Displaying posts categorized under

EDUCATION

Student Writer Wonders: Could Antifa Do More Harm Than Good? A “proud liberal” suspects Antifa might be going a little too far. Mark Tapson

A Texas-based website called StudyBreaks.com, which features writing from “exceptional students” across the country, has posted an essay by Eric McInnis of Arcadia University which poses the burning question, “Could the Leftist Group Antifa Create More Harm Than Good?”

To reasonable people who pay attention to the news, it would seem patently obvious that the violent anarchists of Antifa have already created a lot of harm and zero good, but that’s not how McInnis, and no doubt many other leftists, see it.

“The rise of nationalism and fascism in America has easily been one of the scariest movements within 2017,” begins McInnis, who describes himself as “a proud liberal who leans into certain socialist ideals and policies.”

He is concerned that since Donald Trump’s “infamous election, far-right extremists have moved away from the dark caves where they belong and flaunt their blatant racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia for the world to see. It’s obvious at this point that America needs a hero, and one group named Antifa seems to have answered the call.”

Let that sink in: this student believes that the masked thugs ganging up on innocent bystanders (because they, and not actual Nazis, are Antifa’s primary targets), beating them with poles and bike locks, and destroying property simply for the thrill of anarchic destruction are the heroes America needs. Not the patriot citizens eager to Make America Great Again, but the domestic terrorists chanting, “No Trump, no wall, no USA at all!”

But even for “proud liberals” like McInnis, Antifa is taking things to an uncomfortable extreme: “[W]hile it’s wonderful [!] to see people stand up and fight back against such oppressors, the main question going on in my mind, as a liberal, is whether Antifa’s violent and destructive tactics are something to admire or something to concern.”

If you have to puzzle over that, it’s time to rethink a great many of your life choices.

Still, though, McInnis leans toward admiration of Antifa because their noble cause is just: “[I]f they’re attempting to defeat people that hold a disgusting and hateful ideology, there should be nothing to complain about, right?” After all, “it’s important to remember their actions are nowhere near as dangerous or reprehensible as their foes.”

But as “a supporter of… peace, tolerance and understanding,” McInnis feels that the anarchists need to rein things in a little. Why? Not because they are insanely, indiscriminately violent and seek the destruction of the United States,” but because “their actions could very well lead to an eight-year Trump presidency.”

And for Eric McInnes and so many other “proud liberals,” nothing could be worse than two terms of a President who wants to make America great again.

Campus Censorship: Orwell Ignored by Robbie Travers

What about the delicate sensibilities of those of us who find censoring offensive?

Where are the “safe spaces” for those who would ban banning?

Anyone should be able to criticise or question just about anyone. We should not care — or even know — what minority group, if any, someone belongs to. That would be racist.

When you hear the quite horrific stories of censorship and dangerous restrictions on expression at universities in the US, the UK and Europe, your first reaction might be to laugh at how infantile the nature of political discourse in the student world has become.

Cardiff Metropolitan University banned the use of the word “man” and related phrases, to encourage the adoption of “gender neutral” language. It is the equivalent of the “newspeak” about which Orwell warned: “Ambiguous euphemistic language used chiefly in political propaganda”.

Currently, longstanding expressions carrying no prejudice are now used as the trappings of often fictitious “oppressions.”

City University in London, renowned for its journalism school, is apparently banning newspapers that do not conform to the current student body’s various political biases. If the Sun, Daily Mail and Express are such bad publications, why not allow students to read them and make up their own minds? Perhaps students do not trust their peers to make up their own minds? What if they make up their minds the “wrong” way? To suggest that the brightest and best at our universities cannot contend with a dissenting argument should probably be at least slightly concerning.

There seems to be a growing consensus among student populations that certain views should not be challenged, heard or — if one does not hear them — even known.

A culture has also emerged at universities of promoting “safe spaces”. These ostensibly aim to be free of prejudices such as racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and other bile. But all too often, we have seen them filled with exactly these prejudices – anti-whiteness, anti-maleness and of course anti-Semitism, as even some of Britain’s leading universities are “becoming no-go zones for Jews”.

We have seen the staff of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo slaughtered by ISIS terrorists for mocking Mohammad, and banned from Bristol and Manchester University, apparently because some students might find it offensive. What about the delicate sensibilities of those of us who find censorship offensive? Especially of a publication that has stood up to religious fanaticism and paid the ultimate price? Where are the “safe spaces” for those who would ban banning?

