Article here. Jump the paywall by Googling the first paragraph text. Excerpt:

'Boston police reported fewer calls for intimate-partner domestic violence in March and April than in the same period last year — a seemingly positive trend that nonetheless worries officials and advocates who fear victims are reluctant to report abuse while advised to stay at home due to a pandemic.

“You’re going to see underreporting because people are afraid. They’re living with their abuser," Attorney General Maura Healey said in an interview Tuesday. "It’s hard for them to make a phone call. It’s hard for them to go online even.”'

Press release here. Excerpt:

'The Coalition to End Domestic Violence is warning lawmakers of continued false claims of a “surge” and “spike” of domestic violence cases as a result of coronavirus stay-at-home policies. Such claims have been refuted by 30 police reports from 17 states around the country, which are listed below.

Calls requesting police assistance (“calls for service”) are the most reliable indicator of domestic violence trends, for three reasons:

1. Domestic violence victims or witnesses are able to make a 911 call and be connected to law enforcement officials within seconds.

2. The volume of calls is tracked by a neutral government agency, not an advocacy organization.

3. Many calls to domestic violence hotlines and shelters are requests for information about immigration, housing, or childcare (1).

Article here. Excerpt:

'Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' revised federal guidelines on how sexual assault allegations should be handled on college and K-12 campuses are the target of a federal lawsuit filed Thursday claiming that the changes would "inflict significant harm" on victims and "dramatically undermine" their civil rights.

The suit, filed on behalf of four advocacy groups for people who have been sexually assaulted, including Know Your IX and Girls for Gender Equity, is the first that seeks to block the Education Department's new provisions before they go into effect on Aug. 14.

The rules championed by DeVos effectively bolster the rights of due process for those accused of sexual assault and harassment, allowing for live hearings and cross-examinations. It's what agency officials say was lacking during the Obama administration to protect all students under Title IX, a 1972 law that prohibits gender discrimination, including sexual assault, at schools.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A discrimination lawsuit against Colgate University led by a male former student is moving to trial in the U.S. District Court in Syracuse, New York. In 2017 an unidentified student at the university was charged with four counts of sexual misconduct. Three of the charges were dropped during a campus hearing, however, the student was found guilty on the fourth charge of non-consensual sex.

Colgate University moved to expel the male student with Interim Vice President stating in a court hearing that a “finding of responsibility for sexual assault is a significant offense and one that we believed warranted separation from the institution.”

The male student using the pseudonym “John Doe” filed a lawsuit against Colgate University on the basis of gender discrimination throughout the sexual misconduct investigation and during sanctioning.

Doe claims the campus hearing panel’s decision to expel was swayed by his gender.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The hashtag #BelieveWomen stemmed from an era when women claiming to have been sexually assaulted were broadly dismissed. That is, if you ignore the history of white women falsely accusing black men of rape. Those women were largely believed and the accused often summarily tortured and hung by the neck from a tree.
...
Between 1881 and 1968, 3,446 black men were killed by lynching, a number drawn from the Tuskegee Institute archives. Almost a quarter of lynching victims had been accused of sexual assault, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.

A scholar, Wells didn’t ignore the reality that some rapes happened. She held, rather, that many such charges followed the discovery of consensual relationships between black men and white women – of which there were many.

Regarded as a vessel of Victorian purity, a white woman’s word was rarely doubted. That made legal proceedings unnecessary in the minds of the racist mob.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Men's blood has higher levels than women's of a key enzyme used by the new coronavirus to infect cells, the results of a big European study showed on Monday -- a finding which may help explain why men are more vulnerable to infection with COVID-19.

Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is found in the heart, kidneys and other organs. In COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, it is thought to play a role in how the infection progresses into the lungs.

The study, published in the European Heart Journal, also found that widely-prescribed drugs called ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) did not lead to higher ACE2 concentrations and should therefore not increase the COVID-19 risk for people taking them.

ACE inhibitors and ARBs are widely prescribed to patients with congestive heart failure, diabetes or kidney disease. The drugs account for billions of dollars in prescription sales worldwide.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Federal Department of Education sex discrimination investigations have been opened on Fayette County Schools’ new all-girls elementary STEM program and four female-only STEM programs at the University of Kentucky following complaints from a Michigan professor.

