First of all, I am assuming The Chronicle is Duke University’s student newspaper. I’m sure you’d not be any more likely to read any of the following in Durham’s established press any more than one would in Lancaster. Second, it strikes me as very ironic that Duke students – some of them, anyway – seem as happy to have Mr. Burness leave as Lancastrians – some of them, anyway – are to see Mr. Fry leave. And – to compound the similarities, both of them happen to share the same first name and both of them lack a doctorate. In fact, the only degree listed Burness in his biog is the B.A. (in what?) he got from F&M. At least, Fry had an MBA, if I recall correctly.
Why am I sending this to you? For no other reason than that I find this to be another human interest story. This is why I find Lancaster such a thoroughly interesting and compelling place to live. And why I have no plans, ever, to leave. I can’t imagine that any other place could be so thoroughly fascinating.
The response to an article:
“Fact Checker here. Good day!”
“The Chronicle today beatifies Saint John the Burness, and then installs him graciously as president pro tem of his alma mater. Fact Checker wishes him God-speed.
In fact, Burness’ record as the university’s chief mouthpiece is far more nuanced, if not complicated, than the Chronicle would have us believe.
Moreover, the campus newspaper fails us terribly by not reviewing how just a week ago Burness was in the news coast to coast, as Duke settled a defamation lawsuit brought by former lacrosse coach Mike Pressler.
Loyal Readers will recall this lawsuit best by a quote from the distinguished North Carolina judge who first screened the complaint. From the bench, he asked aloud “Why would anybody be dumb enough to say what (Burness) did” disparaging the lacrosse program, slamming its players and slurring Coach Pressler.
The settlement came just in the nick of time for Burness: he was under court order to give a deposition no later than April 15th that would have delved deeply into the administration’s dreadful handling of the lacrosse hoax.
The deposition — had it occurred — would have started a chain-reaction: other depositions were sure to follow, with Brodhead himself and former board chair Bob Steel on the list of those compelled to testify. The testimony would have been very useful to plaintiffs in several other lacrosse lawsuits. And the testimony would have revealed at last what went on in secret in the depths of Allen Building.
At all costs, Duke had to keep the lid on Burness.
✔I shall spend several paragraphs on the lacrosse case, since it was the biggest PR challenge Burness faced during his tenure here.
— As the lacrosse hoax gained steam, three weeks after the infamous March 13th, 2006 request to Bunny Hole Entertainment and Allure for two exotic dancers, the parent of one player, who kept careful notes, called Burness to offer a complete briefing by lawyers for the players. The parent said already there was a substantial body of exculpatory evidence.
According to the historian K.C. Johnson, Burness said “I know everything I need to know” and then launched into a “diatribe” against the team. Burness said there were “two or three real bad actors on that team,” a statement that simply was not true. Burness denies that he said these things.
— The historian Johnson documents a series of off the record interviews that Burness and Steel conducted that led to headlines like one in the New York Times, “Team’s Troubles Shock Few at Duke.” As time would show, this was completely without foundation. Even as the District Attorney Nifong was being exposed as a rogue, Johnson writes “Burness repeatedly stressed to reporters that the players ‘were not choirboys’ and cautioned against portraying them in an unduly favorable light.”
— Very significantly, Burness failed to make it clear to the media that the Group of 88 — faculty members who in the opening hours of the hoax signed a Chronicle ad convicting the entire team — were quite isolated and not representative of the vast majority of the faculty.
— As both prosecutor and prostitute went down in flames, a reporter for Newsday, the Long Island newspaper in the hometown of one of the three charged, Collin Finnerty, asked Burness if Duke would apologize for its conduct. Apologize? He shot back, “For what?”
Ironically Burness was at the vortex of decisions that impelled Dick Brodhead to do just that in the months ahead: to gather the courage to stand on this campus to apologize to the three innocent players who once faced 30 years in jail, to their parents and to their team. Brodhead did himself no favors by omitting Pressler and not explaining the rationale behind actions he was apologizing for.
✔While there has been no official explanation, many think that Burness’ shortcomings during the crisis led to his office being split in two: there is now a VP for public relations and a separate VP for Durham affairs.
