Some prominent scholars and many civil libertarians have been up in arms about the recent federally driven incursions on due process rights of those accused of sex-related offenses at colleges. Faculty, when their rights are adversely affected, have begun suing. Which raises a question: “Why has not one single major university president brought a legal challenge against [the Dear Colleague] letters?” [Coyote]
Posts Tagged ‘sexual assault’
“To act as though every accusation must be true harms the overall credibility of assault claims.”
The makers of the controversial advocacy film on sexual assault, “The Hunting Ground,” have suggested that by criticizing the film as unfair, Harvard law professors might be creating a hostile environment at their school, which itself might violate Title IX [Samantha Harris, FIRE; The Crimson; Paul Horwitz and Howard Wasserman, PrawfsBlawg; compare recent University of Mary Washington case, in which dean was said to violate Title IX by talking back publicly against accusations]
Jeannie Suk, one of the Harvard professors who has criticized the film, now has an important piece in the New Yorker. One reason we should pay attention to the piece is that its author might soon be silenced, depending on what her institution sees as its Title IX obligations:
This is a piece on a subject about which I may soon be prevented from publishing, depending on how events unfold….If, as the filmmakers suggest, the professors’ statement about the film has created a hostile environment at the school, then, under Title IX, the professors should be investigated and potentially disciplined.
At least for now, though, Professor Suk can speak out:
Fair process for investigating sexual-misconduct cases, for which I, along with many of my colleagues, have fought, in effect violates the tenet that you must always believe the accuser. Fair process must be open to the possibility that either side might turn out to be correct. If the process is not at least open to both possibilities, we might as well put sexual-misconduct cases through no process at all.
Moreover, she points out, an “always believe” premise in the end undercuts the cause of vindicating true accusations:
“always believe” unwittingly renders the stakes of each individual case impossibly high, by linking the veracity of any one claim to the veracity of all claims…. The imperative to act as though every accusation must be true—when we all know some number will not be—harms the over-all credibility of sexual assault claims….equating critique with a hostile environment is neither safe nor helpful for victims.
CNN to air “The Hunting Ground” Sunday
This should be interesting: 19 Harvard Law School professors have denounced “The Hunting Ground,” an advocacy show on college sexual assault which CNN plans to air on Sunday, for bias and inaccuracy. “This purported documentary provides a seriously false picture both of the general sexual assault phenomenon at universities and of our student Brandon Winston,” the professors write in an open letter. Legal journalist Stuart Taylor, Jr. calls attention to emails indicating that those working on the documentary might not have embraced what you would call detached or skeptical methods: “We don’t operate the same way as journalists — this is a film project very much in the corner of advocacy for victims, so there would be no insensitive questions or the need to get the perpetrator’s side.” More: Robby Soave and Linda LeFauve, Reason; KC Johnson, Commentary, on Jon Krakauer’s book Missoula.
And: Emily Yoffe, Slate, back in June but not linked previously; and KC Johnson has questions about a UNC episode.
Police and prosecution roundup
- Mark your calendar: December 1 Cato hosts a policing conference in Washington, D.C.;
- “Note: DOJ thinks flying from Chicago to Los Angeles is suspicious.” Well, no wonder they did a forfeiture then! [@bradheath]
- Mississippi voters on Tuesday returned longtime Attorney General Jim Hood to office by 56-44 margin [Radley Balko; Jackson Clarion-Ledger; earlier Balko on Hood’s spotted record as prosecutor]
- “No! Mine is more unconstitutional!” Police and council in Charlotte, N.C. mull “whether to create ‘public safety zones,’ city areas where people with past arrests would be prohibited from entering.”‘ [Charlotte Observer]
- Harvard lawprof Jeannie Suk on the St. Paul’s sexual assault case and the rapidly changing definition of rape [Jeannie Suk, New Yorker]
- Prison “pay to stay” charges can far exceed any reasonable ability to pay, and few outside the world of ex-offenders “even know it’s happening” [Scott Greenfield]
- “Was it a turf war gone mad? Or a botched police response?” [Nathaniel Penn, GQ, on the Waco biker gang shoot-out, earlier here, here, here]
“OCR’s distorted concept of sexual harassment does more harm than good”
Delivering the 2015 Richard S. Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press, former ACLU president Nadine Strossen voiced concerns that universities, prodded by the federal government’s Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights, are become hostile to ideas and expressions that could make students uncomfortable. “Strossen listed numerous examples of repression of academic freedom that have resulted from university sexual harassment policies, including: a sexual harassment investigation against a Northwestern University professor for writing an article that criticized such sexual harassment policies; a U.S. Naval War College professor who was placed on administrative leave for quoting a Machiavelli comment that included the mention of rape; and an Appalachian State University sociology professor who was suspended for showing a documentary that critically examined the adult film industry. At Harvard, Strossen said, a chilling effect is also in place.” She said OCR has threatened to yank federal funding from schools that fail to “enact sexual misconduct policies that violate many civil liberties.” [Shorenstein Center; my 2013 piece]
The “prosecutor believed her, then believed her, and then believed her some more.”
