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The reaction by former Education Secretary Arne Duncan to the overturning of Roe v. Wade serves as a good reminder that he was one of the most destructive members of the Obama administration.
Duncan, trying to jump in on the liberal Twitter rage-fest over the Supreme Court allowing states to restrict abortion, declared that “33% of current male Supreme Court justices have a history of sexual assault.” Therefore, Duncan said, no one should be surprised “by how they think or what they want.”
Duncan is referring to Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, whose “history of sexual assault” amounts to being accused of sexual assault. Of course, Anita Hill’s sexual harassment accusation against Thomas was riddled with holes. The accusations against Kavanaugh lacked evidence that Kavanaugh and his accusers had ever even met, let alone that he ever assaulted anyone. Both men were accused of misconduct, and no credible evidence was presented in favor of those accusations. That is where that “history of sexual assault” begins and ends.
But that has always been good enough for Duncan. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Duncan oversaw the administration’s changes in Title IX enforcement on college campuses. Obama and Duncan turned universities into kangaroo courts, where an accusation of sexual misconduct was enough to ruin a student’s life, even if no evidence was presented. According to then-Vice President Joe Biden, it was Duncan’s idea to deprive students of due process protections in order to protect women.
The result was hundreds of students winning lawsuits against their universities after they had been railroaded by false accusations, accusations that lacked evidence, and, in one case, an accusation made by a neighbor that was vehemently denied by the “victim.” Black students were disproportionately targeted by these procedures. (As it turned out, the systemic racism was coming from inside the Obama administration). Those students had their academic careers and their reputations ruined, all because Duncan thinks an accusation is enough to prove someone’s guilt.
Duncan’s destructive policies live on in Biden’s administration and will likely be found in Democratic administrations for years to come. While he smears Thomas and Kavanaugh without evidence, it must be remembered that he encouraged universities to do the same to their own students. Duncan did irreparable damage to higher education and due process protections, and he is proud of that fact.