At the University of Edinburgh, a student official was silenced for raising her hand — as if a raised hand were a “thought crime” tantamount to physical violence. Yet, as Sigmund Freud said, “The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilisation.”

Does mean, then, that many campuses are going back to pre-civilisation? Last year, the magazine Spiked found that 90% of British universities hold policies that support censorship and chill free speech. In February, riots to disrupt a speech at University of California, Berkeley caused $100,000 worth of damage — but only one person was arrested.

Do the advocates of suppressing speech not see — or care — where silencing free speech leads? You set a precedent that allows further silencing, which, in turn, creates ever-expanding censorships. One imagines that especially universities should be the institutions that protect the exchange of ideas.

Historically, contrarian views — such as those of Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Darwin, Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, Servetus, Oldenburg, Domagk and Freud — have been essential to shaping our culture. They have reversed accepted practices and opened minds. Where would our culture be without the freedom to question, be creative or even at times offend?

Another Obama Policy Betsy DeVos Should Throw Out A 2014 guidance letter on racial disparities in school discipline has helped create classroom chaos.By Jason L. Riley

When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced last week that the Trump administration would revisit its predecessor’s “guidance” on adjudicating accusations of campus sexual assault, she added that “the era of ‘rule by letter’ is over.” Well, not quite. A second instance of the Education Department’s overreach under President Obama, this one involving discipline in public schools, remains firmly in place.

In 2012 the Education Department released a study showing that black students were three times as likely to be suspended and expelled as their white counterparts. Two years later, the department issued a “Dear Colleague” letter warning school districts to address this racial imbalance, or else. The letter said that even if a disciplinary policy “is neutral on its face—meaning that the policy itself does not mention race—and is administered in an evenhanded manner” the district still could face a federal civil-rights investigation if the policy “has a disparate impact, i.e., a disproportionate and unjustified effect on students of a particular race.”

The threat worked. Fending off charges of discrimination can be expensive and embarrassing, so spooked school districts chose instead to discipline fewer students in deference to Washington. The Obama guidance didn’t start the trend—suspensions were down nearly 20% between 2011 and 2014—but the letter almost certainly hastened it. The effects are being felt in schools across the country, leaving black and Hispanic students, the policy’s theoretical beneficiaries, worse off.

After the Los Angeles school district, where more than 82% of students are Latino or black, ended suspensions for nonviolent offenses, the district reported that the number of students who said they felt safe in school dropped to 60% from 72%. When Chicago curbed suspensions, students and teachers felt the increased disorder. And following New York City’s reforms making it more difficult to keep disruptive kids out of the classroom, the schools that showed increased fighting, gang activity and drug use tended to be those with the highest percentages of minority students.

Somehow racial balance in the rates of suspension and expulsion has become more important than school safety. As Max Eden, my colleague at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in a March report, these policies turn the focus toward the well-being of the bullies rather than their victims. “Advocates of discipline reform often say that they are concerned that a suspension may have negative effects on the student being disciplined,” Mr. Eden wrote. “They are largely unconcerned about the potential of discipline reform to increase classroom disruption and schoolhouse disorder—and the harmful consequences of that disorder for well-behaved and engaged students.” When you diminish a teacher’s and a principal’s authority to discipline students, you undermine their ability to do their job. Disorder only begets more disorder; students who misbehave and face no consequences soon have imitators.

Yet civil-rights activists, liberal academics, policy makers and others calling for fewer suspensions—come what may—insist that what explains imbalances in school discipline is racism, not varying rates of misbehavior. Never mind that these disparities persist in schools with black and Hispanic principals, teachers and administrators, who would have no reason to single out minorities for punishment unless the behavior warranted it. Arne Duncan, the education secretary under Mr. Obama when the “Dear Colleague” letter was issued, said in 2014 that racially uneven discipline is “not caused by differences in children” and that “it is adult behavior that needs to change.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Prof Tweets That He’d ‘Be OK if #BetsyDevos Was Sexually Assaulted’ The now-deleted tweet was a response to Devos’s plans to rein in Title IX on college campuses. By Katherine Timpf

A professor at Austin Community College tweeted that he would “be OK if #BetsyDevos was sexually assaulted” because of her intentions to change the guidelines for how colleges handle sexual assault.

