By Bob Chambers
The Price Of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, The Power Of The Elite, And The Corruption Of Our Great Universities, by William Cohan.
This huge volume (almost 700 packed pages) is an often tedious, yet nevertheless riveting account of the biggest scandal in the history of American collegiate sports. For 14 months, beginning in early 2006, the so-called “Duke Lacrosse Rape Case” commanded the attention of the entire nation. It seemed to have everything: sex, race, spoiled preppy jocks, over-the-top faculty, sheep-like administrators, clueless trustees, a ravenous press, corrupt law enforcement authorities, unscrupulous lawyers and judges, North vs. South, white vs. black, wealth vs. poverty, and, very much in the mix, a university that millions of Americans loved to hate. Part of Duke’s problem in the 21st century is that its ambitions have far outgrown any semblance of the sleepy Southern school that even long ago already seemed to some to embody all that many people despised about that benighted region of the country. As The Price Of Silence strives to show, the university has now completely lost its way.
Posted on June 30, 2014