Talk:Orin Starn

Untitled
note: prodded after AfD. not the way to go a/c the policies. Anyway, distinguished professors at major universities are notable academics by any reasonable standardDGG 01:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I have deleted the following factually inaccurate sentence twice now, which someone has twice added to the entry for me.

This sentence, wholly inaccurate, reads:

"Starn has been sympathetic to the prosecution in the 2006 Duke rape case and has cited the incident in his columns as evidence of racism in campus sports."

I have never said or written anything about being sympathetic to the rape case prosecution. To the contrary, in three separate op-eds dating to last summer, I have stated strong doubts about the prosecution:

July 2nd, 2006, Raleigh News and Observer:

"If District Attorney Mike Nifong does not have a stronger case than it now appears against the three indicted lacrosse players, he may owe them a major apology, and his resignation to the rest of us for dividing Duke and Durham."

September 15, 2006, Durham Herald-Sun:

"Although most Durhamites want to hear all the evidence before passing judgment, there’s also plenty of reason to doubt District Attorney Mike Nifong’s fairness with the lacrosse rape charges. I was one of thousands of city residents to sign the petition putting Lewis Cheek on the November ballot out of concern that Nifong may no longer be trusted with his job."

January 18 2007, Durham Herald-Sun:

"The Durham District Attorney may soon himself be facing disbarment proceedings and lacrosse supporter lawsuits and, if the charges prove false as what we now know about the evidence suggests, the whole prosecution will go down as a sorry misadventure of the justice system gone awry."

Nor have I have ever said that the use, uncontradicted so far, of the n-word and another racial slur by lacrosse players, was evidence of racism in college sports. I've said it's evidence of racial divisions and tension still in American society.

The same editor has also added the sentence "On his blog, Starn half-jokingly calls himself a "left-leaning, politically correct professor who happens to like golf." This is not factually inaccurate, unlike the other edits; but it seems a bit peripheral, and more mean-spirited than anything else with the same negative intent as the other two inaccurate editos.  I give more serious descriptions of my interests already in the entry, and I'm not sure what is served by this addition.

152.3.249.73 21:03, 24 March 2007 (UTC)Orin Starn, March 24, 2007

Somebody -- I can only guess the same person as before -- has again made a series of inaccurate changes to my entry.

This poster put in a whole major heading -- about half the entry -- about my involvement in the Duke lacrosse case. Although it's an obsession for a small circle of culture warrior bloggers (at least one of whom blog anonymously, and all of whom engage in frequent caricature and misrepresentation), this case is a very small part of my work and interests, as evidence by an web-search. It's inaccurate to have it made so prominent here.

The post, as previously, also contains a series of inaccuracies, typical of the misrepresentations involved of those with an axe to grind about the lacrosse case:

1)I've not published any "letters" about the lacrosse case. I have written four op-ed essays.

2)I've never written or said that I believed the "case should go to trial." I said in a September piece that "most Durhamites want to hear all the evidence," which was true enough at the time and a very different thing from insisting the case go to trial.

3)This posting gives a very distorted view of my position because it ignores my repeatedly voiced doubts about the district attorney's case cited above.

There may be nothing to do about this, but I'm also no fan of the posting of the accuser's name both here and elsewhere by Duke lacrosse bloggers on Wikipedia. Although she may indeed have invented her story causing pain to others, the agreed-upon policy of newspapers and other main media -- followed in the Duke case -- is always to protect the identity of rape accusers by maintaining their anonymity. There has been long-standing discussion of the ethical questions around this policy, and, personally, I agree with it. I'm not sure if Wikipedia follows this policy or not.

I expect whoever keeps changing my site will do so again, since for Duke lacrosse bloggers these matters are a full-time occupation. I won't be spending any more time on the back and forth about this. I'll try to get the Wikipedia editors to take an objective look at this dispute, and then leave it at that...

Orinstarn 13:40, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

On Content
There seems to be some disagreement about whether information regarding Dr. Starn's writings on the lacrosse case should be included here. I understand Dr. Starn's statements above and believe that the page currently reflects that - the portion of the page about the case quotes from his op-eds or from articles where he is quoted without any extra commentary on those quotes.

From a prior editor - I agree that more content should be on this page than mainly about the lacosse writings, and I invite editors to add it. I do not think addition by subtraction is the answer, however... DukeEGR93 18:41, 13 November 2007 (UTC)