If We Judged Joe Biden Under the Title IX Standards He Championed for Accused Student Rapists, He Would Be Guilty
The former vice president pushed Title IX reforms that took a believe-victims approach and harmed due process.
The sexual assault allegation against former Vice President Joe Biden is finally receiving the attention it deserves from the mainstream media. Last Friday, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee forcefully denied the accusation, saying that "it never happened."
Key to his denial was the fact that the incident allegedly took place 27 years ago and that hard evidence to support former staffer Tara Reade's sexual assault claim has not materialized. Biden supporters have also pointed out that Reade has told several different stories over the years about what allegedly happened.
But, under the standards that Biden himself has championed in college sexual misconduct cases, none of these facts would necessarily be enough for an accused person to avoid sanction. As I argue in a recent op-ed for The Washington Examiner, "If the allegation against Biden were being decided by the kind of adjudication system that he helped enshrine on college campuses, it's quite likely that he would be found guilty."
This should matter a great deal for how we discuss the allegation against Biden. Indeed, how would Biden want this claim to be adjudicated if the accused were someone else is one of the more obvious frameworks for proceeding. The fact that this framework would quite likely produce an outcome in this matter that would dissatisfy many mainstream liberals and Democrats may be a good reason for them to abandon it as a general standard.
Under the system Biden helped foist upon virtually all college campuses in the country, students accused of sexual misconduct are routinely denied the ability to effectively defend themselves. They often do not even receive hearings—Obama-era federal guidance pushed a single-investigator model in which even presenting evidence on one's behalf becomes a tough task. As I note in the Examiner:
Samantha Harris, an attorney specializing in campus disciplinary issues and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, told me, "For years, Biden has been a leading proponent of a system under which students accused of sexual misconduct are presumed guilty and routinely expelled without so much as a hearing or the opportunity to confront their accuser."
For one thing, the Obama-era standards essentially obligated universities to investigate all sexual misconduct complaints no matter how long ago they had occurred. Many are adjudicated months or even years after the incident in question. According to one survey by an insurance group, the average period of delay is 11 months.
For another, universities have been encouraged to adopt a victim-centered approach to adjudication. This means that inconsistencies in a victim's story are not considered disqualifying: On the contrary, they are to be anticipated. The University of Texas at Austin's sexual assault investigation training materials, for instance, stress that "trauma victims often omit, exaggerate, or make up information when trying to make sense of what happened to them or to fill gaps in memory."
Even if the accused has solid evidence on his or her side, there is little guarantee that the individual would be afforded a fair hearing. Federal guidance discouraged cross-examination at misconduct hearings, instead recommending a single investigator model of adjudication. Under this model, one university official is appointed to determine the charges, collect statements from both parties, decide which witnesses to interview (if any), and then publish a report that effectively decides the matter.
Read the rest of my op-ed here.
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He was accused.
He identifies as male.
He is guilty.
Period.
He is guilty because:
intersectionality points of accuser > intersectionality points of accused
You neglect to include his “Political Ally,” “Democrat Politician,” “Democrat Candidate,” and “Orange Man Bad” points, which put Biden’s intersectionality score far above that of even a disabled, black, Muslim, lesbian transwoman with COVID.
And he also did it. It’s obvious if you look at the weasel trying to deny it. He’s as evasive and slimy as Bubba Clinton ever was.
-jcr
His Alzheimer’s made him forget it, so plausible deniability.
Yeah, because Trump is still functioning super high intellectually. You Trump Daddy worshippers are pathetic.
Damn dude Trump lives in your head.
Along with a variety of snakes, apparently.
He never mentioned Trump. Curiously, you did.
Don’t be too hard on him, he asked someone out in another thread and got rejected, he’s just lashing out
“Trump Daddy”
So you’re saying Trump fucked your mom?
“YEAH, BUT WHATABOUT…..?”
Get’s old dude.
The fact that this framework would quite likely produce an outcome in this matter that would dissatisfy many mainstream liberals and Democrats may be a good reason for them to abandon it as a general standard.
What is this “reason” of which you speak?
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If we judged him by even the loosest standards of #MeToo, he’d be sharing a cell with Harvey Weinstein.
Preferably he could ‘share a cell’ with Epstein.
Wink, wink…
If #MeToo had any principles, they would be stuck with voting for Amash.
“If We Judged Joe Biden Under the Title IX Standards He Championed for Accused Student Rapists, He Would Be Guilty”
Read the post.
I read the link.
