Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. A B Carter's avatar
  2. Jason Aleksander's avatar
  3. Carlo Burelli's avatar
  4. Grant's avatar
  5. David Wallace's avatar

    “I suspect fields that rely more heavily on open access get much better results.” That’s a really interesting observation. I…

  6. A B Carter's avatar
  7. Brian Leiter's avatar

Another student sues Northwestern for Title IX violations

The lengthy complaint is here.  It is full of allegations about the now familiar procedural unfairness characteristic of these university "courts."  The idea that universities should be investigating allegations of criminal misconduct really does defy belief:  allegations of sexual assault should be taken to the police, the district attorney, and the actual courts.  Because Northwestern is a private university, it is not as easy for an aggrieved party to get relief, since private universities are not bound by constitutional requirements of "due process."  This plaintiff, like some others, relies on the theory that the Title IX process at Northwestern manifested gender bias against males; I doubt they will prevail on that claim, to which courts have been largely unsympathetic in the cases I'm familiar with.   More interesting is the breach of contract claim (though that will turn on a finding that the contractual relationship between the student and the university incorporated all the rules and procedures governing student disciplinary matters like those at issue here) and the Illinois unfair trade practices act (not clear that will apply to the university).  The strongest claim is probably for defamation.  Counting in the plaintiff's favor is that it's quite clear real judges are pretty uniformly appalled by the way universities handle these investigations and pseudo-"trials," which means a judge may be more inclined to find a remedy under one of the proposed theories of liability.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Designed with WordPress