By David Harsanyi
Thursday, April 30, 2020
If presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe
Biden were forced to live by the standards he wants to set for college students
accused of sexual misconduct, he would already have been presumed guilty, have
been denied a genuine opportunity to refute the charges leveled against him by
Tara Reade, and had his life ruined.
While Biden has hundreds of pundits and an entire
constellation of Democratic Party–affiliated groups defending him, accused 18-
and 19-year olds have no such recourse under Biden’s preferred set of
guidelines. As conservatives keep hammering the partisan double standards in
the media’s coverage of sexual-assault accusations — a wholly legitimate
grievance — they should not forget that Biden has long championed stripping the
due-process rights of college students accused of sexual misconduct.
In 2011, the Obama
DOJ’s “Dear Colleague” letter directed institutions of higher learning to
adjudicate sexual-assault and misconduct cases under Title IX not by a “clear
and convincing evidence” standard, but by a “preponderance of evidence.” The
letter also “strongly” discouraged cross-examination of alleged victims — one
of the fundamental methods of determining truth — because it “may be traumatic
or intimidating” to the alleged victim. After Secretary of Education Betsy
DeVos proposed new rules to reinstate some semblance of impartiality in the
process, Biden, and a number of other Democrats, engaged in a smear campaign
against her.
The former vice president never actually spelled out his specific
criticisms of DeVos’s proposal. In a sycophantic
2017 Teen Vogue interview, in
which Biden offered a number of rambling platitudes regarding sexual assault,
he argued that DeVos is incentivizing assaults by proposing that colleges live
by the traditional criteria of fairness. “Let me tell you,” he said, “it
bothers me most if Secretary DeVos is going to really dumb down Title IX
enforcement. The real message, the real frightening message you’re going to
send out is, our culture says it’s OK.”
Arguing that unprejudiced hearings (and I’m still not
sure why these cases aren’t adjudicated in civil and criminal court) are a
tacit approval of rape is repulsive. Even worse: We now know Biden believes
that allegations against him should
be evaluated using the precise principles that he would deny others.
Under the Obama administration’s directives, an accused
college student was often denied the ability to question his accuser, denied
the right to review the allegations and evidence in an ensuing investigation,
denied the right to present exculpatory evidence, and denied the right to call
witnesses. Oftentimes a “single investigator,” with minimal training, would be
deputized to be judge and jury. Biden’s personal expectations are dramatically
different. Indeed, he refuses to even open his own senatorial papers — which might contain evidence related to
Reade’s accusations — or to allow the public to see them.
Biden is lucky that, in this case, media outlets chose to
act in a professional manner, reporting and offering context to Reade’s
allegations. Brett Kavanaugh was not so fortunate. Back then, journalists
relayed every salacious, uncorroborated, and risible allegation thrown at them,
leaving the Supreme Court nominee to prove his own innocence. The former vice
president expects college students to live under the Kavanaugh standard while
he enjoys his own.
Now, obviously Biden is to be judged by voters, not by a
court or institutional tribunal. Reade hasn’t filed criminal charges. But guess
what? Most students aren’t under criminal investigation either, and yet their
collegiate careers and reputations can be forever ruined by the prejudiced
process that was forced on colleges by Biden. The Foundation for Individual
Rights in Education estimates that half
of unfair-treatment lawsuits completed since 2013 have ended in the favor
of the accused.
Every allegation of sexual assault should be taken
seriously. But, as I’ve argued elsewhere, due process isn’t the opposite of
justice, it is the prerequisite to it. Biden, whose campaign argues that he is
falsely accused, should finally comprehend the importance of traditional tenets
of justice. And no, not just for himself.
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