Remarkable story of official malfeasance in Albemarle County (Charlottesville), Virginia: though now released from prison, “Mark Weiner has lost more than two years with his young son and with his wife, he’s lost his job, he’s lost his family home, and he’s lost every penny he ever had in savings or retirement accounts.” [Dahlia Lithwick, Slate]
Police and prosecution roundup
- NYC Legal Aid lawyer “represented four defendants in a row who had been arrested for having a foot up on a subway seat” [Gothamist, including report of arrests for “manspreading”]
- Recommendations would expand federal role: “President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing” [Tim Lynch]
- Profile of Pat Nolan and momentum of criminal justice reform on the right [Marshall Project] Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan shows how Republicans are experimenting with criminal justice reform [Ovetta Wiggins, Washington Post]
- “Though we weren’t at any toll plazas, something was reading the E-ZPass tag in our car.” [Mariko Hirose, ACLU on New York monitoring of car transponders, presently for transport management purposes] DEA license plate tracking has been subject to mission creep [L.A. Times editorial via Amy Alkon, earlier]
- “Texas’s governor signs a bill that will end the ‘key man’ grand jury system, also known as the ‘pick-a-pal’ system.” [Houston Chronicle via @radleybalko, earlier]
- “There’s little dispute overincarceration is a problem demanding immediate redress. Except when it comes to sex.” [Scott Greenfield]
- Massachusetts SWAT teams retreat from position that they’re private corporations and needn’t comply with public records laws [Radley Balko, earlier]
Schools roundup
- University of California deems it “microaggressions” to say these things. How many have you said today? [Eugene Volokh; related from Hans Bader on federal government’s role]
- Regarding those conniptions among some University of Wisconsin faculty: “Despite what you’ve heard, tenure is unchanged.” [Christian Schneider, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via Ann Althouse]
- Indiana school board president: black market for sugar, salt observed in our schools after federal lunch mandate [Washington Free Beacon, B.K. Marcus/FEE via @farmerhayek (comparison to prisoner of war economy)]
- “Amherst’s version of Kafka’s ‘The Trial'” [KC Johnson, Minding the Campus] Problems with Washington Post journalism on campus assault [KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr., Weekly Standard; Ashe Schow, D.C. Examiner]
- Judge rules against NYC teacher competence test that showed disparate impact against minorities [New York Times; Blake Neff, Daily Caller]
- Update: “Jury Rejects Unsuccessful Conservative Faculty Candidate’s Discrimination Suit Against Univ. of Iowa Law School” [Caron/TaxProf, earlier here, etc.]
- Ethics regs forbid researchers to exercise “undue influence” over survey subjects’ decision to answer their questions, and applications of that concept can be surprising [Nicholas Christakis on Berkeley instance via Zachary Schrag, IRB Blog]
Update: jury acquits man charged with sex with demented wife
Updating our earlier report: “A jury found a longtime Iowa state lawmaker not guilty of sexually abusing his wife who suffered from dementia, in an unusual case that centered on when a person is no longer mentally capable of consenting to sex.” [KWWL] More: NYT Room for Debate.
“As a university employee, my personal experience with Title IX…”
“As a university employee, my personal experience with Title IX has been discouraging, frustrating, alienating. I have been recruited to join complaints against male colleagues, most recently against someone with whom I was friends outside of our workplace. I have, when I refused to be a complainant, been interviewed as a witness. I have, when interviewed as a witness, been grilled over a multitude of conversations and social interactions that took place away from campus, in the company of adults, that I never expected that I would one day have to explain in a formal setting. …
“Title IX doesn’t make me feel safer. It makes me feel paranoid. I can hardly imagine how much more paranoid it makes my male colleagues.” [Tamara Tabo, Above the Law]