Posted on 09/22/2017 4:38:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
Thanks to a recent speech by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, more people are discussing the real world repercussions of the eight-year war on due process waged by the Obama Department of Education. Out of that discussion, there is a consensus emerging, which recognizes that basic due process protections must be restored on our university campuses. These changes are particularly needed in the context of campus sexual harassment and sexual assault tribunals. But once due process is restored, we need to vigorously pursue campus prosecutions against those who knowingly and maliciously accuse others of sexual assault and/or sexual harassment. Proactive measures are particularly needed to combat false charges of harassment that are politically motivated as the problem has now reached epidemic proportions on many campuses.
This politicization of harassment did not start with Anita Hill – but she did accelerate a dangerous trend that was already in progress. After the relatively unknown law professor accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment she became a household name. Other professors were watching as she profited from those politically motivated accusations. Thus, it was just a matter of time before such accusations started to spread throughout academia. Here is a brief history of how the problem has manifested itself at the mid-sized liberal arts university where I teach.
1995. A feminist philosophy professor was personally offended by another professor’s argument that there should be different degrees of rape – because she thought all rapes were equally horrific. Thus, instead of trying to persuade him to adopt her point of view, she reported him to the Dean of Arts and Sciences for allegedly creating a hostile work environment. It is worth contemplating the chances that she would have bothered reporting him if they were arguing about degrees of homicide rather than degrees of rape.
1999. A feminist criminology professor was upset by her department chairman’s decision to run for a second term. So she tried to defeat him by standing up in the middle of a department meeting and accusing him of sexual harassment – both orally and in writing. In her written supporting documents, she also accused him of harassing three other unnamed women. The charges were investigated and found to be false. She was not reprimanded or disciplined in any way.
2001. The aforementioned criminology professor leveled three more accusations of harassment against another professor who had criticized her publicly for making the first four false accusations. These new accusations were also investigated and found to be false. This brought her career total to seven false sexual harassment allegations. Nonetheless, she was retained without any disciplinary consequences.
2006. After making her eighth false accusation of harassment, the aforementioned criminology professor was finally investigated. At long last, a memo partially documenting her history of making false claims was placed in her personnel file. No other disciplinary action was taken.
2015. Feminist students were angered after campus police prevented them from shutting down a pro-life demonstration by forming a “human chain” around the peaceful protestors. They then decided to monitor the social media page of the professor who had reported them to the police. Offended by the contents of the professor’s Facebook page, several of the feminists contacted the Division of Student Affairs and leveled charges of harassment. Multiple charges were made in retaliation against the professor for expressing his First Amendment rights in a private forum. All of the charges were summarily dismissed. None of the students were disciplined.
2016. A sociologist finally crossed gender lines to become the first male professor to level a false accusation of harassment for political purposes. Ten days after one of his colleagues was cleared of a speech-related harassment charge, the sociologist tweeted out the false accusation to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. Fortunately, because the obscure Marxist had only five Twitter followers, there were minimal reputational damages resulting from his malicious and defamatory tweet. Notably, both the sociologist and the original accuser made their accusations in retaliation against constitutionally protected speech with which they disagreed. The sociologist may have lost his man card but he kept his job.
Reasonable people must surely agree that this nonsense has to stop. One way to stop it is for the Department of Education to demand that universities crack down on false accusations of harassment. At minimum, they should tell universities to start firing professors who make false charges of harassment that are clearly malicious and politically motivated. If they refuse to crack down, these schools should lose federal funding.
Of course, the Department of Education, like most other federal agencies, should not exist and should be abolished. Short of that happening, the least the bureaucrats can do is help us get a few tenured sociopaths off the public payroll.
Please Freepmail me, if you want to be added, or removed from the ping list.
I was the victim of an anonymous sexual harassment complaint at a Fortune 500 company. The alleged victim said it didn’t happen. But the policy said that if an uninvolved third party overheard something and thought it might be harassment, then it was indeed harassment. I never got to confront my accuser. I never got to talk to the “tribunal” which consisted of “ethics” officers from three different faculties who only viewed the complaint and nothing more. Without going into too much detail, I sent an email to the company legal team pointing out that if they used the fact that I’d set up a roast for the departing employee using the email system and they deemed that a “company function” then the company would be responsible for meetings set up at bars by employees. Those too would be company functions and the first time somebody was killed by a drunk employee going home from a “company function” they’d be sued. The legal team quashed the firing but I ended up with a reprimand on my otherwise flawless record.