Still isn’t entirely clear to me whether Robby is saying that Title IX should be trashed or whether Robby is saying that Joe Biden should be held to Title IX standards–but it appears to be the latter.
Title IX standards are an horrific monstrosity that should be abandoned. They are not standards that would make the world a more just place if only they were applied equally to everyone.
I have the impression that Robby just wants consistency and is pointing out obvious hypocrisy. He does not defend those standards.
It’s been about how the standards should be applied equally (rather than how badly the underlying assumptions are) for years, hasn’t it?
If the underlying assumptions are the problem, then applying them equally to everybody is not the solution.
No, but sometimes applying the law equally is the only way to stop applying them at all, let alone unequally.
Agreed. If you have a bad law, but you apply it arbitrarily and unfairly, that’s even more disastrous in my opinion.
Absolute garbage. Injustice isn’t the solution to anything, and we’ve already been through this discussion.
Meanwhile, Robby isn’t arguing that Title IX should be applied equally so that the underlying injustice will provoke change–anywhere.
He seems to just be arguing that Title IX should be applied equally to everyone–ignoring the underlying injustice–because a) he doesn’t believe Title IX is fundamentally unjust and b) because he thinks that if Title IX were applied to everyone equally, that would make it just.
In fact, why don’t you quote the part, here or in any other Title IX article of Robby’s, that explains that Title IX is fundamentally unjust.
Then you can link to the quote where he claims that because it’s so fundamentally unjust, pissing everyone off equally with injustice is the best way promote justice.
Honestly? From the source article:
“These practices were prescribed with the best of intentions in response to a very serious problem. But they have also undermined the ability of the accused, usually men and often men of color, to get a fair hearing. Many campuses routinely deprive students of the ability to defend themselves effectively and default toward believing accusers — no matter how long it takes them to come forward.”
He’s opined about the fundamental issues with the lack of due process in Title IX cases numerous times.
Absolute garbage. Injustice isn’t the solution to anything, and we’ve already been through this discussion.
And you were shown to be wrong there, too, as I recall. Weird that you’re spouting the same thing today. Why allow Democratic candidates to be immune from the publicity standards they set for others? Because that is, in essence, what you suggest.
Shown to be wrong about injustice breeding more injustice?!
That’s something that happened in your mind–not in the real world.
Fuck off Ken.
Ken don’t alter his paradigms
It’s not about Title IX itself, it’s about the Dear Colleague letter that Biden wants to get forced back onto universities
He’s criticizing Biden for foisting a particular adjudication method of title IX on universities. By implication, that method is bad. But it’s also Biden’s fault, in large part.
“If the underlying assumptions are the problem, then applying them equally to everybody is not the solution.”
Forcing it to be applied consistently can be key to getting political support for fixing the underlying problem.
After all, if the problem only affects my political enemies because it’s not applied consistently then what do I gain by supporting efforts to fix the problem.
“Forcing it to be applied consistently can be key to getting political support for fixing the underlying problem.”
I absolutely disagree.
Being the victim of injustice makes people less sensitive to others whose rights are being violated–not more so.
Being the victim of injustice doesn’t make people want justice. It makes them want revenge. It doesn’t make them conscientious. It makes them angry.
Why, when I was a kid, we had to walk five miles to school through blizzards! You should be grateful I don’t paddle you smiling like my Dad used to do!
I mean, seriously, when’s the last time you met someone who was treated like shit so bad for so long that they finally became sensitive to the victims of abuse?
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind–not out to protect others from injustice. I wish the world were more Christian than it is, but . . . do you imagine that being the victim of terrorist attacks made the Ulster Defense Force any more sensitive to the injustices suffered by the IRA soldiers? Do you imagine that UDA reprisals made the IRA any more sensitive to the injustices suffered by the UDA? Why would anyone think the world worked that way?
The idea that people should turn the other cheek, bless those that curse them, love those that hate them, and do good unto those who abuse us may be supernatural in origin. I’ve made an amateur investigation of the ideas about how altrusim arises in the natural world through evolutionary processes. It’s a fascinating topic–and kin selection doesn’t seem to explain it. Even if the existence of altruism in the face of survival of the fittest is of supernatural origin, however, that doesn’t mean it’s a general rule.
Injustice makes people angry and vindictive, and spreading it around to more people doesn’t make the world less vindictive. It makes it more so.
Soave’s walking the millennial version of the cocktail party circuit tightrope, baby.