Fact Checker would have expected the Chronicle today to note that during Burness’ tenure as our point man with Durham, police ran roughshod over our students, arresting them for example for minor offenses that merely resulted in warnings or a summons to appear in court for others. Not to mention the $400,000 bail for each lacrosse defendant, while others in the city charged with rape were routinely posting $50,000.
The announcement of the job split illustrates very well one of Burness’ failures: he never considered the Chronicle nor its constituency on campus to be paramount, even in releasing news that gave hope that Duke’s dis-functional relationship with Durham might be eased. Burness gave this story to the The Raleigh News & Observer and The Durham Herald-Sun for publication on May 2. Because May 2 fell in the middle of undergraduates’ exam week, the announcement could not immediately be printed in The Chronicle, which had suspended publication just two days earlier.
✔This announcement gave us another dimension of Burness: he could obfuscate. In an interview he maintained that the decision to split his office in two was called for in the university’s strategic plan. Loyal Readers know what happened next: a Deputy Fact Checker was promptly assigned to read the plan, “Making a Difference” front to back, and concluded that nowhere does the report call for the appointment of a new vice president. The closest the report comes is where it acknowledges a generic need to “reconceptualize our approach and organize ourselves administratively… to take best advantages of opportunities in a deliberate and effective manner.” This is a far cry from endorsing a vice presidential appointment.
Why is this important? For one thing, citing phantom rationales like this one has become a nasty habit for too many Duke administrators. We saw this same subterfuge when officials insinuated the new dean for undergraduate education position “flowed from” the Campus Culture Initiative. Similarly, Provost Peter Lange mistakenly ascribed Duke’s admissions quota for students from North and South Carolina to James B. Duke’s original Indenture of Trust.
Of course, the CCI never endorsed a new dean and the Indenture doesn’t deal at all with a requirement that a certain percent of Dukies hail from the Carolinas. But claiming otherwise saves administrators from having to share the real justifications for their decisions, which often aren’t compelling.
Another example of obfuscation: several alumni were blasting the Brodhead Administration for not marking Memorial Day or Veterans Day in any way. Indeed the Memorial War honoring alumni who gave their lives in defense of freedom was in neglect for 50 years, with no names added since World War II.
Burness tried to counter this sorry state of affairs by citing events that were occurring on campus. He said Duke Hospital kept a chapel open around the clock on Memorial Day so families would remember veterans; this was misleading at best, for the chapel was open 24 hours every day of the year.
Burness reported the Medical Center had had a significant veterans event in one of its courtyards. In fact this was organized individually by a member of the Army reserves; when asked to name top university officials in attendance, without a blush Burness moved on to the next question.
Back to lacrosse for a moment. A news release from Burness’s office announced the “resignation” of Coach Pressler. This was not obfuscation. It was a damn lie. Pressler did not walk away from his team in time of crisis. He had been fired.
✔And now I would like to discuss what has become known as the Burness Doctrine.
Since the early days of his Presidency, when a Palestinian conference was held on campus — a conference that some saw as endorsing terrorism against Israel — Brodhead has drawn heavy fire. Burness, the loyalist, sought to limit legitimate evaluation and criticism of the President by shutting down and then cutting off access to information for people who did not buy Brodhead’s act. No interviews. No e-mail responses.
Fact Checker’s files are replete with examples.
— Asked about two lawsuits that Duke initiated apparently against donors of endowed funds who said no blacks could benefit, Burness would not even reveal what court Duke was using nor the captions on the lawsuits, nor would he say if these two donors were the extent of the problem which would have revealed how weak the Brodhead Administration’s action was.
— Asked about the use of a gas guzzling private jets after reports that Brodhead had used one to fly to watch a basketball game in Atlanta — at the time there were more than 20 commercial flights a day to Atlanta — Burness was most abrupt if not discourteous. Yes this is the same Brodhead who proclaims Duke to be green.
By signaling that our PR people will deal only with certain (read: ideologically friendly) writers and not others, Burness and his successor, Michael Schoenfeld, who today outs himself as a disciple, seemingly moved toward a brave new world on campus where access seems governed by how lavishly one praises Brodhead.
That assault upon the soul of Duke is as much a part of John Burness’ record here, as the good things that the Chronicle enumerates today.
✔Thank you for reading and supporting Fact Checker.”
