Bestselling author William D. Cohan, whose reporting and
writing have been hailed as “gripping” (the New York
Times), “authoritative” (the Washington Post),
and “seductively engrossing” (Chicago Tribune),
presents a stunning new account of the Duke lacrosse team
scandal that reveals the pressures faced by America’s elite
colleges and universities and pulls back the curtain, in a
riveting narrative, on the larger issues of sexual
misconduct, underage drinking, and bad-boy behavior—all too
prevalent on campuses across the country.
Despite being front-page news nationwide, the true story
of the 2006 Duke lacrosse team rape case has never been told
in its entirety and is more complex than all the reportage
to date would indicate. The Price of Silence is the
definitive, magisterial account of what happens when the
most combustible forces in American culture— unbridled
ambition, intellectual elitism, athletic prowess, aggressive
sexual behavior, racial bias, and absolute prosecutorial
authority—collide and then explode on a powerful university
campus, in the justice system, and in the media.
What transpired at Duke followed upon the university’s
unprecedented and determined effort to compete directly with
the Ivy League for the best students and with its Division I
rivals for supremacy in selected sports—most famously men’s
basketball, where Duke has become a perennial powerhouse and
the winner of four national championships. As Cohan
brilliantly shows, the pursuit of excellence in such diverse
realms put extraordinary strains on the campus culture
and—warned some longtime Duke observers—warped the
university’s academic ethos. Duke became known for its “work
hard, play hard” dynamic, and specifically for its wild
off-campus parties, where it seemed almost anything could
happen—and often did.
Cohan’s reconstruction of the
scandal’s events—the night in question, the local police
investigation, Duke’s actions, the lacrosse players’ defense
tactics, the furious campus politics—is meticulous and
complete. Readers who think they know the story are in for
more than one surprise, for at the heart of it are
individuals whose lives were changed forever. As the scandal
developed, different actors fought to control the narrative.
At stake were not just the futures of the accused players,
the reputation of the woman claiming she was raped, and the
career of the local prosecutor, but also the venerable and
carefully nurtured name of Duke University itself—the Duke
brand, exceedingly valuable when competing for elite
students, world-class athletes, talented professors, and the
financial support of its nationally prominent, deep-pocketed
alumni. The battle for power involved the Duke
administration, led by its president, Richard Brodhead, a
blazing academic star hired away from Yale; the Duke board
of trustees, which included several titans of Wall Street;
the faculty, comprising a number of outspoken critics of the
lacrosse players; the athletes’ parents, many of whom were
well connected in Washington and New York and able—and
willing—to hire expensive counsel to defend their sons; and,
ultimately, the justice system of North Carolina, which took
over the controversial case and rendered its judgment.
The price of resolving the scandal proved
extraordinarily high, both in terms of unexpected human
suffering and the stratospheric costs of settling legal
claims. The Price of Silence is a story unlike any
other, yet sheds light on what is really happening on
campuses around the country as colleges and universities
compete urgently with one another, and confirms William
Cohan’s preeminent reputation as one of the most lively and
insightful journalists working today.
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