On April 4, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent the nation’s school officials a letter urging them to water down due process and other protections for students and staff accused of sexual harassment.  That letter, timed to coincide with a PR campaign by Joe Biden, was also criticized by civil libertarians, like former ACLU board member Wendy Kaminer and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, for defining sexual harassment so broadly as to include constitutionally-protected speech.

As Wendy Kaminer noted, the Education Department is attempting to deprive accused students of the right to cross-examine their accusers: “students accused of harassment should not be allowed to confront (or directly question) their accusers, according to OCR, because cross-examination of a complainant ‘may be traumatic or intimidating.’”  As OCR puts it, “OCR strongly discourages schools from allowing the parties personally to question or cross-examine each other during the hearing.”  This is perverse, since “a famous legal authority once described cross-examination as the most powerful engine for the discovery of truth ever devised by man.”