A professor’s academic career seems about to take off — until suddenly a sexual-harassment allegation against her triggers an investigation that knocks it off the rails. Who filed the complaint, and why? There proceeds to unfold a bizarre and unsettling story of what to universities and their federal overseers can pass for due process [Sarah Viren, New York Times Magazine; Robby Soave, Reason]
Posts Tagged ‘Title IX’
Campus climate roundup
Held over from a week or two back when there were still “campuses” (a joke on that):
- Not just California: mandatory diversity statements (“diversity oath”) examples in recent hiring from Ohio State, U. of Connecticut, Purdue, Cornell [John Cochrane, earlier]
- Disturbing: Canadian bioethicist says “possible solution” to conscience-rights debate is to bar persons with scruples against participating in medically assisted death or abortion from entering medical or pharmacy school in first place [Rachel Browne, Global News]
- If you guessed North Carolina would not be friendly territory for obligatory social justice and cultural studies curriculum, you guessed wrong [David Randall, Martin Center]
- Claim: clinical education in law schools is moving away from “the social justice values that have been [its] hallmark.” Another way of looking at it: it might be moving at last toward better viewpoint neutrality [Paul Caron/TaxProf]
- “Joe Biden’s Record on Campus Due Process Has Been Abysmal. Is It a Preview of His Presidency?” [Emily Yoffe] “Harvard Debuts Anonymous Online Title IX Reporting Form” [Simone Chu and Iris Lewis, The Crimson]
- “Bias Response Teams Silence Civic Debate” [George LaNoue, Law and Liberty on Speech First v. Fenves over University of Texas policies]
Four Harvard lawprofs who stood on principle
Worth a close reading: Wesley Yang profiles four feminist Harvard Law School professors (Jeannie Suk Gersen, Elizabeth Bartholet, Nancy Gertner, Janet Halley) who have taken a strong stand in favor of due process in Title IX proceedings, in the face of the sorts of pressures you can imagine. [Chronicle of Higher Education; earlier here (letter with 28 signers), here and here (Suk), here (Bartholet), here (Halley), and here]
It’s a long overdue profile in the national press for these four brilliant women, and let’s hope the first of many. Their courage and principle should stand as an inspiration and challenge to others in academic life.
Higher education roundup
- The less you know: new push to “de-bias” faculty recruiting by removing CVs and interviews from the process [John Morgan, Times Higher Ed/Inside Higher Ed on developments in Britain]
- “You Can’t Make This Up: A Speech Code that Investigates Students for Discussing the Freedom of Speech” [University of South Carolina: Ilya Shapiro and Patrick Moran on Cato certiorari brief in Abbott v. Pastides]
- “Sokal Squared” hoax runs into IRB (human subjects review) issues at Portland State, and it’s more complicated than you might think [Jesse Singal, New York]
- “A Liberal Case for DeVos’s Reforms” [Lara Bazelon, New York Times] After initial resistance, ACLU moving to acknowledge merit of some objections to Obama-era Title IX procedure [Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic] Attorneys general from 18 states plus D.C. sign letter arguing against presumption of innocence for students accused under Title IX [same]
- “Anti-Koch group tries to get hummus banned from university in BDS effort” [Zachary Petrizzo, The College Fix]
- Monopoly bargaining privileges for faculty: vindication and hope after Janus [Charles Baird, Martin Center]
Campus speech roundup
- Fourth Circuit: Title IX may oblige universities to take action against outside social media sites whose content is said to create hostile environment. By blocking student access to them? [Samantha Harris, FIRE, Eugene Volokh, Robby Soave on University of Mary Washington ruling]
- Return of the loyalty oath? Some senior academics speak out against required faculty diversity statements and pledges, at the University of California [Stephen Bainbridge, Nick Wolfinger, John McGinnis, Law and Liberty] and Harvard [Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, Jeffrey Flier, Times Higher Education]
- Speech codes and “The Coddling of the American Mind”: Greg Lukianoff and Adam Goldstein guestblog at Volokh Conspiracy [series: first, second, third, fourth, fifth]
