Professors’ group charges Obama administration with undermining academic freedom and due process - World Socialist Web Site

2.4.16

Professors’ group charges Obama administration with undermining academic freedom and due process - World Socialist Web Site: The report, “The History, Uses, and Abuses of Title IX,” argues that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Education (DOE) has “broadly defined sexual harassment in ways that undermine academic freedom and due process.”

Title IX is a portion of the federal Educational Amendments Act of 1972, which mandates that no one shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation or discriminated against under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

As the AAUP study indicates, discrimination on the basis of sex was extended to sexual harassment in the late 1970s. It was then generally applied to employees being subjected to demands for sex in exchange for favorable treatment, or the creation of an environment that unreasonably interfered with an individual’s ability to work. The courts began applying this standard to students as well in the 1980s.