Harvard Feminists Abuse Title IX With Kavanaugh Complaints

Even before Harvard University announced this week that Brett Kavanaugh would not be teaching his brief Law School course this year (due to the fact that Kavanaugh himself voluntarily dropped the course), more than 800 alumni had contacted the school asking them to fire the Supreme Court nominee from the gig. While this is troubling enough, it doesn’t even count as a blip on the radar compared to the scheme two student activists cooked up. Together, they convinced 50 of their fellow Harvard students to sign a petition confirming that they’d filed Title IX complaints against the judge, despite the fact that Kavanaugh has done literally nothing to violate Title IX codes of conduct.

Title IX is, of course, the federal statute that requires schools to maintain sex equality on campus. Under the rules and guidelines of the Obama era, schools were forced to abide by his administration’s view of Title IX when adjudicating sexual assault and misconduct accusations – a regulation that led to untold numbers of false and misleading accusations against men who had little or no opportunity to defend themselves against the charges. While the Trump administration is revising these rules, the cat is out of the bag, and the liberal feminists who populate a school like Harvard know it. That’s why they feel justified using the system to pursue a blatantly political agenda.

“Such an abuse of process would undermine the legitimacy and credibility of complaints that the Title IX process is intended to deal with, as well as of the Title IX office to focus on its duties,” Harvard Professor Jeannie Suk Gearson wrote in an email to the Harvard Crimson. “It might be effective in drawing further attention to some students’ objection to Kavanaugh’s teaching appointment, but I don’t expect him to be found to have violated Harvard University’s Sexual & Gender-Based Harassment Policy based on the currently known public allegations against him.”

In an email to Reason.com, Jacqueline Kellogg – the student who organized the campaign against Kavanaugh – said she and her fellow activists were wholly justified in filing the complaints.

“Using the Title IX process to file formal complaints against known abusers and harassers is exactly what the process is designed to do,” wrote Kellogg. “It is not an abuse of process and I am extremely disappointed that Jeannie Suk Gersen and [Professor] Janet Halley made these comments that may inevitably discourage students from exercising their rights and reporting when it is appropriate.”

What’s surprising to us is not that a rabid feminist student would go to these lengths to trash a conservative judge, but that she actually seems to have convinced herself that she’s right. She actually seems to believe that having Kavanaugh on campus would make her and others feel unsafe. Is it possible that could be the case? We had long assumed that students like Kellogg were at least partially self-aware, but we’re starting to have our doubts about that. If they are really this deluded, they don’t need “safe spaces,” they need serious mental health counseling.

Damn, if only the Title IX money weren’t tied up in investigating ludicrous complaints…