- “OCR’s use of overly broad anti-Semitism definition threatens student and faculty speech” [Zach Greenberg, FIRE] University of Washington lecturer publishes article on sex differences in pursuit of computer careers, it’s cited as gender harassment as part of successful push for training and curriculum review [Stuart Reges, Quillette] Update on “Fourth floor, ladies’ lingerie” joke episode [Katherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Education, earlier]
- Bias response teams are benign-sounding way to police speech [Dan E. Way, Martin Center] Prescribed first-year programs do much to bend the assumptions surrounding what can be safely said [John Tierney, City Journal] Artists’ intent was to challenge Confederate imagery, but some students were offended, so down it went [Inside Higher Ed: Scott Jaschik and Emily Chamlee-Wright and Sarah Skwire]
- Speech First, recently formed nonprofit group, sues University of Texas over speech policies [Phil Prazan, KXAN, Washington Examiner: Lauren Cooley and Grant Addison]
Title IX campus regs: the new proposal
The Education Department has published for public comment proposed changes in regulations to Title IX on campus discipline and sexual misconduct; its Obama administration predecessors had decreed major changes in the same law through a “Dear Colleague” letter without public notice or comment. The new proposals differ on some points from draft versions circulated earlier. Cathy Young and Robby Soave provide overviews, and Soave writes on how response from the ACLU left much to be desired. FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) has an initial statement (Samantha Harris), a more detailed analysis (Susan Kruth), and a letter to Senate Democrats correcting some misconceptions. And John McGinnis says both sides are getting it wrong: the feds shouldn’t be regulating college misconduct codes in the first place [Law and Liberty]
Title IX roundup
- R. Shep Melnick on his new book The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education [Christina Hoff Sommers review, Education Next; Brookings; Melnick in National Affairs] And three video appearances by the author [Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth, Hoover Institution, Harvard Program on Constitutional Government]
- Some early looks at Department of Education’s planned revamp of Title IX regs [Robby Soave, Reason and more; KC Johnson, Minding the Campus; Shikha Dalmia/The Week; previously here and here]
- “Students Filed Title IX Complaints Against Kavanaugh to Prevent Him From Teaching at Harvard Law” [Shera S. Avi-Yonah and Jamie D. Halper, Harvard Crimson] “Professor Defends a Woman Accused of a Sex Crime, University Forces Him to Undergo Sexual Harassment Training” [Robby Soave on episode at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire; Conor Friedersdorf (training “as a general purpose punishment for alleged wrongthink”)]
- “Facing Penalties, 100 Percent of College Students Completed Sexual Harassment Training” [Jamie D. Halper, Harvard Crimson]
- “Failing at Fairness: Getting the Story 180 Degrees Backwards” [Coyote]
- Colleges face wave of cases alleging faculty misconduct 25, 35 years ago or longer [Collin Binkley, Asssociated Press]
Campus climate roundup
- In separate incidents, public universities (Rutgers and the University of New Mexico, respectively) discipline a professor and a med student over vulgar and inflammatory political postings on their personal Facebook pages. First Amendment trouble [FIRE on Rutgers case; Eugene Volokh: Rutgers, UNM cases]
- Defend someone who’s facing Title IX charges, and you just might yourself find yourself facing Title IX charges too along with the withholding of your degree [ABA Journal on Yogesh Patil case; Drew Musto, Cornell Sun (19 Cornell law profs write to president to criticize withholding of Ph.D.); Scott Greenfield]
- Social justice bureaucracy within University of Texas might be bigger than some whole universities [Mark Pulliam] “Ohio State employs 88 diversity-related staffers at a cost of $7.3M annually” [Derek Draplin, The College Fix]
- “Male, pale and stale university professors are to be given ‘reverse mentors’ to teach them about unconscious bias, under a new [U.K.] Government funded scheme” [Camilla Turner, Telegraph]
- “Wow, this is truly astounding. A *published* paper [on gender differences in trait variability] was deleted and an imposter paper of same length and page numbers substituted to appease a mob.” [Theodore P. Hill, Quillette, as summarized by Alex Tabarrok] Reception of James Damore episode on campus: “[T]hose of us working in tech have been trying to figure out what we can and cannot say on the subject of diversity. You might imagine that a university would be more open to discussing his ideas, but my experience suggests otherwise.” [Stuart Reges, Quillette]
