Another one bites the dust: Penn caves after threat from Trump over funding

Professor Jonathan Zimmerman of  the University of Pennsylvania writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Nice university you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.

That’s what the Trump administration has essentially been saying to my own employer, the University of Pennsylvania, regarding our decisions about trans female swimmer Lia Thomas. Back in April, the White House warned us that we risked losing federal funding if we didn’t strip Thomas of her records and apologize to swimmers who lost to her.

On Tuesday, we caved. And we will never live that down.

A university is supposed to be a place where free and untrammeled minds search for the truth, as best they can discern it. But in this sordid episode, we put all of that aside. Money talked, and everything else walked.

Let me be clear: Reasonable people can and do differ about whether Penn should have allowed Thomas to compete on its women’s swim team back in 2021 and 2022. It’s a complicated question, and I still don’t know how to answer it.

But here’s what I do know: We should not have capitulated to the White House by removing Thomas’ individual swimming records and promising to apologize to athletes who might have been harmed by her participation on the women’s squad.

We did win a reprieve from the government, which agreed to restore the $175 million in grants that it paused back in March because Thomas had competed on the women’s team. But what does it profit a university if it gains the whole world of federal dollars and loses its own soul?

As president J. Larry Jameson noted in his letter to the Penn community, the university was following NCAA eligibility rules — and the federal Title IX law, “as then interpreted” — when it let Thomas swim on the women’s team. Jameson went on to write that “some student athletes were disadvantaged by these rules,” and he pledged to apologize to them.

You read that right: Penn is going to apologize for following the law.

To be sure, some laws are unjust. Slavery was legal across the United States when the nation was born. Women were mostly barred from voting and from inheriting property. And millions of Black Americans were segregated in communities and schools — again, by law — until the civil rights era.

Universities were deeply implicated in all of these matters. And, to their credit, many of them have acknowledged the same and promised to make amends. Most notably, Georgetown University apologized for its role in the 1838 sale of 272 enslaved African Americans to pay off a debt at the school. Together with the Jesuits, the religious society that founded Georgetown, the university also gave $27 million to a foundation that assists descendants of the people who were sold.

Meanwhile, students at Georgetown voted to add a new fee each semester of $27.20 per student, and to donate the proceeds to healthcare and education programs in Maryland and Louisiana, where many of the known descendants of the 272 enslaved people now live.

One day, allowing Thomas to swim on the women’s team might be viewed as a profound injustice, as well. But in the here and now, most students, faculty, and administrators at Penn don’t see it that way. We’re not apologizing because we think we did something wrong. We’re apologizing to save our own skins.

That’s understandable, but it’s also deeply cynical. It’s the kind of thing that happens in authoritarian countries, where you have to echo the party line to stay in the government’s good graces.

Penn is going to apologize for following the law.

Ditto for Penn’s decision to restore individual records and titles to female athletes who lost to Thomas, as the Trump administration had demanded. By Tuesday afternoon, our website already showed other athletes owning the school’s top times in Thomas’ events.

You might argue that’s fair and just, given the physical advantages Thomas enjoyed. And you might be right. Like I said, it’s an open question.

But there is no question — none — about why Penn made this call: to avoid the wrath of Donald Trump. And that’s what I call cowardice.

In his letter announcing the agreement that Penn reached with the Trump administration, Jameson said that he remains “dedicated to preserving and advancing the University’s vital and enduring mission.” I’m sure he does. But if that mission includes an unwavering quest for truth, the agreement made a mockery of it. Shame on us.

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Education Department plans overhaul of DeVos era Title IX regulations

The Education Department announced plans to hold public hearings on how schools should handle sexual misconduct cases as the first step in a planned overhaul of Title IX regulations, reported NBC News.

In a letter released by the Education Department, the hearing is described as a chance for students, parents, school officials and advocates to weigh in before the Biden administration offers its proposal for how K-12 schools and colleges receiving public funding must respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment. The department has not yet announced a timeline for the hearing but plans to share more details in the coming weeks. The hearing will occur over multiple days and include a virtual component, a department official said.

After the hearing, the department intends to begin a formal process known as "proposed rule-making" to rewrite the Title IX rules, which would include another round of public comments.

The department will also issue question-and-answer-style guidance in the coming weeks to advise schools how to adhere to the current Title IX rules.

During the presidential campaign, Joe Biden vowed to scrap the Trump administration's new regulation on campus sexual misconduct, which took effect in August under Title IX, a gender equity law. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had said she had designed the new rules to offer a clearer, fairer process to adjudicate sexual assault complaints; victims' rights advocates criticized the regulation for narrowing the definition of sexual harassment and limiting the incidents schools could investigate.

Biden signed an executive order last month directing Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to review and consider rewriting the regulation.

"Today's action is the first step in making sure that the Title IX regulations are effective and are fostering safe learning environments for our students while implementing fair processes," Cardona said in a statement Tuesday morning.

Cardona has not indicated the specific policies the Biden administration intends to propose or change.

Democratic lawmakers and advocates for sexual assault victims had already started pressuring the Biden administration to quickly act on changing the Title IX rules. Some welcomed Tuesday's announcement.

"This is a critical next step in protecting survivors in school and ensuring Title IX's promise of ending sex discrimination is realized," said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women's Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy group. "So I'd see this step as a victory and a testament to the student survivors who have continued to so bravely fight for campuses where they can be safe and treated fairly and with dignity."

Federal rule-making can be a lengthy process — sometimes taking over a year — but it is more lasting than executive orders or policy statements and more difficult for future administrations to reverse. Under DeVos, the Education Department used the same rule-making process to set up the current Title IX regulation on campus sexual misconduct.

The framework implemented by DeVos prevents schools from launching Title IX investigations into allegations of assaults that take place off campus, uses a narrower definition of sexual harassment compared to workplace standards and requires schools to presume that accused students are innocent at the outset of investigations.

DeVos' rules were widely condemned by victims' rights advocates, who said some elements, such as requiring colleges to allow accused students to cross-examine their accusers through third parties, would discourage people from reporting assaults. Many trade groups for K-12 schools and universities were also critical, arguing that the rules would turn their institutions into courtrooms.

Advocates for accused students praised DeVos' policies as ensuring evenhanded responses to assault allegations on campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit that focuses on due process on college campuses, said last month that it would not rule out suing to block a Biden administration rewrite of Title IX rules.

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