Obama’s Mentor, Harvard Law Profs Blast New Sex Harassment Policies

Some of Harvard’s top law professors are no
fans of the university’s new sexual harassment policy, and have
penned an op-ed for The Boston Globe stating their
concerns.

Harvard debuted a new sexual harassment policy this year in
response to pressure from the federal Office of Civil Rights. But
the policy—which broadens the definition of sexual harassment and
gives one university office sole power in adjudicating
disputes—vastly exceeds the scope of federal law, according to 28
members of the Harvard Law School faculty. They
write:

As teachers responsible for educating our students about due
process of law, the substantive law governing discrimination and
violence, appropriate administrative decision-making, and the rule
of law generally, we find the new sexual harassment policy
inconsistent with many of the most basic principles we teach. We
also find the process by which this policy was decided and imposed
on all parts of the university inconsistent with the finest
traditions of Harvard University, of faculty governance, and of
academic freedom.

Harvard has adopted procedures for deciding cases of
alleged sexual misconduct which lack the most basic elements of
fairness and due process, are overwhelmingly stacked against the
accused, and are in no way required by Title IX law or
regulation.

The professors recommend scrapping the entire policy and
starting over again. They accept that this could get the university
in trouble with the feds, but Harvard is fully capable of taking a
stand against unjust federal mandates, they write:

We recognize that large amounts of federal funding may
ultimately be at stake. But Harvard University is positioned as
well as any academic institution in the country to stand up for
principle in the face of funding threats. The issues at stake are
vitally important to our students, faculties, and entire
community.

Prominent legal commentator Alan Dershowitz is among the op-ed’s
signatories. So is Charles Ogletree, who is
considered to have been one of President Obama’s mentors. Read
the full thing
here.

On a related note, The New Republic recently
asked “feminist and public defender” Robin Steinberg to
evaluate Columbia University’s similarly strident anti-harassment
policy. After reviewing the policy, Steinbeg and her colleagues
decided that they would never send their sons to college:

A few hours later, Steinberg wrote back in alarm. She had read
the document with colleagues at the Bronx legal-aid center she
runs. They were horrified, she said—not because Columbia still
hadn’t sufficiently protected survivors of assault, as some critics
charge, but because its procedures revealed a cavalier disregard
for the civil rights of people accused of rape, assault, and other
gender-based crimes. “We are never sending our boys to college,”
she wrote.

More from Reason on the debate over campus sex and due process

here.