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Speaker 1: The top Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, says the

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Speaker 1: Education Department Civil Rights chief has crossed the lawn in

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Speaker 1: making callous and egregious comments about sexual assault on college

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Speaker 1: campuses and must be fired. Last week, Candice Jackson was

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Speaker 1: severely criticized for telling The New York Times that of

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Speaker 1: campus sexual assaults fall into the category of we were

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Speaker 1: both drunk. Jackson's apology was not enough for Senator Parrott

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Speaker 1: Patty Murray, who said Jackson has worked to narrow the

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Speaker 1: role of the office in protecting the civil rights of students,

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Speaker 1: and her comments were the final straw. Education Secretary Betsy

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Speaker 1: de Vos has criticized the Obama administration's guidance for investigations

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Speaker 1: of sexual assault on campuses. I think all students deserve protection,

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Speaker 1: all students, that's all students, and I think that there

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Speaker 1: has been a lack of clarity in this area. My

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Speaker 1: guest is Casey Johnson, professor at Brooklyn College in a

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Speaker 1: country tributor to minding the campus. Casey, let's start with

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Speaker 1: someone heading the Education Department's Civil Rights Office making comments

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Speaker 1: like these in the context of the volatile issue of

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Speaker 1: sexual assault on campuses. Is I'm sorry enough. In this case,

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Speaker 1: it does seem to be it's it's may not be enough,

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Speaker 1: but it was appropriate under these, uh, these circumstances. She

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Speaker 1: did issue the apology immediately um And on this issue,

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Speaker 1: it's very very important to speak both carefully and to

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Speaker 1: speak statistically precisely. They have no way, there's no way

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Speaker 1: of knowing what percentage of sexual assaults allegations on campus

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Speaker 1: are caused by any factor. And it's the sort of

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Speaker 1: comment that shouldn't have been made, and I think the

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Speaker 1: apology was very very appropriate. Jackson is the acting head

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Speaker 1: of the Civil Rights Office, and Senator Murray said that

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Speaker 1: the Education Secretary, Betsy de Vos, has not formally nominated

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Speaker 1: her in Senator Murray, so it's because she wants to

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Speaker 1: shield her from scrutiny and not allow people to hear

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Speaker 1: her views and plans for this office. Why is she

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Speaker 1: just the acting head? Why has she not been formally nominated?

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Speaker 1: But I think this is part of a general approach

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Speaker 1: that we've seen from the Trump administration. That's not just

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Speaker 1: in education. This has been administration that's been relatively slow

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Speaker 1: in nominating all subcabinet officials, much much slower than than

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Speaker 1: I think any administration in the post FDR period when

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Speaker 1: the executive branch extended. So my sense here is that

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Speaker 1: this is you know that the Trump people have chosen

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Speaker 1: this approach for whatever reason, uh, to sort of slow

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Speaker 1: walk these nominations. But I don't see anything unusual about

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Speaker 1: about o c R and this regard. You see it

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Speaker 1: in State Department, you see it in Treasury, you see

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Speaker 1: it in other national security agencies as well. So, Casey,

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Speaker 1: this is a Title seven on college campuses is a

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Speaker 1: huge issue. But tell us just a little bit about

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Speaker 1: what Mama did as far as Title seven, so to

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Speaker 1: get us up to date. Right. So, so there was

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Speaker 1: an enormous change beginning in two thousand eleven and extending

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and fourteen where the Office for Civil Rights,

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Speaker 1: which is this Education Department agency that that Jackson just

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Speaker 1: now the acting had a redefined Title nine. So this

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Speaker 1: is a law that was passed in the seventies that

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Speaker 1: deals with gender outlaws general sex discrimination at basically all

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Speaker 1: colleges in the universities as long as they received federal funds.

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Speaker 1: But in two thousand eleven, what Obama did without notice

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Speaker 1: or comments, this was just issued as what they viewed

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Speaker 1: as binding guidance was to say that the federal government

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Speaker 1: can tell colleges what procedures they have to follow when

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Speaker 1: they handle sexual assault allegations, and they're legally obligated to

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Speaker 1: do this. And all of the changes that the Obama

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Speaker 1: administration pushed in both two thousand eleven and two thousand

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Speaker 1: fourteen made guilty findings more likely. So they lowered the

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Speaker 1: standard of proof. They said that accusers have to be

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Speaker 1: allowed to appeal, not guilty findings. In what to me

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Speaker 1: is the most serious of these UH changes, in a

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Speaker 1: really problematic one, they encouraged colleges not to allow cross examination. UH,

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Speaker 1: in these allegations you really have this is this is

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Speaker 1: important way of determining the truth. So the Obomber approach

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Speaker 1: was that we have this this wave of of of

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Speaker 1: a violent crime on campus, UH, and the way to

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Speaker 1: deal with it is to change the procedures to make

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Speaker 1: guilty findings more likely. Under what seems to have been

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Speaker 1: the presumption that if if you have that kind of system,

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Speaker 1: victims of sexual assault will be more likely to come forward.

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Speaker 1: So is divorce likely to retract that? I think? So,

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Speaker 1: I mean the Patty Murray letter, which you mentioned to

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Speaker 1: to lead off, but the timing of it struck me

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Speaker 1: as interesting because the demand for UH for Jackson's resignation

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Speaker 1: did not come immediately after the comments were issued. It

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Speaker 1: only came after Divorce met with both advocates of both

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Speaker 1: campus accusers and students who have been accused of sexual

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Speaker 1: assault UH the Obama administration had refused to meet with

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Speaker 1: students who were accused of sexual assault, and after I

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Speaker 1: think more important, a letter from Divorce to Murray where

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Speaker 1: she had criticized the procedure that the Obama administration had

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Speaker 1: used for developing its policies, issuing these guidance documents without

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Speaker 1: soliciting feedback from from the public. And the message that

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Speaker 1: we've heard from Divorce over the past week, if there's

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Speaker 1: one word that you've heard from her over and over again,

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Speaker 1: it's fair. She wants a fairer procedure on campus. So

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Speaker 1: I suspect we are going to see movement from devas

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Speaker 1: on on these grounds. We are so happy to have

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Speaker 1: you here. That was a great explanation of a really

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Speaker 1: complicated topic, and I'm sure we're gonna be discussing it

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Speaker 1: a lot more