The Obama administration’s zealots in the Department of Education changed Title IX from a simple prohibition against schools discriminating against women into an all-encompassing crusade against any behavior that feminists said was “sexual harassment.” That led to numerous cases where male students were unfairly charged and punished by school officials who wanted to keep the feds happy. What is not well known is how it has also led to unfair accusations against faculty members.

One who was so accused is political science professor J. Martin Rochester of the University of Missouri, St. Louis. In today’s Martin Center article, he describes his treatment by school officials when one or more female faculty colleagues decided to get even with him over a heated exchange regarding departmental matters. Referring to the infamous “Dear Colleague letter” sent by the Office for Civil Rights in 2011, he writes, “The letter was mainly aimed at incidents involving student-on-student sexual assault, but its sweepingly vague language invited constraints on speech itself, including, as in my case, even the sort of heated exchanges that are not uncommon in the professoriate.”

Vague language is not the way to make law, but it served the purposes of the federal bureaucrats nicely.

As is typical in these cases, the accused, Professor Rochester, was not informed in writing of the exact charge against him. Nor was he allowed to confront his accuser or accusers.”At great expense in time and effort” he writes, “I compiled endless paper trails and numerous documents as evidence of my nonsexism, submitting these with an offer to submit more if needed, along with a dozen names of prominent first-hand witnesses who could testify on my behalf, including the former chairpersons of my department, three of whom were women.”

A year went by with no communication from the university’s Title IX bureaucracy, leaving Rochester suspended in a feeling of uncertainty. Finally he was told that the case had been “closed” months earlier, but he had not been informed.

Rochester concludes, “I was left with an unanswered question: is it possible any longer in the current climate for one professor to have words with another professor of the opposite sex without it constituting ’sexual harassment’ or at least triggering a sexual harassment investigation? Free speech, academic freedom, due process, and just plain common sense are at stake here.”

Secretary of Education DeVos needs to proceed quickly to rid the country of the terrible effects of that “Dear Colleague letter.”