Regular visitors to Carpe Diem know that for the last several years I have been on a one-man mission to challenge the frequent and brazen violations in higher education of Title IX’s prohibition of sex discrimination and Title VI’s prohibition of discrimination based on race and skin color. As Professor Philip Carl Salzman pointed out last year universities regularly engage in a hypocritical, double standard — “inclusion and equity for females, people of color, LGBTQ++ and Muslims; exclusion and inequity for males, whites, heterosexuals, Christians, Jews, and East Asians.” In the Orwellian tradition that is a central tenet of campus wokeness, some campus groups are “more equal” than others, and Title IX and Title VI have historically been enforced only for the preferred groups but not for the unpreferred groups. It’s the numerous routine violations of federal civil rights laws and the double-standard for enforcement of those laws that have motivated me to file nearly 400 Title IX and Title VI complaints against US universities for illegally violating the civil rights of unpreferred groups.

Here’s a summary of my civil rights advocacy this year, sorry for the length but there’s a lot to report.

1. Complaints.
So far this year, I have filed 100 Title IX and Title VI complaints with the Office
for Civil Rights for more than 300 violations of Title IX and Title VI at US colleges
and universities. Of those 100 complaints, 30 are for Title VI violations, 52
are for Title IX violations, and 18 are for violations of both Title IX and
Title VI. That brings the total number of civil rights complaints filed to 371 (for
nearly 1,500 violations) since the fall of 2018, which I am sure is the
greatest number of Title IX/VI complaints ever filed by an individual. It’s
especially troubling that universities and colleges regularly certify to the
Department of Education that they are strictly enforcing Title IX and Title as
a legal condition of continuing to receive taxpayer dollars. Despite those
regular and frequently false certifications, most universities routinely
violate Titles IX and VI, and that is what has motivated me to file nearly 400
federal civil rights complaints.

2. Investigations.
In 2021, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has so far opened federal civil
rights investigations based on my complaints at 43 universities mostly for female-only
(and some women of color only) scholarships, faculty and student awards, fellowships,
STEM camps, leadership programs, and STEM programs including Harvard (2), New
York University, William and Mary (4), Carnegie-Mellon, Ithaca College, Seton
Hall, Villanova, Lehigh (5), Cal Tech, Maryland (7), UC-Diego, Cal Tech and Pennsylvania
(2). That brings the total number of federal OCR investigations based on my
Title IX complaints to 164 since January 2019.

3. Resolutions. It’s been encouraging that more than 40 colleges and universities, as a result of my complaints, have corrected their Title IX violations this year, either pre-emptively once a federal civil rights investigation was opened or as a result of a Resolution Agreement with the Office for Civil Rights at the conclusion of an investigation, including the following (you can view the entire list here):

• Wake Forest University’s School of Medicine’s Girls in STEM program was converted to a coeducational program
• The University of Minnesota terminated its women-only gym hours
• University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Girls STEM Day Conference was canceled
• Wayne State University is no longer hosting Black Girls Code programs
• UC-San Diego terminated its Women in Negotiation program
• Brown University’s GirlsGetMath program is now coeducational
• The University of Pennsylvania’s female-only Penn Academy for Reproductive Sciences is now open to all genders

Overall, it’s
been a great year so far with corrections of Title IX violations at more than
40 institutions to date in 2021, which is more than twice the number for successful
resolutions in all of 2020. I would be hopeful for continued success and more
corrections, except for some recent troubling developments that I describe in below.
  

4. New Troubles with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Both President Biden and the Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona have made public statements this year that would seem to support my work advancing civil rights for all students and faculty in higher education. In March of this year, Biden issued an “Executive Order on Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free from Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, Including Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity,” where he said:

It is the policy of my Administration that all students should be guaranteed an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex. For students attending schools and other educational institutions that receive Federal financial assistance, this guarantee is codified, in part, in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. 1681 et seq., which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities receiving Federal financial assistance.

In June, Secretary Cardona issued the statement “Title IX the ‘Strongest Tool’ in Protecting Educational Opportunities Free from Sex Discrimination:”

Today marks 49 years since the passage of Title IX, the strongest tool we have to protect every student’s right to equal access to educational opportunities free from sex discrimination. Because of this landmark rule, our nation has made important progress toward realizing our self-concept as a land of opportunity for all… to protecting students from sex discrimination. I’m proud of the actions the Biden-Harris Administration has taken so far in ensuring that Title IX protects the civil rights of all students….  As Secretary of Education, I am committed to ensuring Title IX works for all students and provides equal access to opportunities that will enrich students’ educational experiences and their futures.

