Posts Tagged ‘colleges and universities’

Yale adopts submissive posture in Title-IX-vs.-speech case

A fraternity has already apologized for its role in loutish public expressions, but that isn’t nearly enough for some complainants who’ve initiated an investigation by the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights that puts Yale at risk of losing its $500 million in federal funding if it isn’t sufficiently cooperative. Peter Berkowitz in the Wall Street Journal:

That Yale finds itself under pressure from the government, in the face of stupid frat-boy initiation rituals obviously designed to humiliate the pledges themselves, dramatizes how far government and higher education have drifted from the principles of freedom. … What is really at stake in the current investigation of Yale is the proper mission of the university. The complainants, not a few university administrators and faculty, and powerful forces at work in the Department of Education seem to think that one of a university’s top priorities is policing students’ opinions and utterances to ensure that they adopt government-approved ideas about sexual relations. That priority can’t be reconciled with the imperatives of a liberal education.

If a letter just sent to alumni by Yale President Richard Levin is any indication, the university may not intend to put up much of a public stand on behalf of its autonomy of governance, the toleration granted even some offensive utterances in a community of unbridled expression, or the importance of due process for students accused of wrongdoing. Indeed, Levin’s letter does not make even the tamest and most tentative attempt to argue that anything about the OCR complaint is legally erroneous or worth resisting. The full text of the letter follows: Read On…

April 10 roundup

  • Civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer on feminism and the Yale speech complaint [Atlantic, earlier]
  • Baylen Linnekin’s Keep Food Legal organization is having a membership drive;
  • Bounty-hunting West Coast lawyers can now sue employers for large sums over temperature and worker-seating violations of the California Labor Code [Cal Labor Law]
  • Current set of urban, suburban parking policies amount to “another great planning disaster.” [Donald Shoup, Cato Unbound]
  • $7500? Tennessee lawyer charged with rape of client released on $7500 bond [WMC via White Coat]
  • Stella Liebeck hot coffee case: Abnormal Use suspects that Cracked never read its FAQ on the subject (or for that matter many of our own postings);
  • Baltimore public housing refuses to pay lead poisoning awards; “too strapped” [Baltimore Sun]
  • “Mr. Potato Head” contest cited in discrimination lawsuit charging anti-Irish bias [Lowering the Bar]

April 2 roundup

  • Schumer: ban gun ownership by persons arrested but not convicted of drug offenses [Jeff Winkler, Daily Caller]
  • Urban-farming pioneer in Oakland may come a cropper for selling produce without license [SFGate via Perry]
  • Harvard-trained Obamanauts’ revenge? Feds investigate Yale for alleged sexually harassive environment [Zincavage] Related: strings attached to federal money for university “sexual assault prevention” include mandatory student sensitivity-training attendance [TBD, more]
  • Trade dumping law as competitive shakedown mechanism [Tabarrok]
  • “Forwarding a Sentence-Long Message from a Listserv = Copyright Infringement?” [Volokh]
  • “Product Defect Case Over Ear Candle Cleared for Trial” [OnPoint News, McConnell/D&D, Abnormal Use]
  • Oh, Title IX, couldn’t you at least leave our booster club alone? [Saving Sports] Wrestling team axe is just the start for men’s sports cuts at Liberty U. [same]
  • “Wal-Mart v. Dukes [Lawyers] Ask Courts To Fix The World” [Dan Fisher, Forbes] Liptak/NYT on use of “social framework” evidence in case [Mass Tort Prof] Rhetoric about “day in court” tends to obscure actual stakes [Daniel Schwartz] More: Hans Bader, and Jon Hyman with many links.

Back to the campus speech code wars?

According to FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an “anti-bullying” bill lately introduced in Congress would alter the definition of harassment in such a way as to give university administrations a strong incentive to punish many forms of controversial student speech, and also press those administrations to monitor students’ use of Facebook and other social media in intrusive ways. I’ve got a new post at Cato at Liberty relaying some of the warnings (welcome Instapundit and Fark readers).

“JFK University removes garden over disability concerns”

Pleasant Hill, Calif.: “John F. Kennedy University this week removed a garden that had been at issue in a disabled-access lawsuit, stunning students and instructors who had raised thousands of dollars to fix the problem.” A graduate student had sued over lack of wheelchair access to the garden, which was used by about 60 students a year; the estimated cost of accessibility fixes was $56,000. [San Jose Mercury-News]

NYC’s outrageous Apple settlement

Among its most insidious features, notes Ira Stoll, is a $2.5 million cy pres fund earmarked for “corporate governance programs at 12 universities across the country,” and which will predictably encourage such academic programs, at law schools and elsewhere, to align themselves further with the agenda of the plaintiff’s securities bar and against the interest of actual shareholders at companies like Apple. I’ve got much more about cy pres law school slush funds in Schools for Misrule, forthcoming. [Future of Capitalism; Jim at PoL]