'Minding the Campus' Applauds FIRE, Criticizes Stanford's Due Process Failures

In response to our press release from yesterday as well as Samantha's op-ed in the New York Post, Professor KC Johnson has written an article on Minding the Campus praising FIRE for its work in exposing the blatantly biased materials Stanford University uses to train those in charge of adjudicating allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault. As we reported, these materials (excerpted from Lundy Bancroft's book, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men) teach student jurors that "act[ing] persuasive and logical" is a sign of guilt, that "[t]he great majority of allegations of abuse—though not all—are substantially accurate," and that they should be "very, very cautious in accepting a man's claim that he has been wrongly accused of abuse or violence." Like FIRE, Johnson recognizes that these training materials encourage student jurors to presume that accused students are guilty until they can prove their innocence—a bias that has no place in an adjudicatory body at any level, and certainly not on a college campus. (Take a look for yourself!)

Johnson also points out the inaccuracy maintained by Stanford in claiming that accused students are "protect[ed] from...malicious prosecution" when he writes:

...while Stanford suggests that its students are "reasonably" protected against "malicious" prosecution, it has endorsed a volume that suggests accusers almost never lie, and requires the accused student to be adjudicated through a process that's wildly skewed toward the accuser.

If you share in FIRE's and Johnson's outrage over Stanford's judicial proceedings, tell Stanford President Dr. John Hennessy what you think.