A press release promoting the app “I’ve Been Violated” arrived in my inbox last week, just as I was about to dig into The History, Uses, and Abuses of Title IX, a new report by the American Association of University Professors.
Written by a five-member committee, The History, Uses and Abuses of Title IX traces the evolution of the legislation (signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1972) from its origins as a tool to fight sex discrimination in academic hiring, through its revolutionary impact on school and college athletics, to its current high profile use in addressing complaints of sexual assault and harassment.
It’s that current use that has gotten out of hand, AAUP says, mostly due to a morphing definition of “sexual harassment” that equates talk and action.
“We do not argue that speech can never create a hostile environment, nor that all speech is protected,” the report says. “We do argue that questions of free speech and academic freedom have been ignored in recent positions taken by the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education [DOE], which is charged with implementing the law, and by university administrators.”
According to the report, the DOE’s power to withhold federal funds from Title IX violators is what strikes fear in the hearts of college administrators, most of whom now operate in a risk-averse, corporate university environment, “in which student satisfaction as ‘education consumers’ is paramount.” The result, they says, has been overly aggressive enforcement of policies often developed without faculty input, and an emphasis on prevention that can have a chilling effect on teaching and research.
AAUP—always a champion of “shared governance”—wants faculty input on Title IX policies and procedures, and peer review of complaints against faculty members. The report also proposes a broader, more systemic approach to problems of sexual discrimination, including support for more teaching and research on all kinds of inequality.
