President Biden is preparing to revive former President Barack Obama’s assault on due process for college students. This shows once again how little Democrats care for one of the core tenets of justice and about the disastrous effects of abandoning it.
Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rightly reversed the standards imposed by Obama’s administration (which Biden had helped push). Now, Biden wants to roll back those due process protections again, imposing a standard on college students accused of sexual misconduct under which Biden himself would be found guilty after accusations from his former aide, Tara Reade, that he sexually harassed and sexually assaulted her.
Hundreds of college students have won lawsuits against or reached settlements with their universities after being falsely accused of sexual misconduct. Students were subjected to kangaroo courts, where the accuser’s word was always believed. Relevant evidence was often not considered, as when Clemson University ignored exculpatory text messages in disciplining a freshman who had been falsely accused of rape.
The effects are still clear today. NFL player Quintez Cephus sued the University of Wisconsin, Madison last month, alleging that being expelled from the university caused him to fall in the NFL draft. Cephus, who was eventually reinstated and now plays for the Detroit Lions, was still one of the lucky ones. Others, such as Clemson’s John Doe, were forced into anonymity or smeared publicly as rapists.
Biden’s hypocrisy on sexual assault in this case is similar to his hypocrisy on race. The race-obsessed Biden, who has talked about how the United States must address systemic racism against black people, wants to revive these old Title IX standards even though they have a disproportionate effect on black students. As Emily Yoffe noted in the Atlantic, “Black men make up only about 6% of college undergraduates. They are vastly overrepresented in the cases I’ve tracked.”
Biden’s idea of justice on campus is a standard he rejects when applied to himself, a lifelong politician. And it is a standard that perpetuates the very systemic racism he claims to oppose. Activist groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which has abandoned its advocacy for due process and taken up the mantle of social justice totalitarianism, are right there with him.
The principle behind this rule change gets the idea of justice exactly backward. It requires a presumption of guilt instead of innocence. The disastrous effects were already becoming clear under the Obama administration. Biden should stop now before going down this path again. Those who care about actual justice should be prepared for when he moves forward.
