Sorry, if I keep harping on the Joe Biden situation. But I missed something in my last post that K. C. Johnson exposes well. Joe Biden has long pushed for policies that weaken due process and the presumption of innocence for college men accused of sexual misconduct:
Perhaps no major American political figure has so consistently championed the erosion of due process for those accused of sexual misconduct. Even if Flores’s claims might be unprovable, distorted, or simply wrong, changing the culture about sexual misconduct and mistreatment of women requires that we accept her version of events. Biden will now learn firsthand how the mantra of “believe all survivors” has the effect of presuming the guilt of the accused.
Biden has certainly championed this approach for accused college students, as the Obama administration used Title IX to impose guilt-tilting procedures on the nation’s campuses. Until 2016, high-ranking administration officials consistently refused to provide much, if any, explanation on why they imposed a preponderance-of-evidence (a hair over 50 percent) standard; discouraged colleges from granting accused students the right to cross-examination; or demanded that schools let accusers appeal not-guilty findings.
Biden has been the most outspoken senior Obama administration figure to defend these policies. . . . Biden responded with fury to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s attempts to create fairer procedures for adjudicating campus sexual-assault claims. In a September 2017 conference call with victims’-rights activists, the former vice president derided DeVos’s supporters as “culturally Neanderthals.”
Well, now Biden is on the receiving end of accusations. Ironic is it not? It almost makes me believe in karma.
But just as I’ve expressed the desire that Biden be treated more fairly than he has treated Justice Clarence Thomas, I also desire that he is treated more justly than he and Obama treated college students accused of sexual misconduct.
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