To the editor:
Of course the process was arbitrary, unfair, malicious, and rigged. What else is new?
The outcome was (or should have been) apparent at the start. As soon as Prof. Porter had the gall, the temerity, the deplorably, non-Progressive chutzpah (many would call it blind stupidity) to question & doubt the Star Chamber judgments rendered via Title IX, he was doomed.
“He washed his hands and sealed his fate”, as Mick might say.
The professor, quite wrongly, believed that there is a higher morality of Right & Wrong, Good & Bad….that Truth (with a capital T which rhymes with P and stands for Trouble) somehow should triumph over emotive voguing and fashionable angst. That the University should stand as a Beacon of Rationality in which all kinds of uncomfortable things are squarely addressed to separate Fact from Fiction.
He simply doesn’t understand.
The ‘lived truth’ of a professional victim (defined purely by class membership in a protected species) trumps everything. It doesn’t matter what objectively happened or what an unbiased outside observer might observe. What matters is that Suzie felt bad, felt threatened, was offended, and experienced an Unwanted Thing. The source of that Unwanted Thing must, therefore, suffer.
Actions, so they say, have Consequences. And whatever action it was which triggered this Unwanted Offending (meaning per the new definition both Sexual Assault & Sexual Harassment), that action and its actor must be punished.
Certainly the Courts might eventually find that Prof. Porter was right, that the NAS was correct, that the Administration was painfully & obviously WRONG…and just maybe $$’s will change hands. But so what? The Courts have been finding these Kriminal Klown Proceedings on Kollege Kampuses to be little more than circuses for several years now. Trump and his DoE tried to change these things with little effect and now Biden and HIS DoE are busy changing them back. In both cases the Universities were clear: they do not wish to become less Woke. They do not wish to recognize responsibility on the part of anyone other than the perennially Accused. They believe the primary duty of Faculty is to create Pleasant Experiences. They know the world is divided between Victims and Oppressors….and they know the Victim is always right (much like the customer)….and they know which side their bread is buttered upon. They despise the ambiguity which is real life and much prefer the inevitable finding of malfeasance founded on the slippery slope of moral relativism.
We’ll see what happens. But even if Prof. Porter is vindicated, is there any reason for optimism that this idiocy will change?