Despite Biden
and Cardona’s supposed guarantee of “an educational environment free from
discrimination on the basis of sex” and “ensuring that Title IX protects the
civil rights of all students,” there have been some troubling signs that the
Office for Civil Rights under Biden and Cardona is actually now actively and
deliberately enabling universities to violate Title IX and continue their
discriminatory practices. The guarantee of a discrimination-free educational
experience and protection of civil rights now apparently only applies to
“preferred” groups (women) but not to “unpreferred” groups (men), even though
men have statistically been an “underrepresented minority (URM)” in higher
education for 40 years.

The OCR’s new
enabling of higher education’s illegal sex discrimination that is in direct
contradiction to the discrimination-free guarantees of Biden and Cardona has
taken place with several new troubling developments. In a significant departure
from past practices, the OCR is now frequently requiring complainants to
provide (a) identities of actual victims and specific instances of sex
discrimination and (b) direct public statements by university officials that
essentially admit their university is violating Title IX.

Here is a recent example of a request for additional information that I received from the Denver Office for Civil Rights regarding a discriminatory program that clearly operates exclusively for women at the University of New Mexico – the Women in STEM faculty awards (doesn’t the name alone tell you everything you need to know?). You can read my original complaint here from May 13, 2020, where I provide numerous gender-specific female references from University websites that along with the program name and documentation that only female faculty have ever received this award provide overwhelming evidence that this is a female-only program. In fact, the stated eligibility requirement for this award is clearly restricted to “tenure-track, tenured and research women faculty members at UNM.”

• Please provide instances when a male applied for the “Women in STEM
  Award” and was denied because of his sex.
• Please provide statements by program officials indicating that the
  “Women in STEM Awards” are exclusively for women, or that men are excluded from
  applying or receiving an award or grant under the program.

Of course, there would be no instances of a male faculty at UNM who ever purposefully applied for an award for which he is clearly ineligible based on the clearly stated female-only eligibility requirement. To apply for UNM’s Women in STEM awards is quite time-consuming and requires many, many pages of documentation including a cover page, summary, project description, “budget with justification,” curriculum vitae, signed statement agreeing to Award Conditions, and a statement of current and pending support including all external funding. It should be totally obvious (even to a government bureaucrat) that no male UNM faculty member has ever devoted the many hours required to apply for the Women in STEM award when it would be so obviously an unproductive exercise in futility. Asking for names of actual victims that don’t exist is apparently a new OCR tactic that will now be used as an excuse for dismissing a valid Title IX complaint about a valid Title IX violation that will enable a university like UNM to continue to engage in illegal discrimination to benefit one of the “preferred groups” mentioned above. 

It should be
noted that OCR regulations do not require “legal standing” and do not require
that a complainant identify a specific individual who has suffered an
individualized injury before curing facial discrimination and per se facial violations of Title IX’s
prohibition of sex discrimination. As outlined above, the OCR has resolved more
than 40 complaints just so far this year that required universities to correct
Title IX violations without ever asking for names of actual victims. The fact
that this is now happening under Biden signifies a major departure from past
practices of OCR and a departure from OCR regulations and policies. If the
situation were reversed and a complaint was filed for a “Men in STEM” award or
a “White Men in STEM” award, it seems obvious that the OCR would not be asking
for examples of women or blacks who applied to those programs and were denied
because of sex or race as part of a federal civil rights investigation.       

Secondly, it
should be equally obvious that UNM officials would not make any explicit statements
publicly that men are excluded from applying for the Women in STEM awards
because it would be publicly admitting that it is violating the civil rights of
male faculty and engaging in illegal discrimination. However, there are dozens
of public statements by UNM that do communicate to the public that the awards
are exclusively and preferentially available only to women, which violates
Title IX, and I provided 15 such statements to the Denver OCR, here are ten:

