Month: April 2020

Unlike ‘wall-to-wall coverage for Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’

Leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden made his name in the past decade as a tireless champion of denying due process to students accused of sexual misconduct, devising the Obama administration’s so-called guidance that it treated as binding regulation.

Now that he’s been accused of sexual assault by a former employee – an accusation that drew little legacy media coverage – some Democratic student groups are showing their consistency on the issue.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Democrats and Penn for Bernie demanded that Biden’s campaign and mainstream media outlets investigate the allegations by Tara Reade, his former Senate staffer, The Daily Pennsylvanian reports.

Left-wing outlets Vox and The Intercept have run lengthy articles in the past week on the cold shoulder Reade has received since she aired a more narrow version of her allegations a year ago, accusing Biden of inappropriately touching her shoulder and neck.

They were largely in line with allegations by a former Nevada lawmaker, Lucy Flores, but the sudden wave of claims against Biden were not enough to make Penn reconsider naming its new Washington, D.C.-based center after him.

MORE: Penn silent on whether it will rename Penn Biden Center

If the elite Ivy League Democrats are any indication, perhaps Biden should start worrying that he’s losing the narrative:

In a written statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn Dems executive board expressed that they take allegations of sexual assault “extremely seriously,” and reference their status as a group certified by Penn Violence Prevention’s Anti-Violence Engagement Network.

“Tara Reade deserves to be heard and journalistic organizations have an obligation to investigate her allegations,” the statement read. “VP Biden should also address them further immediately.” …

Co-director of Penn for Bernie and College sophomore Jack Cahill said sexual assault allegations should always be treated seriously, regardless of political party.

“If you believe in women, and if you want to hold people accountable, you have to be morally and ideologically consistent, regardless of whether it’s somebody you know, or whether they have a D or an R next to their name,” Cahill said. ‘“If Bernie Sanders had a credible allegation against him, I would be very vocal, Penn for Bernie would be very vocal, and calling for an investigation about this.”

MORE: Biden compares advocates of due process to ‘Nazis’

One of Cahill’s colleagues is even more vocal, chastising reporters for ignoring accusations against the more mainstream Democratic candidate:

Emily Liu, a College junior and Penn for Bernie’s Outreach Director, criticized the lack of coverage on Reade’s allegation in major media outlets. At the time of publication, Reade’s allegation against Biden has not been covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post, or CNN.

“I haven’t seen basically any major media outlets cover this, the way there was wall-to-wall coverage for Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, basically anyone possible,” Liu said. “The standard should be applied evenly across the board, especially from organizations like CNN or Time’s Up who have a responsibility to hold the powerful accountable.”

Time’s Up – a nonprofit within the anti-due process National Women’s Law Center – turned down Reade’s request for legal help when she wanted to expand her allegation. It cited its tax-exempt status and Biden’s political candidacy, but The Intercept pointed out another coincidence: The managing director of the nonprofit’s PR firm is a top Biden advisor, Anita Dunn.

A tax professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles discounted the tax-exempt status rationale, telling the media outlet that Time’s Up is “allowed to continue to do what they have always done” with regard to evaluating which cases to take. (Some colleges also ban students from expressing political messages, disingenuously citing their tax-exempt status.)

Biden’s campaign has denied the allegation, telling reporters (for perhaps the first time ever) that they “have an obligation to rigorously vet” claims by sexual assault accusers.

Those making this argument are taking advantage of a crisis to try to keep due process out of college campuses.Many disingenuous things have been said during the coronavirus crisis, some of them by the president of the United States himself. But right near the top must be three letters issued last week — from the American Council on Education (ACE), activist groups led by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), and 18 Democratic attorneys general — calling for the Department of Education to halt the release of long-anticipated regulations that will restore due process to the handling of sexual-assault cases on college campuses. DeVos’s proposed rule would ensure basic rights for accused students — notice, access to evidence, a live hearing, and the ability to have a lawyer or advocate cross-examine adverse witnesses — that are often or almost always absent in the current Title IX process imposed by Obama-era guidance. That system has yielded more than 170 university setbacks in lawsuits filed by accused students in state or federal court.

In its letter, ACE argued that “at a time when institutional resources already are stretched thin, colleges and universities should not be asked to divert precious resources away from more critical efforts in order to implement regulations unrelated to this extraordinary crisis.” The NWLC letter spoke similarly, but leaned harder on the supposed harm to students: “Finalizing the proposed rule would also unnecessarily exacerbate confusion and uncertainty for students who are currently in pending Title IX investigations and hearings, which have already been delayed and disrupted by the pandemic.” The letter from the attorneys general expressed similar language.

First, the universities have known for more than 16 months — since November 2018 — that these regulations were coming. They have had ample time both to tell the government what they think of the regulations and to start planning for their inevitable release. If some of them have failed to plan ahead, hoping that the regulations would never be released or that a lawsuit by victims’ groups would enjoin them immediately following their release, that isn’t the fault of the coronavirus.

Second, do you know who’s going to have a lot of time on their hands in the next six months?  Title IX coordinators. Why? Because the number of Title IX cases is about to drop precipitously.

So this is, in fact, the perfect time for the Education Department to implement the new regulations.

And you don’t have to take our word for it. ACE president Ted Mitchell called these new regulations “a step in the wrong direction,” saying they would “impose[] a legalistic, prescriptive ‘one-size-fits-all’ judicial-like process” on universities. The NWLC was even more blunt, calling the proposed regulations “disastrous,” “confusing and illogical,” and “devastating for survivors” (emphasis in original), and even opining that “‘due process’ is clearly a red herring.”

This is all nonsense. The new Title IX regulations may wind up being Betsy DeVos’s greatest legacy. They will finally restore balance and fairness to a process that, due to the Obama administration’s overreach, had little of either.

The time is now. Let’s hope the administration issues these regulations soon and ignores this galling attempt to twist a genuine crisis for political ends.