Our friend Hans Bader wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal in response to Jessica Gavora’s recent column.

Title IX: From Pro-Female Reform to an Anti-Male One

Ms. Gavora rightly criticizes the Education Department, where I used to work, for pressuring colleges to adopt unconstitutional speech codes in the name of fighting sexual harassment. It has disregarded many court rulings in doing so.

For example, the Education Department has wrongly ordered schools to regulate off-campus speech and conduct. That contributed to the harassment charges against Prof. Laura Kipnis, who was accused over a politically incorrect essay she wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education and statements she made on Twitter. Court rulings like Roe v. Saint Louis University (2014) reject Title IX claims over off-campus conduct, but the Education Department ignores them. It also ignores court rulings like Klein v. Smith (1986) emphasizing that the First Amendment usually bars public schools from restricting off-campus speech. For example, the Education Department told schools to regulate comments “on the Internet” in an October 2010 letter. In 2014, it demanded that Harvard regulate off-campus conduct more.

The Education Department has also ignored the Supreme Court’s statement that speech in school must be “severe,” not just “pervasive,” to constitute “sexual harassment.”

Hans Bader


 
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