One area where Obama will have a lasting legacy is on our campuses. Owing to the “weaponization” of Title IX, we now a sprawling bureaucracy of leftist ideologues who are eager to use their power to punish those who say politically incorrect things that have even the most tenuous relationship to sexual harassment.
In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Adam Ellwanger explains how bad things are. Speaking from personal experience, he relates that when a student, upset at the grade he’d received, filed a Title IX complaint against him that did not contain a “legitimate” allegation, school officials coached him on how to change it so that it was.
Ellwanger was able to fight the complaint off (after months of bureaucratic heel dragging in which he was not informed of the exact nature of the complaint) only because, he argues, he holds tenure. That’s an important protection for the remaining conservatives in academe.
He doubts that the Trump Education Department is up to the task of defeating the monster that Title IX has become. He’s probably right, since that requires the repeal of the law to eliminate the power all those aggressive campus bureaucrats have. That simply isn’t possible.
Ellwanger rightly concludes, “Title IX in its expanded articulation is nothing less than an attempt to advance the ideological objectives of the left on campus. It has been weaponized to silence dissenting speech and chill open debate of leftist ideology on campus. If the university is to remain a place for open inquiry and the production of new knowledge, dissenting voices (often conservative ones) need more than due process in the procedure of investigating complaints against them.”