Officials in the Department’s Office of Civil Rights confirmed in letters to professor Mark Perry dated Friday and April 30 that the office was investigating his complaints about the elementary school set to open in the fall and about the UK programs. Determinations have not been made on the merits of the complaints, the letters said.

Title IX is a federal law that says “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Students who were dubiously accused of sexual assault through the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s kangaroo court system – even more than a decade ago – will soon have their names made public, along with the offense of which they were accused, and the punishment they received if found responsible.

Noticeably absent from the information will be the details of the allegation, which would help to explain whether the student was wrongly found responsible and to what extent UNC-CH went to find them responsible anyway.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Former vice president Joe Biden promised on Wednesday that as president he would reverse new due process protections that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos put in place to protect university students accused of sexual assault, saying they “shame and silence survivors, and take away parents’ peace of mind.”

Biden, who has recently been accused of sexual assault in 1993 by a woman who worked for him, said the new rules give colleges and universities a “green light to ignore sexual violence and strip survivors of their rights.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Both the Department of Education and President Donald Trump’s campaign pushed back on 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden’s promise to reverse due process rules for campus sexual assault on Thursday.

The former vice president, who faces sexual assault allegations by his former Senate staffer Tara Reade, promised Wednesday to reverse Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s Title IX protections for those accused of sexual assault on college campuses. The protections are the Trump administration’s effort to “shame and silence” sexual assault victims, he added in a statement.
...
“Does Joe still stand by his presumption of guilt for the accused – or has he set a new standard for himself in the face of his own sexual assault accusations from a former staffer,” Perrine added.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'But, Joe Biden is the first major party presidential candidate to announce that he is committed to a female running mate, before actually choosing who that running mate will be. In other words, he’s the first to limit the pool of candidates to only women. “And I commit that I’ll pick a woman to be vice-president. There are a number of women who are qualified to be president tomorrow, I would pick a woman to be my vice-president,” Biden declared during the March democratic debate.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Trump administration released new guidelines Wednesday for how universities and K-12 schools should handle complaints of sexual assault and misconduct as part of a contentious overhaul that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos launched in 2017.

Now, under reworked federal rules, alleged student perpetrators will have added protections, including the presumption that they are innocent throughout the disciplinary process and the right to be provided all evidence collected against them. Those students can also cross-examine their accusers and vice versa during live hearings, although it must be done through a lawyer or representative.

The changes, described in a more than 2,000-page document, go into effect on Aug. 14.

They come after the Education Department "heard from too many students whose careers were tarnished by administrators without any resemblance to due process," Kenneth Marcus, the agency's assistant secretary of civil rights, told reporters. "This must stop."

Article here. Excerpt:

'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."

A group of 266 distinguished faculty members released a Faculty Resolution in Support of the Prompt Restoration of Free Speech and Due Process on Campus.

The Resolution concludes with an urgent appeal:

"The undersigned professors call on lawmakers and university administrators to assure the prompt implementation of new policies that will clarify grievance procedures, enhance free speech, and embrace fairness for all."

Among other institutions, the group is comprised of professors from 25 prestigious law schools, including, Stanford University, Harvard Law School, University of Virginia and University of California-Berkeley.

There are numerous examples of faculty members whose constitutionally based free speech and due process rights have been curtailed (1).

SAVE urges the prompt implementation of the new Title IX regulation, which is expected to be released soon.

Sign the Petition!

The United States Surgeon General, Dr. Jerome Adams, has called upon doctors and hospitals to stop conducting elective, non-essential surgeries during the coronavirus pandemic, to conserve personal protective equipment and other resources needed to care for patients suffering from COVID-19.

Dr. Adams’ directive applied to adult surgeries. But what about non-essential child surgeries, such as “routine” newborn circumcision?

Although it is the most common pediatric surgery performed in the United States, infant male circumcision treats no disease and serves no therapeutic purpose. The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated there is insufficient evidence to recommend circumcision for all boys. If it is not essential to circumcise baby boys in England, Europe, or Australia, how can the United States continue to circumcise baby boys in the current pandemic and beyond?