KC Johnson is a history professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is the author, along with Stuart Taylor, of The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities.
Colleges and universities almost certainly face a deluge of lawsuits from accused males over the mishandling of sexual misconduct hearings. Columbia and Drew, for instance, have joined the ranks of universities sued by male students claiming that unfair processes led to disciplinary action against them. At first blush, the Drew case involves a typical […]
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Controversy over one of the worst college hearings on sexual misconduct is moving right along. Vassar has requested summary judgment in the lawsuit of former student Peter Yu; last week, Yu’s attorneys filed a motion opposing Vassar’s request. The filing should get wide reading; in light of the administration’s efforts to ensure that more male students share […]
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A federal judge has permitted a second denial-of-due process suit against a university to proceed. First it was Xavier–after which the university quickly settled with Dez Wells. Now it’s St. Joe’s, where district court judge Felipe Restrepo (an Obama appointee) has issued a ruling that narrowed the lawsuit filed by Brian Harris, but has allowed […]
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Two different items in the last week in the New York Times provide a reminder of why the struggle for due process on campus has such difficulty penetrating the media. The first example came in the latest from Richard Pérez-Peña, who while ostensibly a hard news reporter for the newspaper seems to envision his role as a cheerleader for […]
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As “rape culture” activism heats up, reporters are demonstrating a startling credulity on the subject. One case in point is the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s recent investigation of Title IX complaints from 2003 to 2013. The piece, entitled “Promise Unfulfilled?,” illustrates the faulty assumptions driving many journalists who cover campus sexual assault . The nearly 3000-word article, by Jonah […]
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To great fanfare, the Education Department released a list of 55 colleges and universities that the OCR is investigating for allegedly violating Title IX in their treatment of sexual assault issues. Though Education Secretary Arne Duncan said there’s “absolutely zero” presumption of guilt in the list’s release, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that principles […]
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Two new documents out from the White House–the Vice President’s task force recommendations and a question and answer document from the OCR–continue the assault on due process at the expense of males accused of rape or sexual assault on campus. The administration tips its hand quickly with a telltale verbal switch–referring to complainants as “survivors,” rather than as […]
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A few years ago, the Patrick Witt case at Yale exposed the unwillingness of an Ivy League institution to uphold even the minimal due process protections the schools accord to students accused of sexual assault. Witt, recall, was a star quarterback who withdrew his Rhodes application, the interview for which coincided with the Harvard-Yale game. […]
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I’ve written previously about Katie Baker, the new BuzzFeed reporter on the “rape culture” beat, a correspondent for whom due process appears to be an alien concept. But in an article about Brown, and in her determination to wage war on campus due process, Baker buries the lede. Her story actually shows how anti-due process […]
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Dartmouth president Philip Hanlon recently gave a state-of-the-college address concerning disciplinary matters on campus. Dartmouth clearly wanted the address to receive attention—the college leaked the full text to the Washington Post, which dutifully reproduced it online and did a lengthy article about it. In highly charged language, Hanlon charged that “Dartmouth’s promise is being hijacked […]
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The other day, the New York Times published a lengthy investigative piece on Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston. Much of the article, written by Walt Bogdanich, has little to do with higher education, per se–the Tallahassee Police Department comes across very poorly. Winston come across even worse, since the Times reveals that he was involved […]
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This past weekend, the Florida State football team held its spring football game. Most of the media attention focused on quarterback Jameis Winston, who had also spent much of his spring playing for the FSU baseball team. Winston, of course, is by this point also well-known for events off the football field or the baseball […]
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Some cautious (and perhaps unexpected) good news from the Department of Education. Inside Higher Ed reports that the new DOE rules regarding the Clery Act are not nearly as troublesome as many, including me, had feared. (I formally commented on the rules here.) The new rules contain two positive items. The first, and most important, […]
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It seems as if periods emerge where sexual assault issues tend to focus on a single university. Even in the aftermath of the lacrosse case, attention remained on Duke–in part because of the civil suits, in part because the university, rather than learning from its mistakes, adopted a new policy that could brand a student […]
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BuzzFeed is uncritically fascinated with “rape culture.” Combine that with Occidental, a college where a male student can be branded a rapist even if his partner says “yes,” and the result is an article by Jessica Testa. Her BuzzFeed article, which reads as if it comes from the Onion, provides an unintentional commentary into how […]
