Could this country survive as a free nation if every District Attorney used the power of that office to intimidate any witness whose testimony undermined the prosecution's case?

How long will we in fact survive as a free nation when our leading universities are annually graduating thousands of students each, steeped in the notion that you can decide issues of right and wrong, guilt or innocence, by the "race, class and gender" of those involved?

That is what a large chunk of the Duke University faculty did, while few of the other faculty members dared to say anything against them or against the Duke administration's surrender to the lynch mob atmosphere whipped up on campus.

In much of the media as well, the students were treated as guilty until proven innocent, and those who said otherwise were often savaged.

Members of the women's lacrosse team at Duke who expressed their belief that the male lacrosse players were innocent were viciously attacked in the sports section of the New York Times.

Nor was that the only place where the guilt of the players was virtually taken for granted, on either the sports pages of the Times or in other places there or in other newspapers. However, let me correct a misstatement that I made recently in this column to the effect that the Times' editorial page gave the same impression as its news coverage that the accused students were guilty.

An e-mail from the editor of that page says that there was no editorial on that subject. After a preliminary investigation, I am willing to concede that point and make this correction. The sports pages, the news pages and the editorial page are different things.

I only wish that others in the media and in academe would offer their corrections on far broader and more serious issues with far deeper implications for the future of this country.