academic integrity is paramount, and we must work diligently to protect it. The only way to move forward and put this behind us is to make a change.”

There was another casualty: athletic director Dick Baddour, who served 14 years as athletic director, and 44 years in total at UNC.

Nyang’oro was the only black chairman of a department in the College of Arts and Sciences. Moreover, the department has been battered by UNC's budget cuts. For example the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History and the Institute of African American Research both suffered budget cuts of 20 percent this year alone.

Nyang’oro became a focus of the football scandal in July when it was found that former defensive end Michael McAdoo had plagiarized a paper for Nyang’oro’s class, and the plagiarism had not been flagged despite the use of tracking tools on the internet.

Worse, when the issue got to UNC's Honor Court, the court ruled McAdoo had improper help from a tutor -- but overlooked what the internet tool showed. Shaken, Thorp instituted a faculty-led review of the Honor Court that is just beginning.

McAdoo, banned for life from college sports by the NCAA, is suing.

✔ Nyang'oro's was also surrounded by controversy because of his grade to football player Marvin Austin. He was in a 400-level course as a freshman, a move that required consent of the professor. He earned a top grade despite SAT scores that indicated he could not read very well at all. And no one got less than a B minus.

The Raleigh News and Observer later chimed in that Nyang’oro had hired a sports agent to teach a summer class popular with athletes, Foundations in Black Education, without bothering to inform the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences of his background.

Score one for Duke in dragging out the lacrosse litigation, again

Read Fact Checker every day!! The boys in Allen Building do. There are three posts this Thursday morning. Be sure to scroll down. Have a good day!!!

✔ ✔ Duke University's lawyers got what they wanted in federal court yesterday -- the right to drag an amazing 233 people into the lacrosse litigation and stagger dates for their depositions during the next year.


Lawyers for lax players got the right to take an additional 60 depositions; it is possible the same person will be on both the plaintiff and defendant's list, and the federal court provided that each witness only has to be deposed once.

Another year! And it means that the most important depositions -- of President Brodhead and former Trustee Bob Steel can be delayed some more. Duke did promise it would not destroy e-mails and other evidence that the defense hopes to see. Some day.

Depositions are part of the pre-trial process. They allow lawyers to build their case with greater lee-way than when the witness appears before a jury. And they lock the witness into testimony, for the deposition can be used to detect any attempts to change the story.

Depositions also take a lot of time -- and run up legal bills mercilessly. Duke likes that idea, trying to wear down the plaintiffs and consume their lawyers.

And you thought the lax hoax was simple: a Durham loon lying about rape, and a dishonest prosecutor pursuing charges.

✔ Also in yesterday's court hearing: Duke did not succeed, yet, in having all the depositions take place in Durham. Plaintiff's lawyers pointed out that 29 of the plaintiffs now live in New York, New Jersey and Maryland -- and having Duke bear the expense of sending its legal team there might be fairer.

Background: generally speaking, we are talking about lawsuits against the university for violating player's privacy and other rights in dealings with Durham Police during the 2006 lacrosse hoax. The University settled with the three indicted players; these are from 38 other team members.

The city of Durham is among the defendants. But that part is on hold. The city has an appeal pending challenging its liability -- and when that's settled, it too will want depositions, dragging and dragging and dragging this out.

Lesson: if you want to sue someone, be prepared to have the defendant drag it out mercilessly.