Brett Kavanaugh is getting the Title IX treatment

Months later, we find out that Blasey Ford was motivated in part by protecting Roe v. Wade and other political concerns all along. Now, the New York Times just released a “bombshell” supposedly detailing more sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh. They were forced to correct the story and admit that they originally omitted a few important details: Like the fact that the woman in question does not remember the incident.

Nonetheless, top Democrats such as Kamala Harris (a Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat who must have known every detail in this new report already) and Elizabeth Warren have called for Kavanaugh’s impeachment. (That’s what you do when you’re running for president, I guess.)

All this in mind, the continued debacle seems like a nightmare; an orchestrated effort to ruin a man’s life and toss aside due process. Yet what has happened with Kavanaugh is actually shockingly ordinary, even if it normally doesn’t receive this level of attention. On college campuses across the country, young men are regularly and routinely railroaded in similar ways under hostile Title IX sexual assault disciplinary proceedings.

In 2011, then clarified in 2014, the Obama administration issued a “Dear Colleague” letter instructing colleges and universities to follow clearly inadequate procedures when investigating sexual assault claims. Under Obama-era rules, schools were instructed to use a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, meaning that they need only be 51% certain of guilt in order to rule against an accused student and brand them a rapist for life. Although that is the standard used in most civil trials, those trials involve a number of due process rights for defendants that the Obama administration’s campus star chambers lacked by design. The Obama-era standard discouraged the cross-examination of accusers and encouraged “double jeopardy,” in that accusers were permitted to appeal “not guilty” verdicts.

Although Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos withdrew the Obama-era “Dear Colleague” letter in 2017, schools around the country still choose to follow these wholly inadequate rules. This means that young men at campuses across the country — some but not all of whom are surely guilty — are still being subjected to unfair processes and procedures that look just like Kavanaugh’s nightmare.

The only difference is that Kavanaugh, as unfortunate as his situation might be, has the entire force of the presidency, the Republican establishment, and conservative media behind him. This is why he was confirmed despite the debacle, the Democrats’ miscarriage of justice stopped in its tracks. And it’s why, no matter how loud 2020 Democrats scream, Kavanaugh will not be impeached from the Supreme Court based on current dubious and uncorroborated allegations.

University of Massachusetts engineering student Kwadwo Bonsu wasn’t so lucky. The student at my alma mater had a sexual encounter with a young woman, which she initiated, and she even gave him her phone number after. Then she changed her mind and accused him of assault. When the police investigated, no charges were filed, and the case was dropped. But UMass suspended him anyway. As I wrote previously, “Eventually, he was barred from the campus in its entirety and suspended from the university. He ended up dropping out and was rejected from several other universities he applied to. His life was turned upside down, over a patently false claim and a bureaucracy set up to disregard the rights of the accused.”

There was no 24-hour Fox News clamoring in Bonsu’s defense. There was no impassioned speech by Lindsey Graham to defend his good name. Conservative journalists like Mollie Hemingway weren’t able to write books about his experience.

God willing, Brett Kavanaugh will emerge from this smear campaign with his career bruised but intact. For the countless young men railroaded under Title IX, however, the future is not nearly so bright.