A new attack on campus free speech

Speech alone can now be "harassment" and is to be heavily punished

For two decades, universities have struggled with the question of "speech codes," tempted by the left to enshrine political correctness at the expense of the First Amendment. Most campuses have resisted, but through the Obama administration, the censors have triumphed all at once and everywhere.

A letter from the Department of Education and the Department of Justice addressed to the University of Montana but explicitly intended as a "blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country," the government has altered the legal meaning of the term "sexual harassment." The new rule directly contravenes Supreme Court decisions and previous rulings from OCR that harassment "must include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive." The Supreme Court has ruled that to meet the test of sexual harassment, behavior must be "severe, pervasive and objectively offensive." Note the word "objectively," meaning that a reasonable person similarly situated would be offended.

The reasonable person standard is now gone. The new definition of sexual harassment decreed by the Obama administration is "any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature," including "verbal conduct." The purported victim now has the power to decide whether a young man or woman (but it's nearly always a man) is branded a sexual harasser. It's entirely subjective.

Obama promised fundamental transformation. This is part of it. Freedom of speech is sacrificed, and a new army of sexual harassment "specialists" will descend on America's campuses to enforce the new dispensation.

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