I pointed out to my boss that the secret tribunal, which was indeed called a “secret tribunal” was the same legal mechanism set up for the Inquisition. At that meeting the HR manager told me, “Don’t let this change the way you interact with people. It’s okay to laugh and joke around at work.” I replied, “I can laugh and joke around, but if an ‘uninvolved third party’ decides it’s sexual harassment I can be fired with no opportunity to even speak on my own behalf? Really?” He had the grace to blush.
After that, everybody I knew was very careful not to be overheard when they spoke. You’d see two people stop down the hall, both look around, then proceed with their conversation. If they weren’t alone, you’d see them wait until the uninvolved third party was out of earshot. It was a miserable few years until I got Obama’d out of that job.
None of the students WAS disciplined.
Wow, I can only imagine, but I do remember my mother telling me when I was a child to be careful what you say around people.
“Wow, I can only imagine, but I do remember my mother telling me when I was a child to be careful what you say around people.”
It was a roast for a departing employee. I had the text reviewed by two senior employees, one, a manger, to be certain it couldn’t be interpreted as offensive. I had the entire restaurant in stiches. People told me afterwards what a great job I’d done. But, in that group was a political enemy. If you don’t have enemies then you have never done anything important. The enemy knew about the new harassment policy, which had not yet been published, and the policy mechanism was set up so that there was no penalty if things didn’t work out the way my enemy wanted them to work out. The fact that the departing employee said she was thrilled with the sendoff didn’t matter because of the way the policy was written.
Policies like this are painfully, politically correct. They are made for just the sort of purpose for which it was used, exacting revenge. Using another policy a black could cause almost any lower level white to be fired for “racism.” But a complaint against one of the in-crowd management or in-crowd whites would be ignored. See how that works?
If you wanted to do damage to the moral of a company you could hardly come up with a better means. But, boy did it give some small minded people POWER.
You're trying to correct Dr Adams?
Not true. It is a myth that “none” can only take a singular verb. If the object of the defining preposition (or implicit appositive) is a plural, then “none” takes a plural verb.
In the example cited, “none of the STUDENTS,” the object is “students” — a plural. If the sentence had read “Of the false accusers, none were punished” the same rule would apply.
If the object was singular, e.g.: “None of the shipment ...” or a collective noun — “None of the herd ...” — then a singular verb (is, was) is proper.
Except in British variants that use plural verbs for collective nouns.
End of lecture ... :)
Yes. I wouldn't argue with something he says about criminal justice, but I am perfectly competent to correct grammar. The object of a preposition cannot be the subject of a sentence.
Nothing personal, but pish-tosh. I’m sure you can find someone Credentialed to aver that “not one” can take a plural verb, but you can also find someone Credentialed to assert that one can use “they” as a singular, neuter pronoun.
It is here that civilization stands or falls.
Well there are plenty of sites you can do a grammar check. Why don’t you find one and do it. I did.
BTW why don't you sue him?/s>
While I disagree on this particular point, I respect your willingness to serve as a sentinel of our beloved language. It is indeed one of the plinths upon which our civilization’s pllars rest.
I (with help from my company’s legal counsel) went through the state registered legal hoops fending off an unfounded sexual harassment charge against me by a female employee.
She made the charge after I fired her.
I had always be careful with her. Even in my meetings with her to examine her performance, and my dissatisfaction with it, I always had a female company officer present with me in the meetings.
I don’t remember how many months (or was it more than a year), that went with multiple depositions and hearings before, finally, the state EEOC dismissed all her charges.
Fortunately I had the full support of my boss (the CEO), my staff, and everyone else the state asked to speak to on the matter.
I pity Conservatives on college campuses. They are always in the minority and can only count on each other for support.
I have yet to understand why the Dept of Education does still exist. It should not. I think the initial impetus to have a national department of education was to enforce affirmative action by forcing blacks and whites to integrate into one school that would serve both communities.
This plan has more than failed for any number of socioeconomic reasons...we who are white would most like to see each child be educated to the limits of his or her ability. I did not find the same impetus in the black community and I am not the least surprised to see all this end up in the BLM movement. At this point I have moved from being pro-affirmative action to sending most of the lot to back to Africa. I am, as you can tell, vastly irritated and disgusted.
What a foolish thing to say. That is why we can’t have a reasoned discussion about anything.
“Mind your pronoun cases!” I tell my numerous Offspring. “Do you want our society to collapse into savagery?”
Also, “Mind your homophones!” and “Clear out all those extraneous commas!”
And apostrophe’s!
I lost two good electricians thanks to the offended third party. One electrician got fired because he complemented his coworker on a Texas A&M T shirt. Of course she took no offense since she knew his children were attending Texas A&M. But some over sensitive person heard it and filed a complaint. Despite his coworker defending him, he got fired for sexual harassment in the workplace. She was so disgusted with the situation that she quit.
Unnngh, those are the worst!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.