The Obama administration doesn’t have a great record when it comes to supporting free speech on campus.

The FIRE blog reports.

New DOJ Letter Threatens Campus Speech, Warns Former OCR Attorney

Free speech on college campuses was dealt a significant blow last week when the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a findings letter against the University of New Mexico (UNM). The letter, reminiscent of the 2013 findings letter and resolution agreement with the University of Montana (proclaimed to be “a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country to protect students from sexual harassment and assault”), instructs UNM to adopt an unconstitutional definition of sexual harassment. In its letter, the DOJ criticized UNM’s sexual harassment policies because they:

mistakenly indicate[] that unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature does not constitute sexual harassment until it causes a hostile environment or unless it is quid pro quo. Unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, however, constitutes sexual harassment regardless of whether it causes a hostile environment or is quid pro quo.

The DOJ, like the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) before it, is counting on the unpleasant connotations of the term “sexual harassment” to keep the media and public from noticing that it is defining an enormous amount of everyday speech as sexual harassment. Did you overhear someone retelling an Amy Schumer joke about sex that you found unpleasant? According to the DOJ, that makes them a harasser—even if they only did it once and didn’t do it again after you asked. If that’s harassment, the term is devoid of meaning.


 
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