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Anyone who follows the contemporary media closely is doubtless familiar with the suddenly ubiquitous phrase “rape culture.” In the context of higher education, the phrase implies two interlocking beliefs. First: despite crime statistics showing sexual assault (as well as all violent crimes) to be very uncommon on campus, colleges and universities are, in fact, hotbeds […]
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In something close to a first-of-its-kind decision (in a similar case filed against Holy Cross, the judge sided with the university; comparable cases against Vassar and St. Joe’s remain pending), U.S. District Court judge Arthur Spiegel has upheld much of the lawsuit filed by former Xavier basketball player Dez Wells against the university. A gender […]
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A major theme of my Duke lacrosse blog has been the almost complete lack of accountability for statements and judgments on the case made by academics and journalists. Duke’s trustees awarded the institution’s feckless president, Richard Brodhead, another five-year term. No fewer than four members of the Group of 88–the faculty who rushed to judgment […]
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The “White House Task Force To Protect Students from Sexual Assault,” an initiative that thus far has elected not to engage civil liberties groups, invited public comment on its work and the issue of the administration’s response to campus sexual assault allegations. Below is the comment that I submitted: Since the Task Force has invited public my concerns […]
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In a major victory for academic quality, CUNY students’ ability to complete their degrees in a timely fashion, and basic common sense, New York Supreme Court judge Anil Singh has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the CUNY faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), seeking to eliminate the Pathways curricular initiative. (I wrote about the […]
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An update regarding the issue of campus due process and sexual assault allegations in California: FIRE has a powerful statement condemning SB 967, the California bill designed to codify (and go beyond) the anti-due process approach of the OCR’s “Dear Colleague” letter. FIRE correctly observes that while campus administrators “are neither qualified nor equipped to […]
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In a recent string of tweets, Lindsay Rosenthal, formerly of the Center for American Progress and now at the Ms. Foundation for Women, compared concerns about insufficient due process protections on college campuses to the heavily partisan efforts to impose increased voter restrictions or to level fact-free allegations of “anchor babies”–a comparison, she added, that […]
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“Why could we not expel a student based on an allegation?” That astonishing question was posed at a conference on how colleges respond to sexual assault issues by Amanda Childress, Sexual Assault Awareness Program coordinator at Dartmouth. According to Inside Higher Ed, Childress continued: “It seems to me that we value fair and equitable processes […]
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The Maine Heritage Policy Center, coordinating with the National Association of Scholars, hosted an event last Thursday continuing the conversation regarding the NAS’ comprehensive report on what Bowdoin does (and does not) teach. The event, in which I participated, focused on the theme of global citizenship. In his dismissive response to the NAS report, Bowdoin […]
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Yale has released the latest of its biannual reports regarding sexual assault claims handled through the university’s due process-unfriendly disciplinary system. The report testifies to some interesting changes, strongly suggesting that Yale adjudicates sexual assault claims less on a principle of justice and more out of a concern with avoiding negative public relations. The background […]
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Columbia president Lee Bollinger has announced a new commitment to transparency in reporting sexual assault cases on campus, and used the occasion to reveal a new university website detailing revised sexual assault procedures at Columbia. The new policy’s specifics won’t come as any surprise. As has almost become routine, Columbia’s policy violates basic principles of due process […]
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The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is on the warpath again. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the OCR has launched an investigation of Penn State. And while Penn State is an institution that is hardly deserving of sympathy, given the exposés of the Freeh Report, the OCR’s move has to raise eyebrows. The Penn State […]
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I’ve written previously about the scandal at the University of North Carolina, where for several years, students (who were disproportionately members of UNC athletics teams) took no-show courses in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies. UNC has, not altogether convincingly, maintained that the scandal is solely an academic scandal and is solely confined to […]
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Some updates on two of the Title IX lawsuits filed by male students accused of sexual assault and disciplined through college tribunals. In the Vassar lawsuit, discovery has commenced, and Vassar has until February 3 to turn over material to Peter Yu’s attorneys. Presumably this material will include documents on the shadowy organization–the Interpersonal Violence […]
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Readers of the New York Times might be forgiven for experiencing a bit of whiplash. Last year, when Brooklyn College’s political science department voted to officially support an event demanding a boycott of Israeli academics, the Times hailed the department as a heroic defender of academic freedom. Earlier this week, however, the paper portrayed the […]
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