Rob Ranco, who is an adjunct professor of paralegal studies, posted the tweet on Friday. It has since been deleted, but not before a screenshot was obtained by Campus Reform. It stated, in full:

“I’m not wishing for it… but I’d be ok if #BetsyDevos was sexually assaulted. #SexualAssault #TitleIX”

Ranco then followed it with what seems to be some attempts at explanation:

“Perhaps Betsy doesn’t understand how horrible rape is. She’s made the world more dangerous for my daughters. I need her to understand.”

“Yes, @twitter. My words were harsh. I don’t wish harm on anyone. I wish there’s some way #BetsyDevos would understand and care about others.”

He also jokingly tweeted that “Twitter trolls are now due process experts! Priceless. #TitleIX”.

Ranco’s tweets, of course, have faced a lot of criticism. His account (@RancoLaw) is not on Twitter anymore and a spokesperson from the school issued a statement to Campus Reform saying that the school “does not condone these comments and their sentiment.” I’ve got to say, I’m really wondering just what in the hell this guy could have been thinking.

Now, I do understand that there are a lot of problems with the way that we treat victims of rape and sexual assault in this culture. It’s disgusting, but it’s true: There are far too many people who would rather just write off all accusers as being opportunistic liars than actually try to understand what it must feel like to be in a rape victim’s position — to understand, for example, how issues like shame and/or power dynamics might prevent a woman from reporting her assault to the police. It’s very, very important to educate people on this issue. It’s also important, however, to acknowledge the plain and simple fact that current Title IX guidelines have created a few problems of their own.
As Reason’s Robby Soave points out, people who are critical of Betsy DeVos for wanting to alter the guidelines should stop and think about the fact “that every crazy Title IX case she referenced actually happened.” Rape is a serious issue, which is exactly why it should be handled in a serious manner — for the sake of everyone involved. After all, as Soave explains, campus kangaroo courts not only force the accused to act as their own defense attorneys, but they also can force victims to have to act as their own prosecutors. It allows for situations such as what happened at Stony Brook in New York, where an accuser had to face and question her alleged rapist herself, without the assistance of a lawyer or even her own therapist.

Berkeley to offer counseling to snowflakes triggered by Shapiro visit By Rick Moran

Former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro is scheduled to speak at the University of California-Berkeley campus on September 14, But even before Shapiro utters a word, the university is offering “counseling” to students who might be offended by a speech given on campus by someone they disagree with.

Berkeley has kicked off a “Year of Free Speech” where officials want to “teach” students how to debate unpopular speakers. But even this appears to be too much for the snowflakes.

LA Times:

“We are deeply concerned about the impact some speakers may have on individuals’ sense of safety and belonging,” Alivisatos said in the memo posted on the university’s website. “No one should be made to feel threatened or harassed simply because of who they are or for what they believe.”

The memo drew scorn from conservative websites, including the Daily Wire, where Shapiro serves as editor-in-chief. The site called the measures extreme and criticized them as a sign of the university’s intolerance.

This is fine, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, the school believes that Shapiro isn’t the one being “threatened” and that it’s the snowflakes who they believe are being “harassed” by Shapiro’s visit.

Campus Reform:

Alivisatos’ email also mentions the all-too typical “[some] speech this is antithetical to our values” and points to a campus free speech forum which took place last evening. At that forum, Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society’s john powell (yes, lower case) collided over the extent of the First Amendment.

Chemerinsky (rightly) noted “All ideas and views can be expressed on campus, no matter how offensive,” whereas the best powell could muster was to say the US Supreme Court has been made unjust decisions in the past.

Professor Trump’s Lessons for Higher Education By Ken Masugi

Following some elite campus visits with his daughter, the morose father lamented that one cannot simply opt out of college. Such a defiance of convention did not seem feasible socially or economically. Like all men of sense, he is among those flabbergasted by former Princeton President Woodrow Wilson’s eagerness to make his students “as unlike their fathers as possible.”https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/10/professor-trumps-lessons-higher-education/

Today’s college administrators have gone well beyond Wilson’s edict. It seems that the default position on campus today is to surrender common sense and the most obvious moral scruples, allow questionable social habits, and yield to one’s youthful passions and impulses. All this misery comes at an enormous cost to the parents.

Parents no longer can be deluded by expressions such as the “old college try.” The current successors of Woodrow Wilson are more in line with the pseudo-Socrates of Aristophanes’ Clouds—a man whom the horrified father sees as a charlatan who would gladly allow his son to rape his mother, just after the twerp has assaulted him. The dread and dismay facing parents and prospective students is the same today as it was in 4th century B.C. Athens.

