Paul Haagen's Faculty Associates Plan for Duke University

Duke Law Professor Paul Haagen, who teaches sports law, is head of Duke University's Academic Council, and is a former college lacrosse player, has proposed that Duke University professors be individually assigned on a voluntary basis to Duke sports teams. (Jane Stancill, "Duke Sports Idea Roils Professors," News & Observer, 9/21/2006). The match-up would serve as a way of improving communication between the University's sports and academic programs. The professors involved would be called "faculty associates," and while they would not be expected to monitor or report on a team, they could attend practices, travel with the team, and get to know athletes and coaches. The faculty associates would be assigned by a faculty governing body--and not the coaches--and they would be periodically rotated so as to avoid the potential of becoming advocates for individual teams or coaches.

Professor Haagen's idea has been met with both enthusiastic support and scorn on the Duke campus. For instance, Duke women's lacrosse coach Kerstin Kimel believes that Haagen's idea would greatly improve dialogue between academic and athletic personnel:

"There isn't a real tremendous understanding from a faculty standpoint about what our athletes and coaches do day to day. There's been a continuous drumbeat to divide these two groups. There's just a lot of misperception."

Others, such as Duke political scientist Paula McClain, claim that "people are just aghast that it's even being considered." Apparently, Professor McClain--who is co-director of Duke's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Social Sciences--believes that in the aftermath of the Duke lacrosse scandal, the University needs to distance itself from its sports teams, rather than embrace them.

Personally, I think Professor Haagen's idea is a wonderful one. Stereotypes and misconceptions usually diminish whenever persons from different groups can experience other groups, especially groups that would otherwise be distrusted or feared. Indeed, this has been a core finding by prominent social psychologists, including Stanford University's Claude Steel and the late Muzafer Sherif. And in a very different context, we talked about this same idea in relation to Chad Ford's ESPN work on Playing for Peace: the concept of using basketball to integrate people who would otherwise distrust one another.

As Professor Haagen alludes, putting a "human face" on the unknown is often the best way to no longer fear it. It will be interesting to see whether his plan is given a chance to prove that.