1. An anonymous gift has been made to UNM to support research by, and professorships for women faculty in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
2. Income from investment of this gift will be used to assist UNM women tenure-track and tenured assistant and associate STEM professors with establishing new research areas and developing research collaborations.
3. Eligibility: Tenure-track, tenured, and research women faculty members at UNM who hold the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor and are pursuing research in areas supported by NSF, NIH (non-clinical), or DOE are eligible to apply. 
4. Priority will be given to proposals that assist women Assistant and Associate STEM Professors with establishing new research areas and developing research collaborations.
5. $15K for seed funding for new research if two women STEM faculty at UNM collaborate on a proposal
6. The awards are supported by an anonymous gift made in 2015 to UNM to support research by and professorships for women faculty in STEM.
7.  UNM Provost James Holloway applauded the awards, which foster the ongoing success of women scientists.
8. Since 2016, 39 women in a variety of STEM fields across UNM have been named as recipients of the award.
9.  The call is open for women faculty in The University of New Mexico’s STEM fields to apply for a variety of grants as part of the 2021 Women In STEM awards. The call is being released earlier than in past years to encourage more women to apply.
10.  UNM Provost James Holloway said the awards aim to acknowledge the variety and depth of work done by women faculty members at the university. “The contributions of our female faculty in creating new knowledge, in educating our students, and in serving our state are astounding. I am pleased that we are able to express our gratitude by rewarding them with the 2021 Women in STEM awards.”

In what I’ll
call a “dirty dismissal,” the Denver OCR issued a dismissal letter last month
stating that “OCR cannot infer that discrimination may have occurred or may be
occurring” at UNM for its female-only Women in STEM awards. Additionally, the
OCR’s dismissal stated that “While the materials encourage women faculty to
apply, there is no evidence of an express statement that the award program is
awarded on the basis of sex. Further, the program’s promotional materials do
not include a restriction or preference based on sex.”

What?!!! The university clearly states that eligibility is restricted to “tenure-track, tenured and research women faculty members,” it has given the award exclusively to 39 female faculty over the last six years (and 0 males), and it makes dozens of statements confirming conclusively that there is not just a preference based on sex, but an actual strict eligibility requirement based on sex for this female-only award.

Further, the
OCR cited my lack of identifying actual victims in its dismissal by writing
“OCR asked whether you were aware of any individuals who were denied the
opportunity to participate in the award program because of their sex. You
responded, but did not identify any individuals who were denied participation
because of their sex.” Well of course I couldn’t identify any specific victims
of sex discrimination, because it’s obvious that no male faculty at UNM has
ever spent the time to apply for an award for which he is clearly ineligible
and there would be no paper trail or instances of such discrimination!

Finally, the
OCR stated that it is “dismissing the complaint because OCR lacks sufficient factual
detail to infer that the University’s Women in STEM award program violates
Title IX.” How about just the discriminatory name of the program – that alone
suggests a Title IX violation without the additional mountain of evidence
presented in detail. After all, it’s not the UNM Faculty STEM award or the
Women and Men STEM award, but the WOMEN [ONLY] IN STEM award!! 

Although this is perhaps the most egregious case to date of OCR’s disregard of past practices and a direct contradiction of Biden and Cardona’s discrimination-free guarantee (and I’ve filed an appeal), it reflects what is apparently the new “OCR playbook” that will increasingly be used to dismiss valid complaints of Title IX violations: Give us instances and the names of actual victims of sex discrimination and provide us with specific statements from universities stating that men are excluded from participating in female-only programs. If you can’t provide any actual victims and any incriminating statements from university officials, we’ll dismiss your valid complaint and allow the university to continue to discriminate, but of course only when the discrimination benefits “preferred groups.”

Universities
for decades have been guilty of both violating Title IX and enforcing federal civil
rights laws selectively, and have done so with impunity because nobody
complained. Now that more than 500 Title IX complaints have been filed by
myself and others to hold universities accountable for many thousands of
violations, it’s the legal obligation of the OCR to investigate those
violations and enforce Title IX uniformly. But the recent actions of the OCR
under Biden suggest that at least some regional OCR offices are willing to
abrogate their legal responsibility to uphold the law and are instead enabling,
sanctioning, and endorsing sex discrimination at universities like the
University of New Mexico. Welcome to the new Orwellian world of Biden’s OCR,
where all students and faculty are guaranteed a discrimination-free experience
in theory, but where only some preferred groups will actually have that
experience, while other unpreferred groups will continue to be the victims of
blatant, illegal discrimination.

Although I’m
discouraged to now have to fight both universities violating Title IX and the
OCR’s new resistance to enforcing Title IX, I’ll continue to fight……   

The post An update on my efforts to challenge Title VI and Title IX violations in higher education despite new resistance from Biden’s Office for Civil Rights appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.