Don’t kid yourself that a great reputation or even a religious affiliation will protect your son or daughter. A venerable and distinguished priest and professor, now retired, said about Georgetown University that its only guarantee is that freshmen will graduate as moral relativists. Similar debunking applies to most any university today.

The corrupting temptation of higher education, as it is of any business enterprise, is to flatter the passions of the consumers and accommodate their appetites. Such an attitude means that actual dedication to the good of the students will be subordinate to the good of the institution.

The great question remains: Who will educate the educators?

The way to think about choosing a university might be clarified by reflecting more on the political career of Wilson, who in 1912 was elected president of the United States, just two years after leaving Princeton (and having served as governor of New Jersey in between). Based on his scholarship of applying scientific principles to politics, Wilson enacted a revolution in political practice known as Progressivism, which is rooted in a rejection of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and promotion of rule by bureaucratic experts.

Wilson succeeded all too well. The problem of life in the modern world is our deference to experts: Experts on the Mideast who led us into futile wars; experts on poverty who increased it; experts on race who stoked and aggravated racism; experts on immigration who weakened the bonds of citizenship; the list goes on. One man was unfazed by the experts and defied their minion strategists and was elected president, largely (or should I say, “bigly”) through relating directly to the people. He bypassed the experts.

This is flabbergasting: Can Donald Trump of Trump University notoriety really teach us about choosing the right school? The example is indeed instructive, though not in the way his critics wish. If false advertising is a cause for legal action, America’s “respectable” colleges and universities are the most under-litigated class in the country.

After all, how many colleges advertise or even admit in their catalogs to suicides, drug and alcohol abuse, post-graduation debt, “gut” courses that make no serious demands, or give an honest accounting of the professional accomplishments of their graduates? Far more widespread are slick packaging of slim pickings and meager accomplishments. If I may flash my own badge of expertise, I served for several months in higher education assessment for the State of Virginia, when I rejected some preposterous programs trying to pass as universities. Higher authority overruled my objections, and the pseudo-schools allowed to offer courses for college credit. Trump U is more the rule than an exception in American higher education, and may even have been more honest.

UCI Teaches Students a Lesson in Protecting Free Speech, Disciplines Anti-Israel Goons This is how you keep the exchange of ideas unfettered and unthreatened By Liel Leibovitz

On May 10, 2017, a group called Students Supporting Israel hosted five Israel Defense Forces reservists at the University of California, Irvine. Midway throughout the discussion, forty members of Students for Justice in Palestine, a group vehemently opposed to the Jewish state, broke into loud and derisive chants, disrupting the event. Panelists and Jewish audience members alike were escorted out of the building by campus security, their safety at risk.

This, sadly, is hardly news these days; assaults like these happen regularly on college campuses across the nation whenever anyone challenging the steely dogmas of the regressive left shows up and urges a free and unfettered debate. What is new is the refreshing response of the university’s administration: This week, the university announced that it will sanction SJP with disciplinary probation for two years, during which the group must meet regularly with the Dean of Students to discuss the importance of free speech as well as consult with the administration before hosting any campus event of its own. “Any further violations of university policy,” read the university’s statement, “may result in suspension or a revocation of the organization’s status.”

UCI, read the statement, “welcomes all opinions and encourages a free exchange of ideas–in fact, we defend free speech as one of our bedrock principles as a public university. Yet, we must protect everyone’s right to express themselves without disruption. This concept is clearly articulated in our policies and campus messaging. We will hold firm in enforcing it.”

Amen to that. And if elected officials of all stripes want to help public universities enforce the most sacred of all academic cornerstones, the ability to speak and listen without malice and without being silenced, let them begin by demanding that a commitment to protecting free speech be made a pre-condition for any and all federal funding. The alternative is much too costly for our struggling democracy to afford.

Does Condemning Islamic State Jihadis Constitute “Hate Speech”? by Denis MacEoin

Being a student used to be an uncomfortable experience, during which the fantasies of adolescence were exposed to rational, well-informed, and evidence-based argument. But the cults of political correctness, unbounded gender definitions, Islamophobia-obsession, and anti-Semitism, among other afflictions, have undermined the educational process in the USA and Europe.

