‘Sexual Harassment Policies Need Reform’

Do not miss Wendy McElroy’s piece on the abuse of “sexual harassment” from grade school through college. As we wrote on the home page:

McElroy aptly rebukes the AAUW for “the harm wrought to children by biased reports that lump ‘comments, jokes, teasing, gestures, or looks’ in with real violence.” FIRE salutes Wendy McElroy for bravely drawing attention to the ongoing national scandal of overbroad and vague campus sexual harassment policies.

The misuse of sexual harassment rationales has been a constant theme in FIRE’s work, with students and faculty alike demonstrtating a tendency to cry “harassment” any time they are exposed to speech they dislike. As I wrote in a column for the Daily Journal on the terrible Lyle decision, “Claims of harassment are not an incidental or occasional threat to free speech on campus; they are the single biggest loophole to punish protected speech on campus and have been for decades now.”

here badly needs to be reform within the law of sexual harassment and within local and institutional policies or free speech will suffer and absurd abuses like those at William Paterson University, University of New Hampshire, Occidental College, and countless others will continue to propagate.