President-elect Trump’s pick for education secretary just had her nomination hearings delayed a week, but the media aren’t wasting any time lining up breathless attacks on Betsy DeVos. At Politico, there’s this astonishing headline: “DeVos’ donations spark questions about her stance on campus sexual assault.” Let’s go ahead and confidently answer the most important question here on behalf of Ms. DeVos: She thinks sexual assault on campus is very bad, and people guilty of it should be punished.
Incredibly, Politico’s entire article hangs on DeVos and her husband’s donations to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a libertarian organization that’s been fighting for free speech rights on campuses for decades. FIRE has lately taken up the issue of campus sexual assault, because they’ve noted, quite correctly, that those accused of sexual assault on campuses are subject to hysterical attacks and frequently denied the most basic due process rights. (See the recent Rolling Stone kerfuffle at the University of Virginia for proof enough of that.) Even when charges such as rape are made, campus leftists have long argued for low evidentiary standards to determine guilt. In the past, this even meant trying men accused of serious crimes in campus tribunals that can hand down no more serious consequence than expulsion for a crime that would otherwise merit prison. But Politico found a liberal critic of DeVos and FIRE, so go ahead and stop the presses:
As the article goes on, it reflects more nuanced reporting on FIRE, but the headline remains unforgivable, and the ultimate basis for the article is extraordinarily weak. However, it would be impossible to top Newsweek’s attempt to discuss the debate around DeVos:
After smearing DeVos in the vilest way possible, you do have to love the jeté back from the precipice into the realm of spectacularly unconvincing objectivity. Dumping excrement on to six year-olds is “perhaps” unfair? Why so many lack respect for our journalistic institutions isn’t exactly one of the great mysteries of the age. As Newsweek amply demonstrates here, there’s an awfully fine line these days between media elites and “The Aristocrats.”
The grand irony here is that had such a pointlessly nasty sentiment been published in a campus newspaper and not Newsweek, FIRE would be the organization that defended the right to print it from any legal challenges. FIRE is a very principled organization—and you certainly can’t say that about most major media organizations these days.