If Travers has identified anti-Semitism and signs of radicalization on campus, he has, not just the right, but the duty to expose them to the public eye.Robbie Travers, a third-year law student of 21, has made a mark for himself in Scotland at the prestigious Edinburgh University. Apart from his many other activities, Travers has published articles on the Gatestone Institute site here, as well as for other outlets. He has written on subjects such as anti-Semitism in Europe, the “Fake News” censorship industry, Britain’s Labour Party as a haven for racists, shari’a councils, the assault on free speech, and more. An outspoken young man, he has become one of the best-known figures in the university. Although openly gay and a supporter of a centrist, Tony Blair-ish position in politics, he has frequently come into conflict with fellow students on the radical left, with Muslim students, and with anyone who can be upset by anything that smacks of a challenge to their complacent politically correct sensitivities. He is not afraid to call out radicals and expose them to criticism and factual information that so many modern students (and lecturers) are loath to hear.

On September 6, Robbie’s face appeared across the British media, from the conservative Times to the leftist Independent, to the populist tabloids, the Express, the Mirror, the Daily Mail, and the Sun. Travers had been accused of hate speech and was being investigated by the university, who could well sanction him. What sort of “hate speech” was that? Well, in a nutshell, he had referred to the jihadist fighters of Islamic State (ISIS) — who variously burns or drowns people alive in cages, and sometimes in acid, or kills 250 children in dough-kneaders — as “barbarians.”

You did not read that wrongly. It is now “racist” and “Islamophobic” to insult or ridicule the world’s most unspeakable terror gang, who, among other atrocities, behead innocent men, women and children, rape innocent women, and sell harmless women as sex slaves to grunting murderers and pedophiles. One could not make this up.

Here is what seems to have happened. Travers writes often on Facebook and Twitter, and many left-wing students are possibly outraged by his views on matters such as Islam. Here, for example, is a post on his Facebook page on August 31. I very much doubt if anyone here would find anything offensive in it:

“I propose a toast to the Western world. Unfashionable in today’s climate of moral relativism, but the UK, USA, Israel and other nations play a major role in shaping our world for the better. Whether it be standing against autocratic regimes, whether it be celebrating the freedoms of minorities & those who do not share the opinion of the majority.

“Our democracy has never faced a graver threat than the inhuman & theocratic peril posed by malignant, autocratic, and fascistic branches of Islamism. If we are to see our democracy continue from strength to strength, we must fight to defend our precious and treasured freedoms, rights and protection of minorities as much as jihadis struggle to destroy these just and tolerant values they despise.”

On April 13, he posted something shorter:

“Excellent news that the US Administration and Trump ordered an accurate strike on an IS network of tunnels in Afghanistan. I’m glad we could bring these barbarians a step closer to collecting their 72 virgins.”

It is hard to see how there is anything remotely racist or “Islamophobic” about that. ISIS fighters come from a variety of races and they have attacked and killed many Muslims. But that is exactly what one intolerant student activist claimed it was. Esme Allman, a second-year history student from inner-city London and the former black and ethnic minority convenor of Edinburgh’s student association (who also calls herself not just a feminist but also a “womanist”) was not an admirer of the positions Travers had taken on several subjects.

Here’s What Defenders of Campus Kangaroo Courts Won’t Tell You By David French

It’s Betsy DeVos day here at NR. I’ve got a piece up on the homepage detailing how critics of campus due process rely on junk science and sometimes even sheer malice to prop up failed Obama-era policies, and our editors have expressed their own support for reforming campus Title IX prosecutions. But as you read these pieces and weigh them against the #StopBetsy invective across the web, consider one more thing — state and federal courts are making change inevitable. Universities are losing due process cases from coast to coast.

I’d urge you to read my friend KC Johnson’s excellent, extended piece over at Commentary. It begins:

In late August, U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett blocked Miami University from suspending a student the school had found guilty of sexual assault. The student claimed that his due-process rights had been violated by Miami University’s fact-finding process. This process had featured a proceeding in which all the witnesses corroborating the accuser’s claims had refused to appear—and at its conclusion the chair of Miami’s disciplinary panel simply accepted their unverified statements as “true.” When the case reached federal court, university lawyers argued that cross-examination of the absent witnesses was irrelevant because the accused student was allowed to say that he disagreed with their claims. The university, Barrett responded, misunderstood the importance of cross-examination for assessing witness credibility. Miami’s “claim that no amount of cross-examination could have changed the minds of the hearing panel members,” the judge concluded, “arguably undercuts the fairness of the hearing.” The “arguably” was a nice touch.