I took the whole thing to express to the group-formerly-known-as-believe-all-women that perhaps since its current victim’s victim is the only line of defense against four more years of Trump that maybe it would be a good time to rethink the low standards of guilt-finding. Unfortunately for Roberto and hypothetical hapless college student Biden, that would require those who have taken a single-sentence law and expanded its power beyond all reason to align with Betsy DeVos and that simply ain’t happening.
Nah, all the cocktail parties are cancelled.
No that’s just what they told you.
YOU’RE CANCELLED!
Everyone who spells canceled with two L’s is CANCEL-ED.
Totally agreed.
word.
Worrd
Title IX standards are an horrific monstrosity that should be abandoned. They are not standards that would make the world a more just place if only they were applied equally to everyone.
And yet what’s the incentive to abandon them if only one side applies them? It’s like playing against somebody who cheats and telling yourself that you’re refusing to stoop to their level by cheating despite the fact that you’re repeatedly getting your ass kicked. If the other side wants to cheat, well, okay then, the new rules are that cheating is allowed. Once the other side gets a dose of their own medicine, they might be more amenable to the idea that maybe the old rules where nobody is allowed to cheat is a better arrangement. It may be true that “an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind”, but just standing there and doing nothing while your enemy jabs your eyeballs out leaves only you blind and that’s a pretty piss-poor strategy for fighting.
Can we do like online video games do and just quarantine all the cheaters into one game so they have to cheat against themselves?
It’s called Twitter.
Or California.
Have you been a victim of injustice by way of Title IX or did you come to oppose it without being a victim?
I’ve never been a victim of torture at Guantanamo, but I’ve always opposed torturing terrorists anyway.
I was opposed to motorcycle theft long before anyone ever stole my motorcycle, and having my motorcycle stolen didn’t make me more likely to respect the thief’s rights.
The theory that people become more opposed to inflicting injustice on others after they’ve been the victims of injustice requires substantiation. I can think of an exception or two to prove the rule, but generally speaking, as people are subjected to more and more injustice, they become more likely to inflict injustice on others–not less so.
Regardless, being opposed to injustice does not require being the victim of injustice. Why, I bet you’ve never been raped–and yet you’re probably against rape anyway.
“being opposed to injustice does not require being the victim of injustice”
No, but perpetrating or perpetuating injustice against someone else reduces the margin for you to claim injustice.
Holding someone to the standards they have imposed on others is as just as it gets.
The fact that there’s a legal system in place and the reworking of title ix during the obama/biden years was no more than another way to use $ to force institutions into behaviors that the administration desired. See also operation choke point.
Robby has always seemed anti-Title IX egregiousness.
Those standards should be applied to those who supported and promulgated them, and no-one else.
The Liberals have mutated Title IX in order to weaponize it. The original idea was not bad.
The worse thing to come out of Title IX is the WNBA. Once we started forcing schools to have a girl’s basketball team it was just a matter of time until we ended up with a second rate professional league.
This is mostly tongue in cheek.
As a UCONN alum: shut your damn whore mouth.
Well UConn need something to be proud of, even if it girl’s basketball.
I hear Duke once had a really good Lacrosse team. What happened with that?
The prohibition on discriminating on the basis of sex seems just as straight-forward as the prohibition on discriminating on the basis of race, but plenty of people will argue that it only means you can’t discriminate against women and minorities but you’re still perfectly free to discriminate against men and white people. Everybody is equal, but some are more equal than others.
Everybody is equal, but some are more equal than others.
I know what this is supposed to mean, but it is vague to the point of nonsense. Maybe go with – everybody is supposedly equal, yet only some are afforded the force of government to prohibit being treated inequitably.
Take it up with Orwell.
In Animal Farm, the phrase had specific context. The pigs who wrote and rewrote it were also the ones making the rules, unlike the populace reacting to the intended and unintended consequences of discrimination and hate-crime legislation. That being the case, the reworded phase does not stand well on its own.
Orwell would most likely agree. He is pretty withering in his condemnation of weak metaphors in Politics and the English Language.
I was just be a bit snarky. 🙂
It is worse than that. The argument has been made that to ensure equality among identity groups, discrimination against some is required, particularly white males, though sometimes against those usually thought of as minorities (like East Asians in college admissions).
Differentiating on the basis of sex at least has a well established genetic and biological basis, whereas race is as much a social BS construct as facebooks 67 different genders.
