As I said here recently, whatever else you might think about “social justice,” it really seems to have the money.

As we noted recently, NAS holds no brief for genuine bullying, and we certainly won’t stand in the way if those engaged in it are dealt with appropriately.

But on the majority of college campuses, long under the heel of sensitivity training, sexual harassment enforcers and “tolerance” educators, we shudder to think what “ant-bullying”policies are in the works right now. If you read FIRE’s analysis, you’ll see that we’re right to worry.

If anything is new, though, it’s the establishment of entire programs and research centers that the IHE article describes, all devoted to imparting “social justice” in one way or another. They seem to be getting some pretty hefty support: At Michigan’s Kalamazoo College, for example, the new Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership just received a cool $23M to underwrite its efforts to change the world, complete with endowed professorships. Whatever “social justice” is, it’s certainly not poor.

Imagine what kind of Great Books program you could get going with even a quarter of that sum. Oh, well.

Both of those, as we noted, are serious matters, and genuine cases need to be treated as such. Our problem, however, was the elastic and ever-adaptable definitions of what constituted “harassment.” As KC observes, OCR’s new “guidelines” now stack an already slanted deck even more heavily against the accused. For all intents and purposes, it’s up to you to prove your innocence. And even if you do, well, that may not be sufficient to get you out of hot water. Read his account of the experience of Yale quarterback Patrick Witt if you want exhibit A for this week.

Unfortunately, the New York Times, unchastened by its deplorable handling of the Duke lacrosse case, seems more than eager to run with the ball for the Sexual Harassment Industry, no questions asked. If someone’s accused – especially an athlete – he must be guilty. Doesn’t sound much like investigative reporting, does it?

Believe me, I’ve learned not to ask if things can get any worse where this stuff is concerned.

Apparently, a D of Ed statistical study was conducted to examine the impact of race as a factor in student loan default rate, and results were published accordingly. One small problem emerged inadvertantly last December however when, as part of the discovery process in litigation involving the department, it turned out that the study had omitted any data with regard to black students.

Now, let’s note slowly, carefully and specifically what happened here: 1) the US Department of Education conducted a survey in which it sought to demonstrate the impact of race on repayment rates of student loans and 2) it reached its conclusions without including any figures about black students in the analysis. I think I’ve got it right.

One of the commenters noted that a private business enterprise might well face criminal charges for work like this, while several others suggested that the missing data were deliberately excluded because the results would have been politically inconvenient.

At the very least, the episode doesn’t leave you brimming with confidence about the D of Ed’s capacity to produce reliable and accurate quantitative work, especially if it’s going to figure in their rating of individual programs’ eligibility for student loans.

Looks as if Secretary Duncan had better mandate some crash remediation in statistical analysis for his data crunchers, eh?