Scholars oppose Dept. of Education's extremist April 4 directive

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), an organization with 47,000 members, sent a letter to the Education Department outlining its concerns over the sexual harassment guidelines in the agency's April 4 directive. The group cited the “preponderance of evidence” standard for proving an instance of harassment. The previous wording for the type of evidence required had been “clear and convincing.”



“Given the seriousness of accusations of harassment and sexual violence and the potential for accusations, even false ones, to ruin a faculty member’s career, we believe that the ‘clear and convincing’ standard of evidence is more appropriate than the ‘preponderance of evidence’ standard,” the letter says.



Glenn Ricketts of the National Association of Scholars previously condemned the directive here: http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doctype_code=Article&doc_id=2011



These are further indications that the unconscionable dangers to the presumptively innocent posed by the April 4 directive are widely apparent to important voices who do not write about "gender" issues. The April 4 directive represents an extremist position that is simply not consonant with our shared cultural values and the most fundamental notions of our liberty.



We've written about the directive extensively. See, e.g., here.



See http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/federal-education-guidelines/2011/08/19/id/407961 and

http://www.themoralliberal.com/2011/08/22/reflections-on-aaups-criticism-of-ocrs-preponderance-of-the-evidence-standard-in-defense-of-faculty-rights/