An e-mail:

I think KJL has misinterpreted what is happening at Georgetown. GU is simply hosting a symposium, that appears to be organized around a group called Legal Momentum (originall NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund) – probably through one of the student journals (looks to me like the culprit is Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law). It appears that the award is actual an award being presented by that group to Biden for his work on VAWA. The GU page on the symposium clearly says that Biden will accept the award at GU, it doesn’t say that GU is presenting him withe award. Looks like the president of Legal Momentum is a significant participant in the day’s panels and such and a couple of other Legal Momentum staff are speaking (one appears to be designated as the Symposium Chair). So I wonder if GU had any input into the award being given. Perhaps they could have told LM to give Biden the award someplace else (and at some other time), but given that the award is for Biden’s support for the very topic of the symposium, that seems illogical. I also don’t think it’s all that awful to recognize Biden for VAWA – while the law might be awful, and part of it was struck down as unconstitutional, I don’t think it’s a law that is contrary to any fundemental teachings of the Church – and I don’t think the circumstances here can be construed to mean that Georgetown approves of everything Biden has ever done in his public career in having the award presented at the Law School.
I wasn’t terribly surprised by the original post, as sadly, little that these allegedly Catholic institutions come up with these days surprises me any more. But in reading up, it seems that the post is somewhat misleading and is probably harder on the Georgetown people than is deserved in the situation. We wouldn’t want to just start criticizing everything they do, whether the criticism is fair or not – that makes us no better than the usual suspects on the Left in their typical response to anything even remotely Conservative.