Trading the Megaphone for the Gavel in Title IX Enforcement

Article here. Excerpt:

'When feminist advocates on campus sexual assault “speak truth to power,” they speak for (and often as) victims and survivors. In that position, it’s perfectly fair for them to pick and choose the constituencies to which they give voice. They can and should specialize. But as feminists issue a series of commands from within the federal government about what the problem of campus sexual violence is and how it must be handled, and as they build new institutions that give life to those commands, they become part of governmental power. Now that they have the power to adjudicate cases and determine sanctions, they are facing the full range of cases. For those feminists — and I would argue they should include, by now, the advocacy branch — the days of specialization should be over. It is time to govern. The current moment is a classic opportunity to observe how advocates turn their rhetorical tools and social-movement protest into institutional government.
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One of the most dangerous effects of the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) campaign to force institutions of higher education to take sexual harassment and sexual assault on campus more seriously is the idea — vividly manifested in the institutional reforms adopted at Harvard University last summer — that a single-purpose Title IX office, specializing exclusively in sexual and gender-based harassment, is the right institutional response. Title IX, after all, is dedicated solely to sex discrimination; the Harvard Title IX Office, dedicated exclusively to enforcing the University’s new rules on sexual and gender-based harassment, has no mandate to ensure racial equality. Case after Harvard case that has come to my attention, including several in which I have played some advocacy or adjudication role, has involved black male respondents, but the institution cannot “know” this because it has not been thought important enough to monitor for racial bias.'