As a libertarian, I have my own personal beliefs, opinions and principles but I accept that these are merely personal and that other people have the right to their own beliefs, opinions and principles. If Joe Biden wants to hold to the idea that all women should be believed and that all men should be presumed guilty in cases of sexual assault allegations, I must accept his right to hold to that idea. But I’ll be damned if I have to accept that he is free to claim whatever beliefs, opinions and principles he happens to be espousing at the moment for his own benefit are indeed beliefs, opinions, or principles. If you’re just saying whatever is most advantageous for you to say at the moment, those aren’t really beliefs, opinions or principles, they’re just lies and bullshit and fraud and you’re an unprincipled, lying, bullshitting fraud.
And senile.
Trump raped a bunch of the innocent young women in the Miss America Pageant, and Biden maybe accidentally brushed up against a staffer one time. You guys are pathetic with this Trump Cult you’ve joined.
I think when you parody people, you’re supposed to make it a parody.
I don’t think he is a parody. He actually believes that.
Ok. Fair enough.
But… we already have sarcsmic to give us takes like that, what do we need fake sarc for?
Honestly, I can’t tell what is parody and what is real anymore. Most people seem to be beyond parody.
The day after you attempt to parody something, it becomes reality.
The Babylon Bee accidentally writes headlines that come true.
Poe’s Law is here.
Well that forgives Uncle Joe’s hypocrisy.
Lulz
Oh, please. Biden would simply have to spend years and money to take universities to court for due process violations to possibly, depending on the whims of the judge, regain a fraction of his reputation. And then if that lawsuit is settled in time he would be free to run for president again in four years.
However! Biden has something most accused men don’t have — the experience of being vetted for the Vice Presidency by Obama’s people. If Biden had done anything worthy of disqualification from high office, the Democrats of 2008 would have found it.
#IBelieveJoe
Now see, this isn’t good parody. I heard a Democrat make exactly that argument on a cable news show.
Trump has chosen Ex-Senator Chris Dodd,no lie, to help pick a VP. Joe’s exact words were “Chris go make me a sammich”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/05/exclusive-government-scientist-neil-ferguson-resigns-breaking/
The scientist who convinced the government to lock everyone in their houses is caught banging his married girlfriend in violation of the lock down order. She is actually pretty cute in that picture. As angry as it would make me if I were her husband, the fact that she was running around with such a fucking weasel would make it even more infuriating. I guess maybe her having that bad of taste in men would make it easier to kick her out on the street and let him have her. So there is that at least.
Under no circumstances should anyone engage in retaliatory violence against this man.
If there aren’t a few high profile pushers of this killed, it’ll only encourage them.
Sometimes the soap box and the ballot box just aren’t enough, and some transgressions demand human sacrifice
As first glance she’s cute, but look closer. I swear, her left eye is set 1/2 inch lower on her face than the right.
still cute. perfect does not exist in nature and all …
Oddly enough, I find perfect less attractive than most.
Too plastic
agreed
Not a very impressive pearl necklace from Neil….
Apparently, she and her husband are leftards in an “open marriage”, so he’s probably fucking around, too. I pity their kids. They will grow up with no idea at all of a normal family life.
-jcr
Haha Robby, well we all know that Biden will never get the scrutiny that gets applied to others. It’s fun to play what if though.
What if that faggot Sarcasmuck fell off a building. That’s a good one.
I never thought I’d feel even a little bit sorry for Al Franken. How inconsequential he must have been to have been thrown under the bus by his fellow progs.
People are prejudiced and predisposed to believe shit that reinforces their preexisting beliefs. Welcome to planet Earth. Robby’s slap ass attempt to tie these injustices around the neck of Biden is a good example of this very problem. There’s always more to the story. Things are rarely so simple.
Gee now if you just applied this principle to the Kavanaugh hearings or similar incidents.
Biden is one of the driving forces behind the Title IX rule of evidence.
Shhh, Axe doesn’t like facts if it makes a Democrat pol look like the piece of shit they are
“People are prejudiced and predisposed to believe shit that reinforces their preexisting beliefs. Welcome to planet Earth. Robby’s slap ass attempt to tie these injustices around the neck of Biden is a good example of this very problem. There’s always more to the story. Things are rarely so simple.”
Even Andrew Sullivan – not exactly a right-wing guy – properly frames the cognitive dissonance of US progressives on this matter: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/andrew-sullivan-by-bidens-own-standards-he-is-guilty.html
Yes, of course there’s more to the story and it’s not simple, but none of it puts Biden in a position of consistency. Of course, if you’ve got valid evidence to support an objectively reasonable defense of Biden in this area, please present it. If you do a really good job, perhaps Alyssa Milano will make you a sandwich.
