The new panic: campus sex assaults

Article here. Excerpt:

'The campus sexual assault panic — one of many runaway social epidemics in our nation’s history that have ruined innocent lives and corrupted justice — has now reached its peak. A return to sanity is called for before more wreckage occurs.

My own first memory of a similar panic is the hunt for Communists in America in the period following World War II. There was the infamous “Red Channels,” an anti-communist pamphlet financed primarily by Alfred Kohlberg, a textile magnate with business interests in China and an ally of Chiang Kai-shek. The publication served as a blacklist for the entertainment industry, ending the careers of anyone reportedly linked to organizations remotely identifiable as “progressive.” There was also the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the never-to-be-forgotten Senator Joseph McCarthy. Together, these men helped create a national climate of suspicion that ferreted out very few actual security threats, but ended up punishing many innocents. Remnants of the hunt persisted, but the “scare” essentially died with the senator himself in 1957.
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The latest national hysteria over campus sexual assault combines aspects of its predecessors: the salacious outrage that characterized the daycare sex panic and the dubious federal stamp of approval that made McCarthyism’s excesses so dangerous. Spectacular — but widely disputed — statistics are touted: 1 in 5 women is sexually assaulted in college, 1 in 3 male students is a potential rapist. The rhetoric popularized by mattress protests and awareness documentaries is a simple one: “Believe the accuser!”'