{"id":304958,"date":"2021-07-22T00:37:05","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T21:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/beware-bidens-department-of-education\/"},"modified":"2021-07-22T00:37:05","modified_gmt":"2021-07-21T21:37:05","slug":"beware-bidens-department-of-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/beware-bidens-department-of-education\/","title":{"rendered":"#Beware Biden\u2019s Department of Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Beware Biden\u2019s Department of Education<\/strong>”
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Last week, the Senate Education Committee held a confirmation hearing for a woman who has arguably done more than any other government official to fan the flames of America\u2019s culture war: Catherine Lhamon.<\/p>\n

President Joe Biden has nominated Lhamon to return for a second stint as assistant secretary in the Department of Education\u2019s Office for Civil Rights. During her previous term, under former President Barack Obama, Lhamon transformed that office from a guarantor of statutorily defined rights into a forward operating base for coercing compliance with liberal social<\/a> dogma.<\/p>\n

Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the ranking Republican on the committee, described Lhamon\u2019s track record as \u201cdeeply troubling if not outright disqualifying.\u201d But he and his colleagues seemed focused on fighting the last culture war \u2014 over Title IX and allegations of sexual assault and abuse on campus \u2014 rather than the left\u2019s social crusade du jour: critical race theory.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Lhamon\u2019s track record on Title IX is worth scrutinizing. Under her leadership, OCR coerced colleges to adopt a new \u201cpreponderance of the evidence\u201d standard for investigating sexual allegations on campus \u2014 a standard critics on left and right say creates a presumption of guilt.<\/p>\n

When President Donald Trump\u2019s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, issued a regulation with a stronger emphasis on due process, even the liberal\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0editorial board\u00a0admitted\u00a0that DeVos got quite a bit right.<\/p>\n

Yet Lhamon\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0that DeVos\u2019s regulation takes \u201cus back to the bad, old days, that predate my birth, when it was permissible to rape and sexually harass students with impunity.\u201d When Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) asked about this statement, Lhamon stood by it, declaring that the DeVos \u201cregulation permits students to rape and sexually harass with impunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lhamon has demonstrated a similar cavalier lack of regard for evidence and due process on another key issue: school discipline. Under her leadership, civil-rights probes became tools of harassment to coerce changes in school policies. These\u00a0investigations would\u00a0end only when\u00a0school districts agreed to adopt lenient discipline policies, notwithstanding\u00a0evidence\u00a0that lenience was destabilizing classrooms and boosting violence.<\/p>\n

After leaving OCR, Lhamon was app<\/a>ointed to lead the US Commission on Civil Rights, where she oversaw a report on disciplinary disparities. The report concluded that despite substantial disparities by race in school suspensions, \u201cstudents of color as a whole, as well as by individual racial group, do not commit more disciplinable offenses than their white peers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0pointed out\u00a0that the report\u2019s citations \u201cdid not offer such evidence. One set of data referenced in the report showed the opposite.\u201d Either Lhamon had a sloppy grasp of the evidence on an issue she has worked on for years or she willingly propagated misinformation through America\u2019s premier civil-rights commission.<\/p>\n

The GOP senators didn\u2019t challenge Lhamon on school discipline. Nor did they ask any questions on the issue at the forefront of so many voters\u2019 minds: critical race theory.<\/p>\n

This year, Biden\u2019s OCR\u00a0suspended a decision\u00a0that Illinois\u2019 Evanston\/Skokie School District violated Title VI\u2019s prohibition on racial discrimination when it segregated staff by race, instructed teachers to treat students differently based on race, publicly shamed white students based on their race and taught that \u201cwhiteness\u201d was a contract with the devil.<\/p>\n

The action sent a clear signal that OCR didn\u2019t intend to enforce anti-discrimination law to protect white students or teachers.<\/p>\n

A Lhamon-led OCR could do far worse than non-enforcement going forward. In her previous term at OCR, her modus operandi was to fabricate new interpretations of what civil-rights law requires, then tell educational institutions that they could lose federal funding unless they \u201cvoluntarily\u201d agreed to adhere to these dictates.<\/p>\n

No one should be surprised if Lhamon actually\u00a0enforces<\/em>\u00a0CRT, by coercing school districts into \u201cvoluntary\u201d resolution agreements that require \u201canti-racist audits,\u201d mandate race-focused professional development for teachers or stipulate the hiring of diversity consultants and staff.<\/p>\n

Unless a Democratic senator decides to oppose her or abstain, Lhamon\u2019s nomination is all but assured. The question is whether congressional Republicans will muster the gumption to exercise proper oversight and determine whether \u2014 and how \u2014 she is transforming the Office for Civil Rights into the Office for Critical Race Theory.<\/p>\n

Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Adapted from City Journal<\/a>.<\/em>\n <\/div>\n