Barrett’s decision marked the 59th judicial setback for a college or university since 2013 in a due-process lawsuit brought by a student accused of sexual assault. (In four additional cases, the school settled a lawsuit before any judicial decision occurred.) This body of law serves as a towering rebuke to the Obama administration’s reinterpretation of Title IX, the 1972 law barring sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding.

Obama administration activists and campus ideologues have imposed procedures that revolt judges across the ideological spectrum. Change isn’t optional. It’s mandatory. Federal government policies are driving universities to violate the civil liberties of their students, and it’s legally unsustainable. Here’s Johnson again:

The process began in May 2013, in a ruling against St. Joseph’s University, and has lately accelerated (15 rulings in 2016 and 21 thus far in 2017). Of the 40 setbacks for colleges in federal court, 14 came from judges nominated by Barack Obama, 11 from Clinton nominees, and nine from selections of George W. Bush. Brown University has been on the losing side of three decisions; Duke, Cornell, and Penn State, two each.

As Johnson notes, the universities don’t always lose, but even when they prevail, they often prevail in the face of deep judicial misgivings about university processes. Moreover, these cases are brought against the backdrop of a very particular judicial bias. As a litigator who’s sued a number of universities on constitutional grounds, I can tell you that federal judges do not want their courts to become glorified student disciplinary boards. Yet the facts are often so egregious — and the constitutional violations so plain — that they often have no choice.

So the next time a campus ideologue says reformers are on the side of “rapists,” remember that their preferred procedures are too radical even for President Obama’s judges. One way or another, their kangaroo courts will come to an end.

DeVos Takes on Lawless Campus Tribunals By The Editors

Yesterday, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos took a welcome step toward restoring a measure of justice and sanity to American higher education. In a speech at George Mason University — and in a follow-up interview with CBS News — DeVos indicated that she intended to withdraw Obama administration “guidance” on adjudicating sexual-assault claims on campus and replace it with a regulatory rulemaking process that is intended to protect students from sexual assault and preserve essential civil liberties.

It’s hard to overstate the legal and moral necessity of this action. First, let’s deal with the law. In 2011, the Obama administration issued a now-infamous “Dear Colleague” letter that required universities to lower the burden of proof in sexual-assault adjudication to a “preponderance of the evidence” standard (50.1 percent probability) without also adequately preserving essential due-process rights such as access to counsel, access to available evidence, and full and fair cross-examination of witnesses. At the same time, the administration commenced dozens of open-ended investigations of universities — acting on claims that they were insufficiently committed to protecting women from rape and applying the new guidance to evaluate university policies.

These actions were fundamentally lawless. No American administration has the ability to rewrite the law by merely issuing a letter. At the very least, the Obama administration should have conducted a notice-and-comment regulatory rulemaking process in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act. Even then, the regulation would still have to be consistent with governing federal statutes and comply with the Constitution. But Obama’s Department of Education ignored these steps and instead violated the APA, Title IX, and the Constitution in an ideologically motivated trifecta of campus tyranny.

The result was entirely predictable. Campuses, fearing the loss of federal funds and pushed by their own internal constituencies who pushed ludicrous and discredited claims that up to one in five female students would be sexually assaulted during college, created a vast, morally outrageous, and oppressive system of kangaroo courts. According to a study released this week by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 73.6 percent of America’s top universities don’t guarantee students a presumption of innocence, fewer than half require that fact-finders be impartial, and a full 58.5 percent of institutions don’t “provide students with a meaningful opportunity to cross-examine witnesses” in cases of sexual misconduct. And this is a partial list of university legal failures. All told, 45 of the 53 rated colleges received a “D” or “F” for their commitment to due process.

But those are dry statistics. The individual stories are harrowing, and DeVos provided startling examples in her speech. Schools have punished students even though the alleged “victim” claimed that nothing happened. They’ve investigated and punished professors and students for engaging in First Amendment–protected speech. They’ve refused to allow students to introduce exculpatory evidence. And they’re facing an avalanche of lawsuits from aggrieved students as a result. Brooklyn College professor K. C. Johnson has compiled a list of at least 60 university litigation defeats since the Obama administration issued its “Dear Colleague” letter, and the list often expands by the week.

Schools have been caught between the hammer of an overzealous and lawless Department of Education and the anvil of private litigation. Their choice? Follow the Constitution and potentially lose government funding. Comply with Obama-administration directives and potentially face the wrath of a federal judge.