...At the same time when Cole's pursuit of a job at New Haven was gaining so much attention, it turns out he was also applying for a job at Duke and getting passed over there, too. Since no one outside the halls of Duke knew about Cole's interest — this is the first time it has been reported — there was no "concerted press campaign by neoconservatives" such as had plagued his application at Yale; he was evidently passed up for the job on the merits...

...As the first finalist to visit, according to school officials, Cole's presentation was well attended. Most professors had high hopes for the lecture, which focused on Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the Shiite democratic tradition. After all, as Malachi Hacohen, an associate professor of history, religion, and political science at Duke who attended Cole's lecture, explained, "Cole's earlier work was solid."

But according to several professors familiar with the proceedings, Cole's presentation was unimpressive. According to Hacohen, "It was one of the worst job talks I have heard in my life," "[it was] logically faulty," and "the talk seemed as if it were directed more to CNN viewers than to an academic audience." Michael Munger, chair of Duke's department of political science, explained that Cole's lecture "was just not at a level we were expecting…it was more like an undergraduate lecture."

...he eventually sank at Duke because his limited interest in academic life was so blatant. As Munger explained, "We wanted someone who had a clear commitment to internal institution building. We wanted someone who was going to build the Islamic Studies Center. And…he was honest that he wasn't that interested in that."

According to others, even Cole's supporters were eventually put off by this ambition. He was forthright about wanting to come to Duke because it's closer to Washington than is Ann Arbor, an attitude that led many of Cole's proponents to believe they were being used...