Barack Obama sure has a short memory. Perhaps he's getting old and he's forgotten his attempts to squelch free speech and destroy due process when trying to implement his "the woman is always right" Title IX changes.
The former president got way up on his high horse to criticize Trump, all the way to the nosebleed section.
Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and… https://t.co/gAu9UUqgjF
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 15, 2025
Harvard hasn't benefited from "an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate, and mutual respect" since colonial times. But that's beside the point. The Obama administration carried out the exact same policy when trying to implement its changes to the sexual misconduct policies of all schools that received federal funding. Those changes undermined due process by forcing those defending themselves against sexual misconduct charges to prove their innocence, turning the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" on its head. "[T]hese new policies also harmed free speech and academic freedom, as several professors who spoke out against the policies were subsequently accused of violating them," writes Reason's Robby Soave.
This was the perverse logic of Obama's approach to Title IX, the federal statute that outlaws sex discrimination in education: His federal bureaucrats created such a morass that campus administrators felt obligated to investigate professors for criticizing the Education Department.
Moreover, the Obama-era policies were stridently opposed by Harvard's law faculty. In October 2014, 28 Harvard law professors signed an open letter condemning the federal government's meddling and encouraging the university to resist tyranny via Title IX.
"The university's sexual harassment policy departs dramatically from these legal principles, jettisoning balance and fairness in the rush to appease certain federal administrative officials," wrote the professors. "We recognize that large amounts of federal funding may ultimately be at stake. But Harvard University is positioned as well as any academic institution in the country to stand up for principle in the face of funding threats."
The letter was dated October 14, 2014.
Harvard had no trouble caving to the Obama administration at that time. Most schools gladly changed their policies and curricula to comply with the new Title IX policy.
But Elizabeth Bartholet, a veteran law professor at Harvard Law who teaches civil rights and family law, called the federal government's sexual misconduct campaign against colleges "madness."
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"I believe that history will demonstrate the federal government's position to be wrong, that our society will look back on this time as a moment of madness, and that Harvard University will be deeply shamed at the role it played in simply caving to the government's position," she told The Wall Street Journal at the time.
Shame? Harvard doesn't know the meaning of the word.
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