The full document is available here, though the Executive Summary is quite accurate as to the contents. Apart from a largely irrelevant fixation on the "corporate university," it's an informative report, one that makes clear how the Assistant Secretaries for Civil Rights in the Department of Education have badly overreached their authority since 2011. The report argues, correctly in my judgment, that the OCR had no authority to simply change the standard of proof from "clear and convincing evidence" to "preponderance of evidence." (Note that the latter is the standard of proof in civil litigation, and also in the Title VII employment discrimination context. But without going through the normal "notice and comment" process for substantive changes to administrative regulations, the OCR should not have altered the standard unilaterally. Since findings of fault for sexual harassment and related misconduct is much more like findings of criminal liability, the standard of proof should not have been lowered in my view--especially given that the investigative and adjudication procedures are largely amateur affairs to begin with.)
The other important point the report makes is that the OCR has demonstrated a shocking indifference to First Amendment and academic freedom values in its promulgation of regulations and enforcement actions. We saw this most clearly, of course, in the disgraceful Kipnis affair at Northwestern.
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