When the Duke lacrosse story broke, it immediately became a rallying cry for "social justice.".

When the Duke lacrosse story broke, it immediately became a rallying cry for "social justice." The rape of a poor black woman by three privileged white men was a perfect propaganda piece for the Left: a jarring metaphor of racial, social, and economic exploitation. But now the case has crumbled. The prosecutor has been removed, forced to hire his own lawyers in the face of misconduct charges. Across the country, social critics have been left to cradle a dying scandal in their arms. At Duke, however, a faculty group is working desperately to keep the corpse from growing cold. In the early days of the story, they took out a newspaper ad lamenting the "social disaster" of "what happened to this young woman." The ad contained a collection of dramatic quotes from Duke students, "objects of racism and sexism, who see illuminated in this moment's extraordinary spotlight what they live with every day." Instead of backing off from the ad, the professors have now posted an open letter defending it. They write, "We stand by the claim that issues of race and sexual violence on campus are real, and we join the ad's call to all of us at Duke to do something about this." The methods to be used, apparently, do not exclude publicly declaring the guilt of three innocent men and then refusing to apologize for it.