- Speak not of oaths: Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is latest public institution to require diversity statements of all faculty, staff applicants [Rita Loffredo, The College Fix] Harvard students “will be required to complete a Title IX training module to enroll in fall 2018 classes” [Jamie D. Halper, Harvard Crimson]
DeVos & Co. move to revamp Title IX campus sex misconduct rules
Although formal proposals are not due until next month, word has begun to filter out about the U.S. Department of Education’s plans to revisit and revamp the Obama administration’s Title IX guidelines on discipline for campus sexual misconduct. Emily Yoffe at The Atlantic, whose work in this area we’ve covered before, has more:
A year ago, Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos declared that the rules and procedures put in place by the Obama administration on this volatile subject had created a “failed system” that brought justice neither to accuser or accused. She promised to change that….
As I wrote in a three-part Atlantic series last September, the use of Title IX to protect female students, however well-intentioned, has resulted in the over-policing of sex between young adults. It has also sometimes resulted in adjudications that assume guilt, rely on junk science, gut fundamental fairness, engage in racial animus, and disregard the effects of ending men’s educations and crushing futures. The Times’s story was based on a leak, so we still need to see all the rules in their final form. Because these proposed rules will go through an administrative process known as “notice and comment” – meaning the public can weigh in — revisions are likely….
Among items on the reform agenda are the definition of harassment (moving toward the Supreme Court’s definition as opposed to the broader definition used now); the scope of the university’s duty to address wrongdoing (filed complaints only, or any appearance of misconduct whether or not there is a complainant?); whether colleges are obliged to punish misconduct occurring far away or during the summer, as opposed to on campus; sharing evidence with the accused; and allowing colleges to adopt higher standards of proof. Also under scrutiny are the training manuals and materials used for Title IX investigators; many colleges have yielded to pressure to adopt so-called trauma-informed response to accusations, which invokes dubious scientific assertions to stack the process toward overlooking flaws in accusers’ stories and assuming the worst of the accused.
Some of the proposals might make little difference or even encourage dubious “single-investigator” formats, but overall, Yoffe concludes, their thrust would be to “move the policy in a more just direction.”
More: and don’t miss the new analysis by KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr. in the Weekly Standard.
Higher education roundup
- New York Times tackles a story of lopsided Title IX process [Michael Powell, NYT on Keith Mumphery Michigan State case] Federal court spanks Johnson & Wales in Rhode Island over kangaroo court [KC Johnson, Minding the Campus] U.S. Department of Justice “has filed a statement of interest in a lawsuit challenging the University of Michigan’s controversial speech code policies” [Nikita Vladimirov, Campus Reform]
- “Judges,” he told the crowd, “cannot be intimidated,” and “Lawsuits are won and lost in the courtrooms, not in the streets.” Gail Heriot gives Stanley Mosk his due;
- Suing for faculty positions: “While I find it regrettable that university faculties are so politicized that good candidates like Teresa Manning get rejected, I think it would be even worse to have some law or regulation against discrimination based on politics.” [George Leef]
- “As many as one in four students at some elite U.S. colleges are now classified as disabled, largely because of mental-health issues such as depression or anxiety, entitling them to a widening array of special accommodations like longer time to take exams” [Douglas Belkin, WSJ]
- Diversity follies in STEM [Heather Mac Donald, City Journal] University of Michigan employs 93 full-time diversity staffers [Mark Perry]
- “Six Ideas to De-Politicize the American Campus” [Martin Center]