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Kate Auspitz's avatar

Entirely agree. This is a terrible appointment. Ms Lhamon has not published much and I have not forced myself to read through all her previous Congressional testimony. That said, people who dealt with her during her previous time at the Department of Education report she justifies lowering standard of proof in campus sexual cases on the grounds that such alleged transgressions are “civil rights violations. “

Standards of proof were lowered during Civil Rights movement, properly in my view, in circumstances in which federal authorities sought to prosecute atrocities, e.g. murders of voter registration workers, and complicit local law enforcement had already destroyed evidence.

Analogy between such horrors and

encounters between young people, both likely addled by drink, would be risible if aftermath of “convictions” were not so devastating

This is bad law and worse politics. Embrace of radical feminist orthodoxy on “toxic masculinity” will continue to drive men of all races out of the Democratic Party

And, yes, I am a feminist in what I regard as best American tradition: “My rights and nothing more; my rights and nothing less.”

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François Pignon's avatar

I'm less concerned with Biden's bravery, since it's subjective eye-of-the-beholder stuff no matter who is President. I am interested in finding our more about DeVos's own understanding of higher academics and the collegiate ecosystem. Maybe she actually possesses that kind of comprehensive knowledge. Maybe her ruling was researched and written by professors like Nussbaum and other legal scholars, who had DeVos's ear based on a mutual goal of curtailing government regulation of the education system. I'm willing to give Betsy credit if she performed her own due diligence in good faith and had more of a stake in the matter other than her lifelong goal of privatizing education.

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