As seen in The Post Millennial
Since 2011, hundreds of students accused of sexual misconduct have filed lawsuits against their universities alleging they were denied due process by campus disciplinary panels.
Thanks to the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title IX, a law that requires colleges to prevent sexual discrimination, harassment and assault, a student’s right to fair process has not only been significantly impaired, but in some cases, eliminated entirely. Many universities still use the Obama-era guidance to this day.
In reality, this world of unfair and false accusations that has forced hundreds of young men to sue their universities, was orchestrated and executed by none other than Joe Biden—a man who now finds himself ensnared in the same environment he helped create.
Biden has long viewed himself as an ardent defender of women’s rights. In 1994, Congress passed its first comprehensive bill designed to prevent violence against women, a bill sponsored and overseen by Biden.
When he became vice president in 2009, he sought to continue this work. Stamping out violent and sexual crimes against American women on college campuses became a top priority. Over the last decade, Biden has supported women’s movements such as MeToo, Believe Women and It’s On Us, each designed to shine a light on sexual assault and bring male predators to their knees.
In 2011, he addressed America’s 4,600 universities, mandating how campuses must find and castigate perpetrators of sexual assault and harassment. This new interpretation of Title IX started one of the most devastating trends of witch hunts that the US has ever experienced.
It is easy to forget that the former vice president had a significant hand in the destruction of due process against men—particularly male students—across the country. But this world of accusation-as-guilt that he helped establish has come back around to bite him where it hurts most.
Biden’s precarious interactions with women have long been documented. To date, eight women have accused him of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Many have said he made them uncomfortable, touched them for too long, or invaded their personal space in a way that was both inappropriate and unwanted.
In March, Biden’s former staffer, Tara Reade, detailed her experience with the then-senator in 1993, saying he digitally penetrated her and then swiftly fired her when she attempted to file a complaint about the event.
Although the Biden camp has dismissed Reade’s story, in recent weeks it has been corroborated by several women. Even an old video has surfaced that appears to show Reade's late mother calling into CNN's Larry King Live to seek advice regarding her daughter's experiences with a prominent senator.
While the majority of these accusations against Biden remain unproven, he himself has said in interviews that touching a woman is not okay unless she verbally “affirmatively” consents. By his own definition and admission, he is guilty of the very thing he has dedicated his life to combating.
In a world where Title IX hearings presume an accused man guilty until proven innocent, it is not surprising that the court of public opinion holds Biden to account for his past indiscretions against the women around him.
Many videos and photos exist, showing the former vice president touching, smelling and attempting to kiss women and girls who are clearly, visibly upset by the unwanted affection. These instances have led to the nickname, “Creepy Uncle Joe”, which, by all accounts, does not appear unfair or misplaced.
Biden made sure that Title IX introduced a series of opaque rules and processes against young men on campuses that left them with no tangible way to defend their academic future, subjected them to intense scrutiny and bias by an extra-legal, unelected panel of school officials, and failed to outline the clear rules of consent by which they might find themselves judged.
It breathed life into false accusations that have destroyed the lives of a breadth of men over the years.
But this should not come as a shock to anyone.
The country seems to have forgotten Biden’s role in the case of Anita Hill, a young woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in 1991. Biden later admitted that he knew parts of Hill’s testimony were untrue.
During the proceedings, he called no independent experts and was later accused of hiding witnesses who might have damaged the case. In the end, Biden, the defender of women, allowed Hill to drown on the witness stand, defending herself alone with the eyes of America watching.
It was a disaster.
But, if there was ever a question of Biden’s indifference to women’s rights, false accusations and due process, the answer was crystallized in 1991.
Here we are almost three decades later and it appears not a great deal has changed.
What is perhaps most striking is how Biden can’t seem to comprehend or even abide by the new rules of engagement between the sexes he helped establish. In 2016 he told students at the University of Nevada Las Vegas that “if consent cannot be given, it is a crime” and to “ostracize the abuser, make them the pariah on campus.”
But when referring to his own actions of unwanted hair smelling, touching, kissing and hugging in a statement, he called them “expressions of affection, support and comfort.”
If Biden were a student on a college campus in today’s America, he would be subjected to a panel of prejudiced Title IX adjudicators, who, more than likely, would find his “expressions of affection” potentially worthy of expulsion.
But if Biden were held to the same standards he helped engineer and enforce, he would be ostracized and treated as a social pariah rather than the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
As it stands, the former vice president is being rewarded for a career of detrimental legislation—legislation that has both destroyed the lives of men, obliterated due process and excised the rule of law—with a presumption of innocence he himself has not afforded to thousands of men across the United States.
The Obama-era Title IX guidance is only one in a long line of Biden’s bad policies, but it has proven to be without question one of the most destructive. What is perhaps most egregious is that Biden, as the architect of false accusations, is unlikely to find himself held to the same standards of guilt he instituted for so many others.
Comments