The once and former Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Thomas Nifong has been officially disbarred,Former Durham Co. District Attorney Thomas Nifong and his bosses have taken away his badge and locked him out of the building. The arrogrant ex-lawyer had actually intended to remain on the job for another month after his disbarment.

This author and this publication called for Nifong’s disbarment and removal from office very early last year, soon after the story hit the newspapers with a huge bang. I’m glad that Nifong has received his due, and I hope that the civil suits against him, brought by the young men he falsely prosecuted, will be highly successful.

But there’s more to be done. 

The state must bring criminal charges against Nifong. The accuser must be charged and brought to justice. Duke University president Richard Brodhead must be fired. And the Duke faculty members who rushed to sign an advertisement condemning the incident as representative of prevalent campus attitudes should be fired as well. Every one of them.

Thomas Sowell, who has been writing about the case since last May, has provided a fine summary of the issues on National Review Online. He notes that the real moral corruption at Duke was among the faculty and administrators:

 

This case served their purposes. That trumped any question about whether the charges were true or not.

Don’t expect any of these people to recant or apologize. But be aware of how wide and how deep the moral dry rot goes.

That such people are teaching students at an elite university is a chilling thought. That they promote a campus atmosphere where political correctness trumps the search for truth is painful.

That such attitudes and such atmospheres are not peculiar to Duke University, but are common on elite college campuses from coast to coast is a time bomb with the potential to destroy individuals and ultimately undermine the whole society.

 

Sowell is correct to observe that the Duke administration and faculty won’t purge these people on their own. It would take courage from the trustees to accomplish that. And given the mindset of most college trustees today, that is not going to happen.