The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities

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In recent years, politicians led by President Obama and prominent senators and governors have teamed with extremists on campus to portray our nations institutions of higher learning as awash in a violent crime waveand to suggest (preposterously) that university leaders, professors, and students are indifferent to female sexual assault victims in their midst. Neither of these claims has any bearing to reality. But they have achieved widespread acceptance, thanks in part to misleading alarums from the Obama administration and biased media coverage led by The New York Times.

The frenzy about campus rape has helped stimulateand has been fanned byideologically skewed campus sexual assault policies and lawless commands issued by federal bureaucrats to force the nations all-too-compliant colleges and universities essentially to presume the guilt of accused students. The result has been a widespread disregard of such bedrock American principles as the presumption of innocence and the need for fair play.

This book uses hard facts to set the record straight. It explores, among other things, nearly two dozen of the cases since 2010 in which students who in all likelihood would have or have subsequently been found not guilty in a court of law have, in a lopsided process, been hastily and carelessly branded as sex criminals and expelled or otherwise punished by their colleges, often after being tarred and feathered by their fellow students. And it shows why all studentsand, eventually, society as a wholeare harmed when our nations universities abandon pursuit of truth and seek instead to accommodate the passions of the mob.

As detailed in the new Epilogue, some encouraging events have transpired since this book was first published in October 2016. A majority of the judicial rulings indozens of lawsuits by male students claiming their schools treated them unfairly and discriminated against them based on their genderhave rebuked the schools for their handling of these cases. And Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called for fairness to accused students and accusers alike, revoked most of theguilt-presumingObama-era policies, and began a protracted rule-making process designed to compel procedural fairness and nondiscrimination.

Author Bio

KC Johnson is a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where he specializes in recent U.S. political, diplomatic, and legal matters. He has written five books, co-written a sixth, and edited or co-edited six additional books. He has commented widely on higher education matters, both for the blog Minding the Campus and in op-eds for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Daily News, and other publications. Stuart Taylor Jr. is a freelance writer focusing on legal and policy issues. He is also a National Journal contributing editor. He has coauthored two critically acclaimed books: (with Richard Sander) Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It (2012) and (with KC Johnson) Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case (2007).