Great article, thank you.
I’m old to remember Robby claiming that the real conspiracy theory was Kavanaugh *not* leading a gang of prep school rapists.
Joe Biden demonstrating the first stage of what is colloquially referred to as “motorboating.”
My complaint with Reason on Title IX is they make a big deal when a “conservative” or “male” uses it to make a complaint when they should be encouraging them to do it as much as they can. You can’t fight city hall but you sure can break it. That is what ended this nonsense back in the 90s. When men started making as many or more complaints they realized it could be used against them they dropped it like a hot potato. We should be encouraging men at colleges that as soon as they have any questionable encounter to make a complaint, anytime they feel the least bit challenged or uncomfortable by a discussion in class or on campus to file a complaint. If you slam the Title IX office with these complaints, they will have to stop the nonsense like they did in the 90s or expose themselves to an actual Title IX complaint for treating complaints from men different than women. It’s a win win situation.
This is already being adjudicated on campuses.
There are plenty of stories documented here and elsewhere of young men on campus filing complaints only to have the counter complaint upheld and their career ended.
You seem to be operating under the delusion that there is some kind of equity involved here. That there is some sort of sense of justice yearning to be addressed.
There is not. This is a group weapon wielded by one group against another. There will be no moment of realization. Those inculcated in this belief system will never give it up. The only possible way out of this box is to grow out of it. In that way, perhaps your solution is part of the answer. Because people living on college campuses right now are the ones who have to grow out of it so that we can expunge this in 20 or 30 years.
I have seen reporting here and elsewhere that attitudes among post-millennials are changing on this topic. But I’m not so sure. At least not at the elite schools. I have a couple of relatives who are currently studying at Elite liberal universities, and they are all in on all of it. The Title IX fuzzy definitions of consent and lack thereof, the evils of cultural appropriation, the necessary and Urgent nature of proper pronoun usage, all of it.
If you have not interacted with it in an up-close-and-personal way, your first run-in with a True Believer is kind of shocking. Particularly when you know that person to be extremely intelligent.
Of course, I have other relatives who are dealing with these cultural issues with arrows and stories of ridiculous buffoons in places of authority. So I suppose it is just a matter of which of those two groups wins out in the Next Generation.
The Dems by now realize Biden’s championing of asset forfeiture and shoot-first prohibitionism is what wrecks economies with recessions, unemployment and loss of retirement investment in securities. The gal is offering him and the Dems a second face-saving chance to back out–like the plagiarism hubbub the last time he nearly got to drag them down with the Dixiecrat and Gee-Oh-Pee urine-sniffers.
picking on Joe is barely fun anymore
THIS IS A JOB INTERVIEW NOT A CRIMINAL TRIAL!
Lol.
It’s humorous that the Senate won’t open the personnel records for anyone under any condition. Excuse me, but what is the point of keeping the records? Why don’t you just burn them?
Poor Brain-Damaged Biden….turnabout is fair play, right Joe?
We were told that we simply had to believe all women, and not vilify them for coming forward. So what happened here? Tara Reade is getting dragged through the mud. Where are all those feminists I heard from in 2018? Their silence is deafening. Hypocrites.
And the MSM? Please. Their actions over the last month wrt these revelations is revealing.
Great job Robby!
For those of us living in libertarian land, this is the obvious story, along with team Democrats treatment of Brett Kavanaugh.
The other story that screams out at Libertarians has to do with the fact that your story appeared in the Washington examiner instead of the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Etc.
The obvious and nasty wielding of such charges for either political purposes for simply as a gender-based power tool never seems to gain any traction though. Too many people are wedded to their toy, I suppose.
We have reached this point many times in the past. The attacks against Republicans in the late 80s and into the 90s led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. And the Democrats learned nothing. Well, nothing except for that they were able to successfully Protected Their Own.
And only Collegiate front, the Duke lacrosse team and the Rolling Stone article and Mattress girl did not give them pause. These exceptions merely proves the rule for them.
The astonishing thing for me is the high degree of unanimity in the Press. In what is still a male-dominated world, you would think that at least one organization would raise its hand and ask what we are doing here. But the prism of politics is much more powerful then any innate sense of justice or even a self-interest. You would think that the excesses of the me-too movement and spreadsheets being passed around on the internet cancelling men’s careers would have been enough to get their attention. But apparently when politics are involved, memories are short.